Here's Irem Corp. venturing into beat'em-up turf. A territory quite familiar to other developers of the early 90's but mostly unexploited by a company brought to general attention by its shoot'em-up reputation.
Odds are you never heard of Undercover Cops. And even if you did because you happened to find this rare cabinet during the 90's at your local arcade, I bet you didn't think much of it. Don't worry, I'll be getting into what makes this beat'em-up made by a company that has very little experience in the genre so special. But for now, trust me and get a hold of the japanese version, the one we are going to be looking at in this article.

Arcade flyer

The golden age of beat'em-ups started during the late 80's with titles like "Double Dragon", but Irem did not take any part on it despite the inmense success they enjoyed having a hand in adapting Jackie Chan's "Spartan X" movie as one of the earliest examples of this genre: 1984's "Kung-Fu Master". Irem always seemed to stay behind juggernauts like Capcom and Konami when it came to putting out quality titles, and remain known for classics "Moon Patrol", "Lode Runner", the previously mentioned "Kung-Fu Master", and of course the biggest one of all, "R-Type".
Irem's beat'em-ups list is quite short in fact. Besides their original kung-fu hit, it includes its spiritual sequel "Vigilante", wacky "Ninja Baseball Batman", an odd "Hook" movie adaptation, flawed medieval title "Blade Master", and finally "Undercover Cops", a rare title you probably didn't spend more than 3 quarters on.

Arcade flyer

Situated in post-apocalyptic New York, Undercover Cops tells once again the tried-and-true but stale story of a city overrun by thugs who are about to get spanked by the local heroes. The game is divided into 5 stages guarded by their correspondent boss, and three different vigilantes are available to beat up anything that moves on your way to the last level.

So what makes Undercover Cops so special then? Well, the arcade version America got (dubbed "World" version, after all a "U.S." version was never produced) is not a finished product. For unknown reasons Irem decided to release the final version of the game in Japan, but distributed a sort of "beta" to the rest of the world. This obviously affected the title's popularity outside Japan (since there is a big quality gap between the two versions), forever secluding Irem's finest beat'em-up into obscurity.
Finding any online reference about this proves impossible due to the fact that this crippled version sank the Undercover Cops name so deep that even though the japanese ROM is widely available on any MAME emulator nobody actually noticed the differences.

Deja vu, mon frere:
The small police truck that takes Dr. Crayborn away at the end of the game drives suspiciously similar to this other one...

The unfinished version isn't exactly buggy, but simply lacks lots of features and details that made its japanese brother such a great game. These range from unimportant and silly name translations to our characters having their fighting repertoire reduced by a whopping 50%. Simply unacceptable.
Here's a complete list of what the World version lacks:

All these missing features and details quickly sank Undercover Cops into oblivion, and one has only but to play thru a couple of stages of the japanese version to realize what a polished beat'em-up this is.
Each character has a bigger repertoire of moves than your usual Final Fight or Captain Commando. In addition to hit, jump and two-button specials, these vigilantes can dash, dash and hit, dash-jump and hit, hit off the ground, throw in at least two different ways, and execute an airborne special move that looks amazing and is more powerful than the regular one (half-circle-forward + hit in mid-air).

The game also features a never before seen array of weapons, health items, and a very interesting cast of enemies. Instead of mundane knives, bats and guns, Irem's title features heavy cement columns, huge steel beams and even a whole rusting Humvee for you to hurl at your opponents.
Health items don't fall behind either. Besides meatloafs, donuts and slices of cake, you'll also have to digest live rodents, roosters, small pigs and even chicks if you plan to stay alive.

Off-the-ground come-back:
Tap the hit button repeatedly after being knocked down to make a smashing come-back. Japanese version only!

Add all sorts of wretched mutants, rusty cyborgs, vicious humans and other post-apocalyptic inhabitants and you suddenly have a beat'em-up that really stands out. Not to mention the unique bosses: A short-circuiting cyborg that continuously tries to throw you into a metal compactor, a crying dominatrix with a jackhammer for weapon, and an armed man-eating mole-man with lethal farts constitute some of this unusual crew.

Put all these things together, add some of the amazing art design and animation Irem became known for in games like "In The Hunt" and "Gunforce 2" plus an excellent soundtrack full of jazzy / techno tunes and you'll see why this game rocks. The only thing keeping it away from perfection being the boring waves of palette-swapped enemies the CPU throws at you during the last couple of stages.

Not hentai!
Undercover Cops was big enough in Japan to have its own manga, nowadays extremely rare.

The japanese version was so popular that it even spawned a nowadays hard to find manga series, an outstanding Super Famicom port made by Varie with most of the game's features intact (although lacks 2-player mode), and a totally original turn-based/board game title for the GameBoy under the name of "Undercover Cops Gaiden: Hakaishin Garumaa". Check this last one out, it's quite playable even though it's in japanese.
What did we get? Not a comic book or manga, that's for sure. The SNES port was cancelled at the last minute even though there is a cover for it floating around cyberspace, and the GameBoy title just plain didn't make it to this shores.

Unreleased SNES cover

The SNES version was cancelled at the last minute, making this unreleased cover a nice curiosity.

Some time after the "World" version hit the streets, Irem finally released a complete, finished, and english-translated adaptation of its Japanese original under the title of "Undercover Cops Alpha: Renewal Version". Nothing is missing on this revision, but the extremely low number of upgrade kits distributed made it a near-impossible find. After all, the few arcade operators that actually carried the previously release version didn't see the point in re-investing on an upgrade board whose differences with the previous one most likely escaped them.

Undercover Cops Alpha: Renewal Version - Arcade

Soundtrack:
	Northern Barramundi (Stage 1)
	Sarah Sowertty (Stage 2-1)
	Chaca Chaca Move Ya (Stage 2-2)
	Nasty Loud Quack (Boss BGM)