Hotline Miami Collection (NSP, XCI) ROM + v2.03 Update

Hotline Miami Collection is a 2012 top-down shooter game developed by Dennaton Games and published by Devolver Digital for Windows. The game is set in 1989 Miami and revolves primarily around an unnamed silent protagonist—dubbed “Jacket” by fans—receiving coded messages on his answering machine instructing him to commit massacres against the local Russian mafia. The gameplay blends a top-down perspective with stealth, and the story features extreme violence and surreal storytelling, along with a soundtrack and visuals inspired by 1980s culture.

The game was developed as a spiritual successor to a canceled game from 2004 referred to as Super Carnage, where the goal was to kill as many people as possible. The game was developed within nine months and released on 23 October 2012 for Windows. In 2013, the game was ported to OS X and Linux on 18 March and 9 September, respectively, while Abstraction Games ported the game to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita on 25 June 2013 and PlayStation 4 on 19 August 2014.

After release, Hotline Miami received critical acclaim, with praise focused on its narrative, themes, soundtrack, color palette, and gameplay. It has since been considered one of the greatest games of all time, cited as a highly influential independent video game and a notable cult video game. The success of its publisher, Devolver Digital, has been attributed to the game’s success. A sequel, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, was released in March 2015. Hotline Miami was re-released alongside its sequel as part of Hotline Miami: Collected Edition in Japan in 2015 and as part of the Hotline Miami Collection in August 2019.

GAMEPLAY

Hotline Miami is a top-down shooter game set in Miami during the 1980s. The game is divided into divided into several chapters, which are further divided up into floors. At the beginning of each chapter, the player character “Jacket” receives a message from his answering machine, instructing him to travel to a different part of Miami and eliminate all enemies there.

The player can defeat their opponents through a variety of melee and ranged attacks, ranging from knives and crowbars to guns. Additional methods available to the player include knocking out enemies with a door, using them as a human shield as defense, or kicking them against the wall. If the enemy isn’t immediately killed in an attack, the player can perform a finishing move.

Before each chapter begins, the player can choose from a variety of animal masks, which grant different abilities depending on the mask chosen. These attributes include the player’s gunshots being silenced or finishing moves being sped up. Both the player and enemies can be felled from a single attack. To compensate, the player can quickly restart the current stage after death, allowing the player to rethink their strategy. Additional types of enemies appear throughout the game, such as dogs. Additionally, enemy AI is inconsistent, with reactions to attacks ranging from responding immediately to attacks or sounds to doing absolutely nothing.

The player is awarded points with each enemy they kill, with the number of points awarded being determined by the method of execution or the number of enemies killed in a short duration of time. At the end of each chapter, the player’s total score is tallied up and the player is given a final rating based on their performance. High scores will unlock new masks and weapons for the player to use.

PLOT

In April 1989, Jacket receives a message on his answering machine and a package is delivered to his door containing a rooster mask. Alongside the package, there are strict instructions advising Jacket to retrieve a briefcase from the Russian mafia at a metro station. Jacket continues to receive messages on his answering machine instructing him to conduct more massacres. After each massacre, Jacket visits a store or a restaurant where a man known as Beard meets him and gives away free items such as pizza, films, and alcoholic beverages. During an assault on the estate of a film producer, Jacket rescues a girl and takes her to his apartment, nursing her back to good health and developing a romantic relationship with her. After this assault, Jacket is visited by three masked personas who question him for his actions, with these encounters continuing throughout the game. In another assault on a phone company, Jacket finds everybody dead except another operative known as the Biker, who is attempting to access a computer, and the two fight to the death.

As Jacket continues his massacres, his perception of reality becomes increasingly more surreal and twisted. Talking corpses begin appearing at Beard’s places of work, until Beard himself abruptly dies, being replaced by a bald man named Richter that offers Jacket nothing. After coming home one night, Jacket discovers his girlfriend murdered and a rat-masked man on his couch, who shoots him. In one final encounter with the masked persona Richard, it is revealed that Jacket is in a coma and that he was reliving the events of the past two months while comatose. Jacket overhears that his attacker has been put in police custody, where he escapes the hospital and storms Miami police headquarters, killing all inside.

Jacket finds his attacker to be Richter, who had also been receiving messages on his answering machine. After interrogating him, Jacket spares his life and steals the file on the police investigations of the killings before heading to a nightclub that the calls were tracked to, where he finds the address to the headquarters of the Miami Russian mafia. Jacket travels to the headquarters, kills all of the guards, and confronts both leaders of the syndicate. After Jacket kills his bodyguard and injures his hands, one of the leaders “spares him the pleasure” and commits suicide. When Jacket confronts the other, he contemplates the things he did and allows Jacket to kill him without resistance. Afterward, a victorious Jacket walks out onto the balcony and lights a cigarette, taking a photo out of his pocket and throwing it out.

After the completion of the Jacket levels, the player unlocks a series of levels where the player character is the Biker. Similarly to Jacket, the Biker has been receiving messages on his answering machine and is dedicated to identifying the source of the messages. After the encounter with Jacket depicted earlier and various interrogations, he finds the source of the messages to be 50 Blessings, a group operated by two janitors that attempt to undermine the Russo-American Coalition, which they view as “anti-American”, by ordering their operatives to commit numerous anti-Russian massacres. The game features two endings, with the full ending requiring the player to find puzzle pieces scattered throughout the game to crack 50 Blessings’ password. If the player manages to crack the password, the Biker uncovers their secrets and political agenda. Without the password, the Biker is mocked and fails to discover the truth. In both endings, the player has the option to either kill or spare the janitors. Afterward, the Biker departs from Miami.