| smbhax [sys=PCCD; cat=Beat_em_up; reg=NA] |
| | | Final Fight knock-off without weapons or co-op play, and very few fighting moves. Still, sucker for beat-em-ups that I am, I like it quite a bit.
The fighting moves: punch/kick, jump, jump kick, side jump kick, and your special that hits everyone around you but takes off a hefty chunk of life. That ain't too much to work with on your way through five pretty long levels of various bad guys and their bosses, especially with no weapons to collect. Still, it gets the job done.
You have two badly-animated, blue-jeaned and blond or mohawked 80's characters to choose from. One had his girlfriend kidnapped, the other is willing to help out for some unspecified reason. And of course in the best game tradition, instead of writing the girl off as a bad piece of work, or going to the cops or something, the two bosom friends decide the only option is to go beat down about four hundred gang members themselves. Onward!
You'll jump and kick your way through a wide variety of slums, skyscrapers, gambling dens, sewers and plush secret headquarters along the way to getting your piece of ass back. Aside from the limited character animations everything looks pretty nice, the sprites are large, with no slowdown in sight, the sound effects beefy, and the music properly rock/ambient 80's style, and well orchestrated at that.
If it had two-player support it'd be super, as it is, it's good. Even being able to cheap the last two bosses with jump-kicks doesn't kill the fun (in fact it was something of a relief, I was out of *gasp* continues). Not quite up there with a Final Fight but good solid face-smashing action nonetheless. |
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| | | | I'm told ( https://selectbutton.net/t/2d-beat-em-ups-that-arent-streets-of-rage-et-al/1222/341 ) this--and I guess probably the arcade game of which it is a remake, Riot City--takes place in Kowloon Walled City. |
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In Mednafen.
Kinda slower paced and simple, maybe a stage or two too long, but fun CD audio "rock" instrumental tracks, some surprisingly nice pixel art backgrounds, and just good solid action. First time I've played it in like 5 years and I was surprised by how much fun I had! : ^)
Used an infinite lives cheat from https://gamehacking.org/game/84935 -- although I had a little trouble getting it working. Cobbled around cutting and pasting from other google hits... It works now but may not seem like it is at first since your lives drop from 5 to 4--but don't drop lower than that. The working entry from my Mednafen pce.cht:
[486d69d9548bfb43ebd521ea284d9ac3] Riot Zone (USA)
R A 1 L 0 001f0e44 05 infinite lives
Kowloon Walled City underwent demolition from March 1993 to April 1994, and was replaced by a park whose construction started the following year, says Wikipedia. The Sega-published original arcade version of this game, "Riot City," came out in '91, and Super CD port "Riot Zone" came out '92 (in the US--not until Feb '93 in Japan, as "Crest of Wolf"). A screenshot from the arcade version, in this article https://easternmind.tumblr.com/post/729714466067005440/the-weird-and-wonderful-history-of-kowloon-as-a , shows a cutscene exterior view of this game's gang turf "the DragonZone" definitely looking like Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. I was topped off to the KWC connection on the selectbutton forum by the author of this blog article about the game: http://lunaticobscurity.blogspot.com/2017/06/crest-of-wolf-pc-engine.html
Screenshots on MobyGames of the arcade version show its play area graphics, particularly the backgrounds, being virtually identical to the Super CD port--and that yes, it does have a GUI for two-player simultaneous play, which the lunaticobscurity article makes clear is not in the PCE port. GameFAQs and Wikipedia say the PCE port was handled by Japanese Studio Agenda Co., Ltd. |
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| | | From pce.cht:
[486d69d9548bfb43ebd521ea284d9ac3] RIOT ZONE
R A 1 L 0 001f0e44 05 Infinite Lives
R A 1 L 0 001f0e49 28 Infinite Time |
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