Motor City Patrol Overview
Motor City Patrol is a top-down driving game for the NES where the player assumes the role of a city police officer. The primary activity involves operating a squad car to address various criminal incidents across an urban environment.
Officers engage in routine traffic enforcement, such as signaling speeders to pull over, and respond to more serious events like robberies by firing upon fleeing vehicles. The game structures its progression around escalating criminal targets, with players ultimately working to apprehend a designated top fugitive. A session concludes if the player's vehicle is destroyed or a critical mission fails, making the overall experience challenging.
This style of open-ended, mission-based urban pursuit is noted as an early conceptual forerunner to later crime-focused driving games.