City Connection (1985). Play Free Online

Summary

City Connection, known on some North American boxes as Cruisin’, is a quirky NES platform racer that turns every road into a paint‑by‑numbers puzzle. You steer a tiny Honda City that never stops, racing over elevated streets to fill every tile with color while dodging pursuing police cars you can temporarily stun with oil cans. The game packs twelve distinct stages—Manhattan, the Grand Canyon, Easter Island, Paris, Neuschwanstein Castle, London, Sydney, Egyptian temples, plus stops in India, Holland, China and Japan—each dressed in its own backdrop and backed by a unique musical twist on the main theme. Some levels even borrow Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 or a sped‑up “Highway Star” riff, making the soundtrack one of the earliest examples of stage‑specific tracks on a console. Though the controls felt stiff to some critics, the NES port earned a place in retro collections, resurfacing on Wii’s Virtual Console in 2008 and later on 3DS, Wii U and Nintendo Classics in 2019.

Storyline

City Connection puts you behind the wheel of Clarice, a blue‑haired teen protagonist. She pilots an orange Honda City hatchback as she roams the globe. The game’s core objective is to travel around the world in search of the perfect man for Clarice. Each stage presents a new city to navigate, keeping the quest both whimsical and adventurous.

Edited by Maya Carter