Escalator Action: Going up

Sometimes I stumble upon a game and fall in love with the idea of it so hard I have to drop everything to play it. Escalator Action is the latest game to stir such a strong reaction in me, the pun title—a play on Taito’s arcade classic Elevator Action—both genuinely funny and also implying there’s a fun and fundamental stair-based twist on a famous game waiting within. Which is all very cute, but does this old doujin game have anything more to offer than a clever name? Er, yes, actually. Quite a lot more in fact. The basics are more or less as anyone familiar with the original would expect: I try to make my way to the end of each area (marked by an orange door here), and shoot at any smartly-suited agents who get in the way—and hopefully before they do the same to me. Beyond that general framework the game is very much its own thing, right down to the controls. I have to use either WASD or the arrow keys to move about (with jump mapped to “up”, which feels like some minor win for my…