Cops - [Official] - Out now for Hypseus
On the 19th of May 2026, I published a preview to YouTube of something a lot of people have been waiting for. COPS.
The 1994 arcade FMV police shooter and driving game, originally released by Atari, and developed by Nova Productions.
COPS for Hypseus is available now.
COPS is a 1994 arcade game based on the American TV show of the same name. It’s a full-motion-video police game with shootouts and car chases; all presented in that very specific early-90s arcade FMV style. The game includes “Bad Boys” by Inner Circle, the theme song from the show, along with the rest of the music used by the original machine.
The original arcade machine was a pretty unusual beast. Like many FMV arcade games of the period, it used a laserdisc for the video footage. But COPS also had a CD-ROM drive to play commercial music, including the TV show’s theme song.
So it wasn’t just a lightgun game. It was a big, sit-down arcade attraction, with video, music, steering, shooting, and a cabinet that was trying very hard to feel like a playable police TV show.
And now, thanks to LutherGond, COPS has been brought to Hypseus.
LutherGond is the person responsible for this release. He did the coding, the reverse-engineering, the game logic, the painstaking recreation of how this thing actually plays. And he had very little reference footage of real hardware to work from. That’s worth stressing, because a game like this is not just a case of dropping some video files into an emulator and calling it done. You have to work out when the game expects input. How the targets behave. How the driving sections work. How the indicators are supposed to respond. How the scoring and damage systems are meant to behave. How to make it feel right, even when the original hardware is rare, obscure, and not exactly sitting around in every arcade for easy comparison. So please, give LutherGond the credit he deserves for this one.
A lot of people have been hoping for a Hypseus version of COPS for a long time. And from the reaction to the preview video, a lot of people were also surprised to learn that this game even existed.
This is a first for Hypseus, and it’s another brilliant addition to LutherGond’s growing list of FMV arcade rescreations.
I helped out a little on this release too. I made the custom bezel, and I coded the functions for the VFD-style display, the seven-segment display that sits below the video window. And that was important, because the original COPS cabinet didn’t just show the video. It had a physical bezel around the screen, with lamps behind it. Those lamps lit up to tell you things like your ammo count, how much damage you had taken, and how far off course your steering was during the driving sections. It also had a seven-segment display beneath the screen, giving useful information to the player.
For the Hypseus version, we’ve replicated that with an on-screen bezel that is lit from behind in a similar way. So when you fire, take damage, reload, or drift off course while driving, those indicators are built into the presentation rather than just being hidden away in the game logic. It’s not just decoration. It’s part of how the original machine communicated with the player.
There is one important thing to know about that. Because the lighting and indicators are built around this custom layout, this version of COPS is designed for 16:9 screens only. That isn’t an accident, and it isn’t a bug. It’s because the on-screen bezel has been carefully arranged for that layout, so the game can recreate the cabinet-style indicators properly.
As for how the game plays, you can have two players as shooters, and one player as the driver. But you need at least one shooter. Driving is optional.
The shooting sections are best played with a lightgun, and that is obviously the most authentic way to experience it. But you can also play with a mouse. Each shooter needs their own separate device, so if you have two shooters, you need two separate aiming devices.
And if you want someone to drive as well, the driver also needs a separate device. You can’t use a device that has already been assigned to a shooter. For the driving sections, a racing wheel gives you the most immersive experience. In my demo, I used the Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel, which works really nicely for this kind of thing. but you don’t have to use a wheel. Just about any gaming device can be used for driving, including a controller or even a mouse, as long as it is separate from the shooting device. And if your wheel or controller supports rumble, the game supports rumble too.
The driving sections are mainly there for fun and immersion. They don’t award points, so if you just want to play COPS as a shooting game, you can do that. But if you have the extra device, it’s absolutely worth trying the driving. It adds a lot to the feel of the game.
During those driving sections, the display below the video window becomes especially useful. It tells the driver how much more they need to steer in a particular direction to stay on course. So instead of just guessing, you get a cabinet-style readout, like the original machine had, giving feedback as you play.
And of course, all of the music is included in this version. That matters, because the music was part of the original COPS arcade experience. The game used commercial tracks from its CD-ROM drive, and those songs helped give the cabinet its TV-show, action-movie, police-chase energy.
So, to quickly recap:
COPS for Hypseus is available now.
It supports one or two shooters.
It supports an optional driver.
It supports lightguns, mice, controllers, wheels, and rumble where available.
It recreates the original cabinet’s light-up bezel and seven-segment display with a custom on-screen layout.
And it brings back one of the strangest, most ambitious FMV arcade games of the 1990s.
You can get the game from the link below:
And if you’re a Windows player using my Borf Launcher for Hypseus, make sure you’ve updated Borf to the latest version. The new setup feature will practically set the game up for you with minimal effort, so I’ll link to Borf below as well.
And again, please make sure you show LutherGond some love for this release. This was a big one.
COPS is obscure, complicated, and not exactly drowning in reference material. But he’s brought it to life for Hypseus, and that deserves proper appreciation.
If you need help getting COPS running, or if you need advice with Hypseus in general, come and join the Hypseus Discord server. It’s also a good place to talk about FMV games, laserdisc arcade history, lightguns, ports, setups, and all the weird stuff that people like us somehow end up caring about.
If you use RetroPie, Hypseus can be installed directly from RetroPie-Setup. Otherwise, it is available from DirtBagXon's GitHub repo at https://github.com/DirtBagXon/hypseus-singe
All the files you need for this release of COPS can be obtained from the link here: https://mega.nz/folder/SqAQEYKA#k5nM7ELjjASUdqNw9FS8DQ
Support for Hypseus Singe is available from DBX's Discord server at https://discord.hypseus.net
Borf Launcher for Windows is available from https://therealwidge.itch.io/borf-launcher-for-hypseus