Starsky & Hutch took the detective duo from the seventies series — revived in collective memory those years thanks to the comedy with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson that would premiere shortly after — and turned them into a street-chase arcade game. Supersonic Software developed the Xbox version, while Mind's Eye Productions handled the PlayStation 2 and PC editions; Empire Interactive published it in Europe and Gotham Games in North America, in September 2003.
The formula combines driving the red-and-white Ford Gran Torino with driving stunts, ramming, and shooting from the car, all sprinkled with the jokes and chemistry between the two leads that defined the original show. It doesn't try to simulate an open city: these are closed missions, pure arcade, built for short sessions.
At the time it passed largely unnoticed next to giants like Need for Speed, but it remains a well-packaged eighties-nineties curiosity: a vehicular action licensed title that bet on its protagonists' humor rather than simulation.
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