Beat em ups.

I’ve said so much already. What more can I add? The style was super hot in the 16-bit era, and still weaves its way in and out of the limelight from time to time. The formula is classic, even timeless, to speak boldly… one or two protagonists (maybe more, if hardware permits), punching and kicking their way through hordes of baddies, occasionally facing down a lieutenant or three on their way to the Big Bad Guy(s). The format allows game designers to go way out into left field for enemy and level design, and that’s unfailingly where developers were at in the early and mid 90s.

Crude Buster, alternately titled Two Crude Dudes, fits that bill precisely; it is wild, colorful, and just-beyond-real. Released for arcades by Data East in 1991, the game is hailed by many as a classic entry into the beat em up family, and the game did so well in arcades that it was released in 1992 for the Mega Drive/Genesis. Players control one of two hulking mercenaries hired on by the government to take back a ruined New York from a group called “Big Valley,” who (literally) nuked the city and claimed the rubble as their own.

Now, I don’t know if “Big Valley” is one of those “lost in translation” things, but it isn’t a very heavy-sounding name for a terrorist organization full of tattooed punks and mutant bio-monsters. They make up for it in action, though. Your unreasonably buff nuclear warrior is first assailed by shirtless frisbee aficionados and what look like mustachioed elf men; things soon turn a bit more dire as you face the first boss – a brute rivaling you in swoleness, in face paint and KISS shoes, wielding snakes.

He wants to rock and roll all night, and murder everyday.

As you progress through the nuclear ruins of NYC, shit only gets more serious. The most annoying enemies early-on are the little hunchbacks who latch onto you and sap your vitality as they gnaw on you. However, it gets far worse as weirder and weirder mutants come crawling out of the rubble to make your Brian Bosworth-looking ass wish you never shook hands on that government contract.

Thankfully, your crude dudes are pretty monstrous themselves. They can easily lift set-pieces as big as junked cars, as well as most enemies they can grab. These make great projectiles to supplement your determined (if not terribly graceful) punching and kicking. If you get low on health, look for soda machines. JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE, drinking some fizzy water loaded with coloring and corn syrup will save the day. These also usually show up in little vignettes between levels; the arcade version just puppets you through, while the Genesis port makes you whack the cans out of the machine yourself.

Just guzzle it down, big guy. Make all the pain go away.

The graphics in the arcade version really don’t suffer much in the crunching-down for the 16-bit Genesis port. They are on par for their time; things are a riot of color, and there’s a comic book level of detail to everything (not to mention the cool visual popup sound FX a la 1960s Batman). The sound is where some effort clearly went in; the arcade version features a lot of digitized FX and some good music. The Genesis port actually has better music with a more fitting pace to it, but it loses a lot of the digitized stuff out of sheer space efficiency.

All things considered, I’d give Crude Buster an 8/10. It’s challenging, fun, colorful, and definitely deserves mention in any conversation about the beat em up format in video gaming. Crude Buster is different enough to interest you, but it’s still a red-blooded beat em up hit through and through.

See you in August, you big goofs!

The beat ’em up was (and to some extent, still is) an extremely popular game format. The concept may sound repetitive on its nose – that is to say, you mostly just walk forward and beat the shit out of people – but it’s been done in so many ways, with so many embellishments and extra touches, that it hardly gets old if you’re a fan. Like a lot of us, I was primarily exposed to this genre through either arcade ports or original titles for the Mega Drive/Genesis. Now, as I’ve discussed in some previous articles, we definitely didn’t get the bulk of Japan’s weird stuff then, but we did get some gnarly-ass console games… one of them being Mystical Fighter.

This weird but fantastic entry into the Genesis beat ’em up library was called Demon King Renjishi in Japan, hitting shelves in October of ’91. Very soon after, it was released for American audiences as Mystical Fighter. Its developer, KID Corporation (defunct as of 2006), is also known for developing Burai Fighter and Low G Man. Taito published the game, lending its name to the wide distribution and classy packaging.

Aforementioned classy packaging. JP (left) and USA (Right). Click to enlarge.

The plot of Mystical Fighter is based loosely on Japanese myth, and I do mean loosely. An evil “Lord Kabuki” is all set to conquer the kingdom after kicking the asses of White Lion (not the band) and Red Lion (I also promise this has nothing to do with Voltron). A mystical seal on Mt. Fuji is broken, setting the two warriors loose again to take a second shot at stopping Lord Kabuki… and the players control one or both of them as they try. The US manual’s translated version of the plot is below:

The first thing one notices as the game kicks off is that, while a little stereotyped-sounding, the music is awesome. It’s got a serious beat, and it’s not just some innocuous background loop. The ol’ YM1612 is put to beautiful use, something which this Segaphile will finally admit does not always happen. The graphics are also very fitting for the theme, evoking the dark and ephemeral world you’re supposed to be traveling through to stop the evil lord. The contrast your two characters – who look pretty damn kabuki themselves – also plays a well-conceived role in establishing the tone. It’s suitably heroic, even if understated. Normally I save an appraisal of these elements for closer to the end of a game article, but I wanted to put them right out front because I find them particularly impressive in Mystical Fighter.

This isn’t to say that the action is lacking. This game has every bit of the jaw-breaking, shit-kicking intensity that Streets of Rage or Golden Axe have. I’m sure there are folks who would disagree with me, but just look at the moves you can do! I’m not knocking Streets of Rage, but Axel cannot grab someone by their lapels and full-on hurl them entirely across the screen in a horizontal line. Mystical Fighter is its own animal, and it’s one with a mean temper. The sound effects that go along with your crazy leaps and attacks only add to the feeling of overall mayhem.

One guy goes flying in a laser-straight line toward the edge of the screen while another prepares to taste my creepy white foot. Once you get used to the controls, it’s like playing as a brutal circus acrobat or blood-crazy gymnast. 

There is a mechanic similar to that in Golden Axe, however, where you pick up scrolls (as opposed to potions) to save up for devastating magical spells. The more you pack up, the better the effect. You get to use those moves on an army of sumo guys, ogres, undead samurai, ninjas, and some bosses that are literally out of this world. The enemies may look like fat guys in bathrobes and clones of E. Honda, but don’t be fooled… everyone and everything you encounter is dangerous enough to take seriously.

I did find that some of the boss fights are pretty easy though, once you figure out the fairly predictable patterns. The big dog (lion? I don’t know) thing at the end of one of the first levels stands out as a good example of this. Just punch it in the face and get out of the way. Keep doing that and you’re golden.

He looks way scarier than he is, which isn’t very.

My attention span is admittedly horrid, so I haven’t beaten this game, but I do plan to revisit it. I give Mystical Fighter 8/10; it’s better (in my opinion) than other reviewers give it credit for, it’s got its own incredible flavor to it, and it promises high-flying fun.

Thanks, folks! See you again in mid-June! Stay Retro!

The games we remember from the golden era fall into two categories: the classic, undeniably great ones… and the ones so ridiculous we can’t forget them. They’re not even necessarily bad (although many of them are), but they’re just so… well, bizarre that they become etched into our memories for decades.

This is one I’ve wanted to visit for some time now. I saved it for a rainy day.

Adventures of Bayou Billy is a retooling of a Famicom game called Mad City, which was released in 1988. When exporting the game to America and the PAL region in 1989, Konami decided to redo a lot of the graphics and scale up the difficulty a little. They also added something fairly rare at the time: DCPM-coded digital voice samples. What’s actually neat about the game is that it’s three games in one: you will do some hand to hand fighting, some action driving, and some shooting (either with the Zapper or the controller).

In either game, you play Billy West, a survivalist and ex-soldier who lives in the bayou and spends most of his time fighting the crime lord Godfather Gordon. Guess what Gordon does to get your attention and set up one big showdown in the Big Easy?

Very original! I think I’m beginning to learn something about living in a video game: don’t ever love anyone or anything, or it will be used against you.

That’s right. Your scandalously curvy girlfriend, Annabelle, is in trouble! Gordon not only has time on his hands, but apparently a lot of money to throw away on your murder as well, since you’ll deal with threats ranging from gators and thugs to airplanes and helicopters. The baddies (even the gators) drop food, weapons and armor occasionally, and these help a lot since Billy actually isn’t all that great of a fighter. His repertoire consists of a punch that has lousy reach, a kick that has slightly less lousy reach, and a jump kick that looks like some Riverdance shit. Some enemies even drop guns, which give you bullets for yours. When I say “some,” I mean “very few.”

You know all those strongmen downtown in New Orleans. Always out swinging their cartoon ball-and-chains in their perfect white bell bottoms. Scandalous! 

Get used to this.

In stages 2 and 7 you have to scoot carefully along and shoot it out with more of Gordon’s goons; depending on the game type selected, this can be done with the Zapper (plugged into the other controller port) or the controller (via a movable crosshair). The latter technique is much slower and will probably get you killed. You always magically have bullets in these stages, regardless of how empty your bullet counter is in the street-fighting portion of the game.

Gray is the preferred color for swamp ops. Gray sweat pants. Any true operator knows that.

Stages 4 and 5 are kind of like a racing game, except blue jeeps and prop planes are constantly trying to murder you. In the original Famicom version, your jeep had a life bar, but in the US version, one mistake kills you. I guess they figured that since us Americans are obsessed with cars, we’d appreciate the hardcore hell-on-wheels version.

Yes. Apparently you are going 180 mph on a dirt road. No big deal.

Bayou Billy is a pretty respectably hard game, right from the beginning. It’s so hard that it has a practice mode. I can play any of the three game types in practice mode and get my ass annihilated halfway through. The actual game is damn near impossible for me; I admit that I had to watch a longplay just to get a look at all of it. The bosses in the main game seem uncompromisingly brutal in that way beat-em-up bosses often are, with huge hit ranges and more durability than a Panzer tank. Once you make it to New Orleans, things get super ridiculous, with circus strongmen and full-on gangster gunmen joining the fray as regular enemies. In fact, the first fight you have in the front yard of the mansion is with three men armed with guns. Inside the mansion things get outright absurd during the final showdown:

The graphics are pretty cool, meeting the standard for Konami games of the era with rich colors and decent texturing. Enemy design isn’t terribly creative, but the swamps and streets of Louisiana look alive and are rendered with authentic detail. The music for Bayou Billy is a hidden diamond; I am especially enamored with the default side scrolling stage music and the boss theme. Konami rarely screws up the music part of anything, and this is no exception. That fighting stage music is probably something you could put on in a club and people would make the best of it! The voice samples (there are only two of them) are all right, but they’re characteristically fuzzy and it’s obvious that they were added as an afterthought.

I’d give Adventures of Bayou Billy 6/10. It’s not a great game, but it’s a weird game. It took a novel approach to diversifying gameplay, it had great music, and it’s one you remember if you encountered it back then. After all, fighting alligators with a stick is pretty hard to forget.

We’ve got some real treats in store for you next month, RetroFans! Stay tuned!

You asked for it, you got it!

We’ve talked about a few beat em up games so far; some of them have been true-to-form classics, like Double Dragon or Golden Axe. Some of them have been departures from the norm, like River City Ransom. Readers keep asking me from time to time: “Dude, when are you gonna write about Streets of Rage already?”

Well, RetroManiacs, I guess I‘ll go ahead and do it. After all, it’s well worth talking about.

Gaming History 101… Back in the early 90s, the Fourth Generation war was on. That is to say, Sega still produced consoles, and they’d produced a real gem in the form of the Genesis/Mega Drive. It was competing well with the Super NES, and part of that was because Sega had the oomph to spit out home-developed games just like Nintendo did. In 1991, when the war was at its hottest, Sega released Streets of Rage. It ended up being a home run; the title had two sequels and was also ported to Sega’s whole line (then) of platforms.  While it is well-known that the Mega Drive/Genesis did not fare well domestically, Streets of Rage helped their console do well in the US market by being everything a beat em up should be: brutal, colorful, and exciting.

No name is given in the manual for the city Streets of Rage is set in, but it is a corrupt and benighted city.  The diabolical crime lord Mr. X has bought off or intimidated everyone, even the police. Well, except for three:  Adam, Axel, and Blaze. The three cops do everything they can to fight within the system, but corrupt or terrified superiors block their way. The trio (who are also experts in their respective martial arts) end up quitting the force… but that doesn’t mean they’re done cleaning up the city. They’re going to put an end to Mr. X’s plague of crime, or die trying.

In case you’re curious, the “B” means they’re bad at it. Really, you can beat the game with any or all of them, but my favorite is Adam. Once he gets there, he gets the job done quick.

Players choose from among the three protagonists, and 2 players cannot choose the same one. Adam is a skilled and powerful boxer, but moves more slowly than the others. Blaze is agile and quick, but her strikes do less damage on average. Axel is the balanced one, and is usually a popular choice for new players. Gameplay resembles that of the game’s predecessor, Golden Axe, but only at the core level. Each character has a move routine, some up-close variants (throws, etc) and a jump attack. In addition, you can pick up knives, pipes, and other weapons your less scrupulous opponents drop as you pound your way across the streets. Each player also gets a token-based special attack. This token can be replenished by beating a level or gaining a life. What is the special attack, you ask?

Serve and protect. 

That’s right. I’ll spare you the socio-political commentary.

The foes you face in Streets of Rage are trend setters. That is to say, every time this formula has been copied (and believe me, it has), the aesthetic of the enemy types has been loosely copied as well. The theme that ties them together could be described as “colorful.” Mr. X has really worked hard to make his gang of miscreants a diverse one. Most of the low-level baddies are easy to dispatch, but there are a few who know their stuff. You’ll want to use team tactics on them or just catch them quick; next to the bosses, the high-flying thugs are your worst threat.

Plenty going on in Streets of Rage. Above, left to right: two of the Freddy ripoff bosses; the boomerang guy just before he gets crazy; giving a low-down punk a broken bottle in the gut; waiting to hit a line-drive at the wharf.

Oh, the bosses, though. Every stage except stage 7 has one. They are all hilarious. Some of them become recurring baddies later on, albeit in slightly weaker forms (to compensate for their greater numbers). It is worth noting that the bosses are all also HUGE. When I say HUGE, I mean easily twice the size of your character. Again, as with the trickier hoodlums, these guys usually take team tactics or quick pattern recognition to defeat. It helps to have another player, but it also helps to have a rough idea of how far a boss’s attacks will reach.

The bosses. Immediate in-joke references can be seen, the most immediate being Freddy Krueger and the Ultimate Warrior (RIP). And yes, you eventually fight clones of yourselves.

All of this mayhem eventually culminates in a face-to-face with Mr. X himself. The game offers multiple endings, because no matter which character you play, Mr. X offers you a job. You know what’s even cooler? If there are 2 of you playing and one of you refuses, you have to fight to the death. If you do the right thing and unanimously refuse, it’s on. Mr. X doesn’t screw around with kung fu or boxing… he just pulls out a Tommy gun and starts spraying his own mansion with bullets in an attempt to do you in. All the while, more of his cronies file in to make mince meat of you. If you win this colossal battle, the good ending plays: the city is restored to order and peace.

The graphics are splendid, even for the Genesis. Just look at the game’s intro: a sweeping background shot as the story scrolls down, and then our pugilistic protagonists phase into view. All is color and light in this game; it is very late 80s/early 90s, complete with neon everywhere. The soundtrack fits nicely with this aesthetic too, written by the gifted Yuzo Koshiro. It features out-and-out dance music, complete with drums that were purposefully made to sound like the popular TR line of rhythm machines made by Roland. The soundtrack was modeled closely after then-contemporary hip-hop and R&B music, which was enjoying a surge of popularity in the early 90s. The OST of all three games in the series has been released in CD format; these printings are rare and considered valuable by collectors.

Streets of Rage gave way to two sequels, both of which introduce new characters and new threats to the streets of the city. There is still a huge fan community even today in 2015, with Streets of Rage Online carrying the banner far into the Information Age. Streets of Rage is one of those franchises that never became a Sonic or a Mario, but nonetheless left a lasting impression on a generation of gamers. I give it 8 stars out of 10. It is an action-packed, exciting, and memorable title that stands as one of the Genesis system’s icons.

Until next time… keep your dukes up!!!

Part of why so many of us love video games is that they’re a release. They release tension. They give us an outlet. Have you ever just wanted to, like, throw a trash can at a guy, or kick and punch him until he passes out? You might not have been there, but I doubt that. If you denied it, I wouldn’t believe you.

River City Ransom was one of those releases for a lot of gamers in 1989. Made by Technos, the same company that developed Double Dragon, RCR plays similarly to that game, although several elements have been added. The best way to describe River City Ransom is that it is a scrolling beat-em-up, but with faint hints of RPG inserted throughout. For instance, the gameplay is non-linear, meaning you can wander about, even backtracking. You don’t “level-up,” at least not by the strict definition of that term. Instead, when you beat the crap out of hooligans, they drop money, and you use that money to buy both temporary and permanent powerups.

In Japan, River City Ransom is called Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari, or “Downtown Hot-Blooded Story,” and is part of the Kunio-kun series. Several of these games, when localized for the American market, were renamed and retooled to stand alone. Examples are Renegade, Nintendo World Cup, and Super Dodge Ball. Astute observation reveals similarities in graphics, of course. River City Ransom revolves around rescuing your character’s girlfriend from Slick, the main villain. To do this, you must battle your way through River City, slamming the members of various gangs and learning new techniques to toughen yourself up for the final ascent into River City High School. You need not do this alone, as a second player is able to play as the friend of the main protagonist (who is basically identical for gameplay purposes).  As mentioned above, your character has a set of stats, such as Stamina (which acts as a life bar), strength (which governs how much your attacks hurt people), and proficiency levels with various attacks and weapons. Like many other beat-em-up games, enemies will drop weapons they’re using when you defeat them, and you can wield them afterwards, even throwing them at range. The thugs also drop money, varying in value depending on how tough they are. At intervals throughout the town, you are able to spend this cash in strip malls. There are both take-out and dine-in restaurants, where you can buy powerups in the form of food. Most food simply refills lost Stamina, but some of it also increases stats slightly. Of paramount importance are books, which are expensive but allow you to learn special techniques or improve your basic attacks. The need for these items leads to a form of “grinding,” not unlike certain RPGs, where you are wandering about, getting in fights for the money you’ll find.

Here is a short video of gameplay.

River City Ransom is well-known to gamers for its colorful and humorous nature. As you fight, messages appear across the bottom of the screen. When you enter an area, you’re told which gang controls it. When you KO an adversary, he usually has something to say about it.  Occasionally there is a cutscene, where dialog will be displayed across this area as well. The game’s graphics are standard for a late NES-era game, but what really shines visually is the animation and art style of the game. The violence is portrayed in a delightfully cartoonish fashion, all bugged-out eyes and motion lines. The sound effects aren’t anything to write home about, but the music is quite good; there aren’t many separate tracks, but what you hear is arranged with skill and dramatically appropriate. Have a listen below!

River City Ransom has been remade and ported a few times; notable among these is the remake for the Game Boy Advance, River City Ransom EX. This expansion upon the original game adds a great deal of configurable options and extra perks, as well as improved graphics and smoother controls. The general idea, however, is much the same. The original has also been released for download on the 3DS and the Wii, so a whole new generation of gamers can get in on the brutal action.

Perhaps not as widely known as its cousin Double Dragon, River City Ransom is nonetheless a notable title for its bold crossover into RPG-style gameplay. Other franchises and genres would experiment with this idea later in the history of video gaming, and those titles owe a nod to River City Ransom.