Street Beat was another great game released for the Commodore 64/128 by Mastertronic for a pocket money friendly £1.99. The aim of the game was simple... You play a character called Rockin Rodney, who has just started a new job at Significance Records. You must wander town, collecting audio cassettes from various houses and returning them to your place of work. The only thing is, you need to get a certain number of people dancing before you can drop the tape off at Significance Records. You do this by using the ghettoblaster which you carry on your shoulders. You basically shoot musical notes at the passing pedestrians to get them dancing. Using F1 and F4, you can change the volume of the music - the louder it is, the further the musical notes go (although you're more likely to get nicked by the local police).
You have to watch your batteries though. Pop into electrical stores to replenish your ghettoblaster batteries should they get low. If the batteries run out, you lose all the people you've got dancing and you have to start all over again.
Every now and then you are notified of a dancing/house party which you can gate crash. If you are successful in finding the right house, you can increase the number of people dancing greatly.
You also have to watch out for various characters who make playing the game difficult, including :-
- Tone Deaf Walker - He'll damage your ghettoblaster and you'll need to find a repair shop to get it working again. Don't let him touch you more than once otherwise your ghettoblaster will be irreparably damaged and the game ends.
- Psycho Killer - This guy will kill you and instantly ends the game.
- Gangster of Groove - If you let these guys touch you, they steal your tape.
The town is quite large, and it can be difficult to find a house with a tape to collect (indicated by a random flashing front door). Fortunately if you bump in to a character called Jumping Jack Flash, he will teleport you to a house with a tape (or Significance Records if you already have collected a tape).
There are 10 tapes to collect, and you have to collect them all and get them to Significance Records before your on-screen tape counter reaches 999.
I spent many hours of my childhood playing this game, and even after 25 years I still have not finished it. I think the most tapes I could find is 8 (out of 10). Graphics are simple but effective, and there is a good number of tunes to listen to when you collect a tape. This game was actually a re-release of a game called Ghettoblaster - Both games were the same, but with a few minor changes such as different music.
May the funk be with you.
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