RoboCop (NES) - RetroAchievements/guides GitHub Wiki
Guide created by Glendaal
Overview
- Estimated achievement difficulty: 6/10
- Approximate amount of time to master: 4+ hours (Depending on skill).
- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 3 (will likely take a few more)
- Number of missable achievements: 23/30
- Do cheats disable achievements?: No, using the continue cheat is allowed, although some achievements specifically requires to beat the game without using any continues
- Does difficulty affect achievements?: There's no options to change difficulty
- Glitchy achievements: None
- Hardest achievement: Auto-9 Collector's Edition
Introduction
Welcome to RoboCop, released in 1989 by Data East on the NES console and inspired by the highly successful arcade game of the same name released in 1988. The game was ported in Europe in 1991.
The game consists of 6 stages and 2 bonus stages spanning across different popular scenery from the movie. A boss awaits at the end of each stage to give you hell. The game takes between 20-30 minutes to beat.
First of all, it's important to note that RoboCop is stupid, he is brain dead (literally) so don't expect him to win any Nobel prizes. So in many parts of the game he will just put down his gun for absolutely no reason and force you to fight bare-handed, and most of the time he will end up shooting diagonally instead of shooting straight like you want him to because the controls are extremely sensitive. The developpers thought it would be awesome to have a feature in which you can shoot down diagonally. The thing is there is only one spot in the entire game that it's necessary, some common enemy waits for you at the bottom of stairs in stage 3, that is the only place where you will need to shoot downward. Otherwise it's just there to piss you off and make RoboCop shoot at the ground like a clunky idiot instead of shooting straight like you want him to. And good luck making him listen to you when you want him to go upstairs or downstairs.
You have to take a close look at the two bars at the bottom right of the screen, one is a time bar, the other is your health bar. Either one of these gets to zero, you're dead. Bar recovery items (both health and time) are scattered across the stages for your convenience. Luckily your health bar is extremely big and allows you to get a lot of punishment before dying. The time bar is a little more annoying, especially in the 6th stage. Upon completing a stage, your health bar will recover depending on how much was left on the time one.
As for the controls, the A button is for shooting (unless RoboCop puts away his gun just for the lolz, then he will punch), and B button is for punching at all times, so no, RoboCop does not jump, he's above that. The select button allows you to do a very efficient block that will make you invincible to just about every attacks, very bad mapping for this, but we are in 2023 aren't we? Bring forth the MacGyver in you and remap that button to a more convenient place on your controller, you will thank yourself later. Finally, the Start button pauses the game (duh) but also allows you to switch weapons by pressing up or down. 3 weapons are available in this game: your standard gun with infinite ammo, a machine gun and the big cobra gun, both of them having limited ammo.
Upon dying, you will then go back to the main menu where you will be able to continue and restart the stage you died on. After using 3 continues, the game won't go back to the main menu anymore, but there is a code that you can enter to bypass this and continue an infinite number of times. There is also a way to earn an extra life on the bonus shooting stages that will allow you to instantly go back to life with both the time and health bars fully loaded upon dying, those extra lives are gonna be a must for the harder achievements. See the achievements description section for more infos.
In conclusion, the game itself is not really hard. The bosses are kind of a joke for the most part and once you memorize the stages layouts after a few runs you can breeze through the game without any trouble. But the achievements are a different story, a lot of them will test your nerves and you will most likely start to feel the urge to turn our lovely RoboCop into scrap metal before long, but with practice and dedication everything is very possible to do and Dick Jones's reign of terror will come to an end while you get a cool new shiny badge for your collection.
Roadmap
Step 1: Beat the game
Take this run to give you the opportunity to see what you're up against. This game is fairly short and you have infinite continues, so take your time and memorize the level layouts and enemy patterns for future more serious runs. You will earn all the story-related achievements and you can always attempt a few miscellaneous ones on your way to the end but don't be too stuck on doing them, you will have plenty of opportunities to earn them on your next run.
Step 2: Take out the trash
Now that you know the game a little bit better, you can attempt some of the special challenges that allows you to use continues (all damageless bosses, doing the continue cheat, killing the knife throwing guy on stage 5, destroying the spike wall, max out the cobra gun's ammo)
Step 3: Put what you have learned through the test
Now you must be starting to know the game fairly well, you can now attempt the high score achievements, the bonus stage ones, and beating the game without blocking and without using the 2 special guns (machine gun and cobra).
Step 4: The hardest challenges
Everything is going well? Good! Now it's time to wrap this game up by taking out the big guns. 2 achievements are extremely hard: beating the game without using the pistol and beating the game without dying and having one extra life left after defeating the final boss. Those will be the tie breaker between those who are gonna master the game and those who won't. Which side are you? It'll all depend on how much you want it, I will sure try to help you to get though it the best I can though, see the achievements descriptions below for tips and tricks.
Achievements
Stage 1 Clear (1 point)
Clear the first stage
Beat Stage 1, story-related and can't be missed
First Perfect Case (5 points)
Defeat the Thug without receiving damage
This guy can be mildly annoying, he is impervious to bullets so you have to punch him out. It's just a toss up about who's going to hit first. If you land the first punch, spam the punch button as fast as you can and he won't be able to get out of your grasp, after a dozen punches he will fall. If he lands first, then reset the game and try again, the first level is very short so it won't take too long to get into another fisticuffs
Stage 2 Clear (2 points)
Clear the second stage
Beat Stage 2, story-related and can't be missed
Second Perfect Case (10 points)
Defeat the Mayor's Kidnapper without receiving damage
This isn't too hard, when the fight starts you can casually walk towards the middle of the screen, then crouch and wait for the bad guy to shoot, when he does so, the hostage will crouch for a second, allowing you to stand up and shoot the kidnapper. You have to do this with your pistol, if you use the machine gun you will hit the mayor, we don't want that now do we? If you hit the mayor your own health bar will go down so get your timing right. After 3 shots the kidnapper will let go of the mayor and go ballistic, frantically moving left to right. Stop shooting, he will dodge just about every shots and it won't hurt him anyway even if it lands. Just move all the way to the left and crouch, all his shots will miss you (typical 80s bad guy shooting), just get a close look at the furthest point he goes left, he won't get any further, so sneakily make RoboCop advance the closest you can from that spot while staying crouched to avoid being hit by his bullets and punch the dude when he comes near you, easy win. The only easier fight in the game is the final boss, yeah you read that right.
Stage 3 Clear (5 points)
Clear the third stage
Beat Stage 3, story-related and can't be missed
Third Perfect Case (10 points)
Defeat the Gangster Bosses without receiving damage
In my opinion this is the hardest damageless boss in the game, before entering the boss's lair, make sure you have the cobra equipped and 90 machine gun bullets, which can all be found on stage 3. When the fight begins, DO NOT hesitate, walk all the way to the right without any hesitation and shoot a cobra bullet upwards to destroy the thing in front of Clarence Boddicker. The enemies who were following you are magically gonna disappear and Boddicker will run away. In his stead, 3 army guys will appear above you, switch to your machine gun and wait for them to come down. They are as stupid as RoboCop so they will come down just one at a time, pepper them with your machine gun when they come down and you should kill them fast enough before they even have the chance to attack. The only challenge here is the machine gun's very short range so you have to move close-ish to them, otherwise you won't hit. Just be careful of the army guys waiting on the platform above as they can shoot you from up there but their bullets are not too difficult to dodge
Stage 4 Clear (5 points)
Clear the fourth stage
Beat Stage 4, story-related and can't be missed
Fourth Perfect Case (10 points)
Defeat the ED-209 without receiving damage
This guy is a joke, 10 points for this is like giving a free toy with your happy meal. If you kept your 2 cobra bullets then you can kill him with those 2 shots in 2 seconds. But if you didn't...it's gonna take you 10 seconds instead of 2. There's only one way for him to hit you, he just moves (very, very slowly) from left to right and when he gets to the end of both directions he will fire a short burst downwards, with very little range. You nearly have to do it on purpose to get hit by that. On top of that, if you crouch near his feets while he's moving left he won't even fire. Even better! Touching him won't hurt you (the 2nd stage's very human kidnapper was damaging you, a full metal android, by touching you but somehow you put your big boy pants here and stop being hurt by merely touching something, even if it's a 5 tons killing machine). Anyway, to damage him, shoot at his head
Stage 5 Clear (10 points)
Clear the fifth stage
Beat Stage 5, story-related and can't be missed
Fifth Perfect Case (25 points)
Defeat Clarence and crane without receiving damage
At some point towards the end of stage 5, you will fight a chopper, move a little bit forward and you will jump right into this boss fight. This time, Boddicker isn't messing around and he is carrying Cobra guns. Half a second into the fight he will throw a Cobra blast at your face that you won't be able to dodge. To negate this, have your pistol ready and shoot him as soon as the fight starts, you don't have a big window so be quick about it. Boddicker's pattern is pretty straightforward, he just keeps moving in a half circle, stopping on edges to shoot a Cobra blast at you. You just always have to shoot first and he won't ever shoot at you. Just stand in the middle and laugh at him running out of breath while shooting at him when he stops. There is also a crane that can be quite annoying that will drop beams on you, the beams somehow bounces when they hit the floor so be careful. You can destroy the crane with one Cobra blast. Manage to get rid of the crane quickly and this damageless battle will be very easy.
Stage 6 Clear (10 points)
Clear the sixth stage
Beat Stage 6, story-related and can't be missed
Sixth Perfect Case (25 points)
Defeat the Red ED-209 without receiving damage
He is back! The meanest, unforgiving boss you ever met in stage 4, and he is back with a vengeance! You are now sweating bullets wondering how OP he is gonna be now and how he learned from his past mistake... Well, no. He is exactly the same as he was in stage 4, same attack pattern (if you can call it that), he just have more health. To make things easier, as if it was needed, you can farm Cobra gun bullets right before the fight, so you can blow him to smithereens with it. After 6 cobra bullets, he's only gonna have one health bar left, so finish him off with a few pistol shots. Congratulations, you just destroyed the deadliest final boss in video game history.
Heatproof (10 points)
Defeat the fire cannon on stage 4 without receiving damage and using only Auto-9
See Heatproof v2.0
Heatproof v2.0 (25 points)
Defeat the fire cannon on stage 6 without receiving damage and using only Auto-9
Both of these things are frustrating, they are harder to beat damageless than other of the bosses in the game. You can only use your pistol so have it in your hands when the fight begins.
Stage 4: When it starts, move all the way to the left, safe and out of danger. Now look at the flames it throws at you. One of those flames goes further than the others, that's your cue right there. When that flame is gone move forward and shoot 5 or 6 times, then go back on the left and wait for the next long flame, rinse and repeat. Once you get the hang of it it becomes more and more manageable. Take note that there is absolutely no indications that your are hitting it so even if you are under the impression that you are not doing any damage you are, keep doing it until it's destroyed
Stage 6: Same principle as the one in stage 4, except this time it also fires missiles at you from above. Don't worry though, you still are safe on the far left of the screen. But now you will have to time your attacks even more closely to avoid both the flames and the missiles. Take your time, pick your shots and it'll eventually go down. Note that for future playthroughs, 1 cobra shot destroys these things.
Detective (10 points)
Shoot 30 targets in the first training round
See Sniper
Commissioner (10 points)
Shoot 30 targets in the second training round
See Sniper
Sniper (25 points)
Shoot 32 or more targets in each shooting round without losing continues between them
There is a bonus stage at the end of Stage 2 and Stage 4. Both of the shooting bonus stages are identical, so don't expect a different pattern between them. You gain an extra life when you hit 30 targets. You can only have one extra life at a time, so getting 30 target hits on stage 4 while already having an extra life in your pocket from stage 2 won't give you another one
32 hits is pretty much considered a perfect run (although I did manage to get a 33rd hit once or twice). So you have to do 2 perfect runs in a row without losing continues between them. At this point if you were a good student and followed this guide you will know this game fairly well by then and getting to level 4 continueless will be a walk in the park so I wouldn't worry too much about that aspect. For a heads up on how to hit all 32 targets, take a look at the video linked below created by yours truly
Secret Room (1 point)
Find the secret passage
On Stage 2, when you enter the building you will have to walk down a hallway to the left and then go up 2 sets of stairs. At the top of those stairs open the first door you see and break the wall on the right side of the room by punching it a few times
Punching bag for Robocop (5 points)
Destroy the spiked wall on stage 2
Right after finding the secret breakable wall mentionned just above, you will have to break another wall, a spike wall will appear and menacingly move towards you. Just punch it a few times to destroy it. The achievement will unlock as you leave the room
Most Wanted (10 points)
Shoot the knife throwing enemy and get your reward
Near the end of the first part of Stage 5, you will be walking high on a platform, just before the stairs going down to a health item this enemy will appear. He have pretty much the same appearance as the normal goons but for some reason he throws a knife at you, a mechanic droid, and he's the only enemy in the entire game that does that, he then just turns around and get away. You have to shoot him before his retreat. Just crouch to avoid the knife and shoot him, achievement unlocked. I don't know what the 'reward' is supposed to be, maybe the fact that shooting him in the crotch is the reward by itself, which is perfectly fine with me
Max Cobra (5 points)
Max out Cobra ammunition
Easy peasy, on both the 5th and 6th stage you meet a Cobra gun carrying enemy that will drop one when you kill him. This game has gone the Mega Man route and the enemies appears inifinitely by toggling the screen left and right, just kill that guy and grab his Cobra weapon until you're maxed out. You will need this strategy for the dreaded Auto-9 Collector's Edition achievement
Manual Override (1 point)
Robocop is never discouraged. Force him to continue the game after using 3 continues (using only Start)
This achievement is confusing a lot of people, there is in fact 2 ways to do the continue cheat. After losing 3 continues the game won't go back to the main menu. You then need to hold A+B+Select and then press Start. You will then go back to the main menu and be allowed to keep on continuing. BUT, there is another way to do the continue cheat and that's the way to earn this achievement: instead of the other code you need to press Start just about 150-200 times. It'll then bring you back to the menu and you will get the achievement.
There is also 2 conditions for this to work: you can't do this on the 1st stage and you have to get at least a few points before dying. If you do the cheat with 0 point you won't get the achievement, so just make sure to kill at least one enemy before letting yourself die
50,000 Pts (5 points)
Earn 50,000 Points
See 100,000 Pts
100,000 Pts (10 points)
Earn 100,000 Points
This will require you to beat the whole game without continuing, if you get 32 hits on both bonus stages then you will have a 64,000 points head start, so you need 36,000 points across the 6 stages to get to 100,000, just don't skip too many enemies and you will be fine, a decent run will most likely give you around 110,000 points
Robocop Overtime (25 points)
Clear the game without using a continue
Self explanatory, this won't be much of a problem once you know the game well enough. A lot of the harder achievements requires to not use any continues anyway so you will get this while attempting something else
Shield Not Included (25 points)
Clear the game without blocking
You can block in this game by pressing the Select button (do yourself a favor and remap this asap so it's somewhere more convenient), and the blocking is surprisingly overpowered here. RoboCop gets impervious to nearly every attacks in the game while defending. This achievement consists of clearing the game without blocking. After knowing the game well enough you won't be blocking that much anyway so I suggest doing this paired with something else (maybe your 100,000 points run). You will definitely need the blocking feature for the 2 hardest achievements.
Detroit Bankruptcy (10 points)
Ammo is expensive. Clear the game using the Auto-9 gun only (3 shots or continues allowed)
See Robocop 2014
Robocop 2014 (25 points)
Clear the game without using a continue and without using Machine and Cobra guns
These 2 achievements are for beating the game without using the 2 special guns, one allows continues, the other don't. So going for the one without using continues will end up unlocking both. If you try this after doing most of the other stuff you won't have much difficulty. The only challenge will be on stage 6 where time is an issue. The final boss is an easy sack of potato but he takes a while to die with the pistol so be sure to have an extra life when going for this, because you will most likely run out of time.
Auto-9 Collector's Edition (25 points)
Clear the game without using default gun
This is by far the most difficult achievement in the game, you will need to grab every special weapons you can, use the blocking ability the best you can and use your special weapons at very specific spots. It goes without saying that you will need those extra lives too. If you die, don't even think about trying to continue, it won't be possible as you will lose all the special weapons you had. Here are the main points for every stages to take into account.
Stage 1: Pro tip: kill the first 4 or 5 enemies then move with your head straight down all the way through the stage without even trying to defend yourself, grab the time and health powerups along the way and you won't die, kill the boss quickly and you'll have cleared the stage so fast that you will recover all your health for next stage. So 1st stage beaten in 25 seconds, not too shabby.
Stage 2: Why change a winning formula? Go straight to the end of the first part of the stage without defending yourself, move all the way and don't stop. At the very end before entering the building, a health powerup will nearly give you all your health back, how easy is that? When you enter the building, go through the second door and grab the machine gun powerup at your feet, then proceed to the boss room. In case you are wondering, you can punch the kidnapper when the hostage is crouching. Finish him off and hit 30 targets in the bonus stage for your first extra life.
Stage 3: You will actually have to play a little bit here. Make sure you block effectively, especially against those goons shooting at you from above, punch your way through the enemies, DO NOT USE YOUR MACHINE GUN, you're gonna need every single of those bullets. Fortunately this level is kinda generous with the health powerups so be sure to grab them along with every weapons in the stage, 3 machine guns and 1 cobra that I'm sure that by now you know by heart where they all are. So before the boss you should have 120 machine gun bullets and 2 cobra bullets. Equip your cobra and face the boss. You will need the cobra to blow up the thing in front of Boddicker, you can't destroy it with the machine gun. Once it's destroyed, switch to your machine gun to take care of the 3 guys. It takes 20 MG bullets to kill them, so at the end you should be left with around 60 MG bullets and 1 Cobra.
Stage 4: Walk through the tiny robots, don't you dare wasting MG bullets on them, on the 2nd screen you will need your last Cobra bullet to destroy that mechanical thingy that throws lightning at you to open the door. The health powerup there will give you a lot of energy back, you'll need it. On the next screen, grab your machine gun and get ready for the fire cannon. When it appears, DON'T MOVE, you can't be to close or the bullets won't hurt it, where you start you are exactly at the right spot to damage it with the MG. Pepper it until it's destroyed, it should take between 25 to 30 bullets to destroy it. At this point, if you still have your extra life I highly suggest you to lose it on purpose at this point, you'll get another one in a minute, at least you will get all your health and time back. You should have something near 30 bullets left for the boss, don't pepper it this time, you have to shoot him one bullet at a time, he loses 1 health square every time you hit him but then he have a bit of an invincibility moment, so be careful to not get tapped out of ammo. You should have 5 or 6 MG bullets left after the fight. Good, you'll need them. Then grab the extra life in the next bonus stage, this is mandatory
Stage 5: Punch your way through the stage, make good use of your block ability, you can't lose your extra life here. When you get to the Cobra gun wielding enemy, farm 3 from him. Then go all the way to the boss, ignore the chopper and be sure to have your MG equipped. When the boss fight starts, you know the drill, shoot Boddicker with a MG bullet as fast as you can before he shoots you with the cobra, then switch to your own Cobra and take him out. It should take 4 cobra shots to kill him, but you actually have a bit of a room for error here, you just absolutely need 1 cobra shot for stage 6 so you can waste 5 on Boddicker.
Stage 6: At the beginning, move forward as fast as you can, ignore the chopper for now, it will keep reappearing infinitely if you take it down too quickly. So dodge it's grenades and use your block against his machine gun attack. When you moved forward a few screens, you can take it down with your Cobra gun if you have 2 bullets left, if you only have 1, you'll have to live with it for the whole conveyor duration. On the 2nd part of the stage, if you move forward fast enough, the Thug (stage 1's boss) won't appear. On the 3rd part, you will face the flame gun, that's where you need your last Cobra bullet. When it's destroyed, you should be running out of time soon, if you don't have an extra life, you have my sympathy.
That's where it gets funky, a Cobra-wielding dude will conveniently appear for you to farm cobra bullets. The thing is wasting all 6 cobra bullets on the final boss will leave him with a bit of health, so you'll need MG ammo to finish him off, and you don't have any. The small robots appearing at the same spot as the Cobra wielding enemy can drop MG bullets, so you'll have to farm some Cobra ammo, then take out small robots in hope that they'll give you some MG ammo. By experience, they shouldn't take long to drop some. When they do, make sure you have 6 cobra ammo and the 30 MG ammo you just got and go destroy that thing. Finally done, achievement well earned.
I'll Save This For Next Time (25 points)
Clear the game without losing continues and with extra life
You need to beat the game without dying and without losing your extra life (on a run I grabbed the extra life in the first bonus stage, lost it in stage 4, got another extra life in the 2nd bonus stage, kept it through the end and the achievement didn't unlock, so you really can't die or use one of your extra lives). The difficulty in this achievement lies into beating stage 6 before the time runs out. Luckily there's no holds barred here so use everything in your arsenal to fly through it, be sure to farm the cobra bullets at the end to take out the final boss quickly. Upon becoming an expert in this game you'll suddenly see this a lot easier than it actually looks
CONGRATS FOR YOUR NEW MASTERY!
Thanks to LordShin and JAM for the creation of the achievement set