D.D. Crew

Overview

D.D. Crew is an obscure beat 'em up developed and published by Sega for the arcade platform, on the Sega System 18 system board. It is preceded by Tough Turf, Golden Axe, Dynamite Düx, and Spider-Man: The Video Game in Sega's famed, belt scrolling lineage.

Story

The D.D. Crew is a special crew within the L.A.P.D., who are awoken to the threat of a bomb by a man in an Orange suit who exclaims "YO GOTTA BOMB IN YA PARK !!" during the games opening cutscene. The player can choose from 4 members of the D.D. Crew, who all happen to resemble real life celebrities: F.F., who can be presumed is the leader, resembles a blonde Jean-Claude Van Damme; King is the biggest of the bunch who moves and sounds most similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Buster is an African-American boxer who parallels Balrog by resembling Mike Tyson in a deliberately non-litigious fashion; and Gung-Ho, a discernibly white old dude who is likely the game's smaller aged version of Stephen Seagal.

There are 7 bosses that are unnamed, all presumed to have a role in the planting of the bomb, and greet the player with a single line of dialogue upon encounter. Almost all of these instances include poor grammar in the accompanying text, a "realistic" close-up on the boss' face with bizarre facial animation (though impressive for 1991), and comically enthusiastic voice acting.

The penultimate boss is the same man that made a call to the D.D. Crew in the intro cinematic. The last boss is evidenced to be a corrupt Japanese businessman by the fact that you have to fight through a large office building get to him, as well as his suit and katana. He realizes in his dying breath that crime, in fact, does not pay. What any of this has to do with the planting of a bomb in a park is left to the player's imagination.

Boss Quotes

These are in order of each stage's end, and are grammatically intact:

"YOU'RE IN FOR SOME ROUGHIN' MAN!"

"YOU! DIE!"

"NOBODY PASSES ME, ALIVE!"

"TAKE A LOAD OF THIS WILD THANG!"

"I'M COMIN' THROUGGGH!"

"LONG TIME NO SEE... FOREVER!"

EVRYTHING HAS IT'S RISE AND FALLS!"

Gameplay

The most objectively damning aspect of D.D. Crew is its poor implementation of combat mechanics. While there are high points that could have set it apart from the competition in a good, such as the ability to throw enemies from the ground, and a very useful jump attack, these are outweighed by what has been overlooked.

This game was released 2 years after Final Fight and in the same year as the first Streets of Rage. Those beat-em-ups have two crucial elements that this one is missing: an auto grab mechanic initiated by walking up to the opponent, and a "crowd control" move, which allows the player to deal with multiple enemies when being approached from more than one side. Without these 2 things, the player is left to attempt to line their attacks up on their own. Grabs can happen, but only unreliably, and at random. Similarly, while you can knock enemies on the ground and throw them afterwards, most enemies are cannot be knocked back without dying as well, so this is also rarely applicable.

Music

D.D. Crew features a hip-hop/house inspired soundtrack which uses a high amount of voice samples. There is one that is clearly taken from a James Brown song, but the origins of the others are a mystery. These include: a goofy cult-like humming, female moaning/heavy breathing, a pitched-up man saying "keep me hangin' on" and "going to a jungle", and women yelling "you a sucka!".

Due to the credits opting to not credit anybody other than the fictitious four main characters, the composer is currently unknown.