Once you have inserted your coin into the cabinet of Taito Corporation's 1989 racing/shooter arcade game, S.C.I. - Special Criminal Investigation, it will proceed to the start screen shown above (which features a billboard for Violence Fight), as the text "PUSH START BUTTON" flashes up on it; once you have pushed the Start Button, Gibson and Broady's red Nissan 300ZX T-Top Turbo shall drive off into the distance. A Taito Monitoring System (with the company's name represented by their old logo, which was withdrawn in 1988) will then come up into view from the bottom of the screen, as it adjusts its frequency to 4 and volume to almost maximum (and a picture of Gibson and Broady's Nissan 300ZX appears under it, with the text of "PLAYER'S CAR: T BAR ROOF V6 DOHC 3000CC TWIN TURBO ENGINE" to its right) - and its "BUSY" light will now come on as Nancy (World: "Halen") appears on its square blue screen, followed by one of the first stage target car (which is a red German sports car) as the following text appears letter-by-letter under it:
The game shall then proceed to the first stage; as in the original Chase H.Q. game from 1988 (but not the spin-off Crime City game from earlier in 1989), the amount of time you shall have to catch up with the criminal's car on each stage, and how much additional time you will receive on doing so, depends on what the arcade operator has set the "Timer Setting" dipswitch setting to (55, 60, 65 or 70 seconds). Therefore, if using MAME to play the game, you may wish to set it to "70 Seconds" to increase your chances of catching the criminals before the timer runs out - and the amount of Turbo Activator uses you will have for each stage also depends on what that arcade operator has set the "Turbos Stocked" dipswitch setting to (3 or 5), so you may also wish to set this option to "5" if you are using MAME, in case the default three uses is not enough for you to catch a specific criminal before the timer runs out. If you manage to catch up with a target car, you shall now also receive a bonus of 10000 points for every second you have remaining, and as you shoot or ram it, its damage percentage will flash up under its damage meter; once it is at a specific level, a helicopter will fly down into view from the top of the screen and airdrop a rocket launcher onto the Nissan 300ZX. Once you have caught it its ammunition of five shots, which will further damage the target car by 10% (as opposed to just 5%) will be displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen (and disappear as each one is fired) - and once the target car's damage meter is completely filled, it will burst into flames and stop (however, the sixth stage follows a completely different format to the other five, and if you fail to finish it in time, you shall not be able to try it again, even if the arcade operator has set the "Allow Continue" dip switch setting to "On").