So I didn't pay for this game, make of that what you will, I can't stand Ubisoft and their horrific micro-transactions, but I really enjoyed the game, completed it in just over 2 days, had lots of fun, story was enjoyable and the London setting was pretty damn faithful, it's crazy walking around the same spots in real life as in the game. The system of rivals and the fact that everyone has an opinion of you is kinda crazy, if you get into a police chase and hit someone and kill them, their next of kin might kidnap your character or attack you on sight, it's a really clever system. Dunno how much it affected the game but technically it was pretty impressive

Better than TIS-100 in my opinion, so realistic for modern reverse engineers who work with unknown appliances, circuit boards daily, trying to poke at them and find out what they do.

You're given a PDF that looks very similar to a real spec sheet for an FPGA or embedded device, you gleam details from it, learn how it works, and develop software to use it.

Was expecting it to be a breeze due to my TIS-100 experience and real world job, there were some INCREDIBLY difficult challenges, I got the world record on one level at one point only to be trumped a few days later, the competition is crazy and the optimisations people are doing to lower the cycle count is truly incredible.

If you're good at this game look for a job in reverse engineering or vulnerability research.

Pretty good game, played it in the late 90s/early 2000s in Oregon, I think there was some trademark issues or disputes our something, lots of lawyers hanging around the cabinet, making notes and such.

One time one of the people hanging around the cabinet said they were impressed by my high score and asked me to fill out a questionnaire for market research, lots of odd questions about headaches, I guess they were concerned about epilepsy attacks?

One last fun story I remembered, they opened up the cabinet and flipped some dip switches and unlocked some kind of secret level, I lost almost immediately but it was the strongest memory of childhood I have, he just sighed and opened it up, flipped the switches down and went back to making notes.

The guy who had it in his Arcade moved away, sadly he died in a boating accident or something, real shame, didn't even know he owned a boat.

Still have dreams about this game to this day, maybe it's just my rose tinted glasses, memories of a better time :)

UPDATE: Got an email from someone after posting this, really quickly too, I guess there's some die hard fans of this game, invited me to some meet-up, sadly I no longer live in Oregon and no longer am an American citizen (Not sure why that's a requirement?) so can't accept his invitation but shows there's still a lively community around the game :)

Way ahead of it's time, yes there's rose tinted glasses but I played through it again recently and it still holds up, I cannot believe it was made and ran on the PS2.

I've put hundreds of hours into this game as a kid, always stuck on the initial levels, I remember getting into Los Alamos and being amazed, I thought the game would never end.

Now as an adult... it did end, in less than a day of playing but it was such a fun ride.