The Street Writer Podcast, Episode 12

The brawler series heats up as some of the absolute best brawlers of all time are released in the same year. Will Konami, or Capcom be crowned the king of the brawler?

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The Abridged History of the Brawler, part 25

The following games found a balance between the traditional side scrolling mechanics and the free-roaming brawler. They too featured wave after wave of opponents to battle but offered new ranged game mechanics to do so. Players no longer had to wait for an opponent to come to them, they could instead pace out the advancing bad guys with some well timed projectiles. We'll begin with the one that combined animé stylization with side scrolling action.

Namco's Rolling Thunder from 1986 was not a typical run-and-gun game. Instead players had to carefully track through an enemy compound while shooting or avoiding hooded sentries. Players could jump up or down to platforms and even sneak behind fences or inside of doors to evade captors. Although the game was still set in 2D, being able to interact with the environment gave players the illusion that there was height and depth to the levels as well. It also added a bit of a puzzle playing element to the shooting mechanic. Players did not have unlimited ammo so simply running and shooting was out of the question. Players could save up machine gun rounds between levels by shooting only when they had to. What the main character, the super spy named Albatross, lacked in this game was the ability to perform close range combat with the bad guys. That gameplay element would be introduced a year later by Sega.

The original Shinobi had very similar play mechanics to Rolling Thunder in that the character could jump to different levels and avoid enemies and strike from a distance. Joe Musashi used ninja stars to strike but could upgrade to a pistol. The game was unique for its use of a magic system which could wipe opponents off of the screen or do tremendous damage to a boss character. Both Shinobi and Rolling Thunder would stay popular with gamers and sequels would be released on arcade and home consoles.

The ninja was beginning to develop a following in the US and by 1988 two major ninja games were released. The brawler Ninja Gaiden I had featured previously in this series. The second was the side scrolling action game the Ninja Warriors by Taito. As the game allowed two-players on screen fighting against opponents at the same time it could be considered a brawler. What made this game remarkable was that it was the second game that Tecmo released that was two monitors wide, the previous one was Tecmo Bowl from 1987. Ninja Warriors was a brutally hard game. Players had to have an absolute sense of range and timing in order to get very far into the game on one quarter The ranged ammunition, the ninja stars, were limited and there were no weapon upgrades. Players could wait for opponents to reach them and then cut them down with a short sword, but that also put them at risk of having opponents reach them from behind.

Visually the game was impressive. The levels were highly detailed and the sprites were large and well animated, I want to say that the moves were rotoscoped for how fluid the animation looked. On two displays it was like being the hero in a widescreen movie. However that sensation would be short lived. The Ninja Warriors was the first arcade game where I felt as if the ending were a hollow victory. I do not mean the poor translation in the credits either, the part that read: "A revorution broke out. And everything became to and end. The troubled country seemed to be finished by the death of the wicked machines. But the peace did not came."

Instead I refer to the defeat of the military dictator. He was a fat military character that was groveling and running with fear inside of his palace. He was impervious to ninja stars so players had to walk right up to him and cut him down with a knife attack. He went down with one stab, not very final boss-like at all, what came next would shock and sadden me. Some general, whose face was hidden in the darkness, pressed a red button, detonating a bomb hidden inside the robots, flattening the palace of the dictator. I was stunned. There would be no sequel, no chance to continue the adventure. The heroes were disposable. By extension the players felt the same way as well.

That same year another Japanese studio made players feel like real heroes. Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja was released by Data East and had some of the best two-player side scrolling combat in any brawler. In fact when I did not mention this title early on in my brawler series my friend was upset. He was wondering how the "Double Dragon" of 2D side-scrollers could be left out. I told him that I would actually be saving this entry for when I spoke exclusively to the 2D brawlers that helped define the genre. What Bad Dudes did was more than define the genre. They set a standard for the Japanese pandering to young Western male gamers. President Ronnie, who happened to look a lot like the popular Ronald Reagan, was kidnapped by the Dragon Ninja clan. It was up to a duo of street fighters to save him. If that wasn't a premise for a low-budget 1980's action film then I don't know what was!

Bad Dudes was a better version of  Kung Fu Master and Vigilante. To show off the pedigree Data East even made Karnov, the first boss in the game. The famous strongman and fire breather was one of their earlier arcade stars. In Bad Dudes players fought waves of ninjas approaching from the sides, and could jump to different platforms to continue the adventure similar to Rolling Thunder or Shinobi's mechanics. Players could get knives or nunchaku's for weapons, however their best strikes were dished out with bare hands. The characters could charge up a punch by holding down the attack button and then release it once their character was glowing with energy. The force of the punch would actually send an invisible shockwave through the air, knocking down any ninja that was at least 2/3 of a screen or closer. This worked well on boss characters and large groups of opponents. Players could kick ninja stars out of the air, knock opponents off ledges and do all sorts of over-the-top moves.

The only game that could have possibly topped this game for action and impossible stunts was another one by Data East. Most brawling fans might think I was referring to Sly Spy, the 1989 title that gave Rolling Thunder a run for its money. The game even began with the secret agent jumping out of an airplane and shooting at terrorists while free falling over the White House! However like Shinobi and Rolling Thunder the game was a 1-player affair.

The title that tried to outdo the Bad Dudes was called Two Crude Dudes aka Crude Buster. The 1991 title had a completely different art style, one which did not settle with most fans of the original Bad Dudes. The characters were large, brightly colored, mohawk wearing bruisers, fighting to save a post apocalyptic New York. It was as if the Japanese were trying to make a game that looked like a comic book, complete with word balloons during strikes, only they had no idea how American comic heroes were supposed to look or act. The game allowed the Crude brothers to interact with the scenery. They could lift and throw cars at opponents, yank street signs out of the ground and swing them like clubs and even knock down buildings The game pandered to every insignificant detail the programmers knew about the USA. There was graffiti on the walls, a fallen Statue of Liberty and even a KISS knock-off boss in the first level. The problem was that the game might have been appealing to pop culture from 1981, rather than 1991.

The other side-scrolling Data East games would fare better because they would be based on licenses. Before the company ruined their good name with the abysmal Captain America and the Avengers game they released Robocop. The 1988 title was based on the hit movie and featured locations, sound bites and villains right from the film. Players could shoot or punch opponents, they could even get different types of ammunition as well. The film and game based on it were so well made that Sega poached the concept in ESWAT a couple of years later.

Just as they had released a one-two punch with Bad Dudes and Two Crude in 88 and 91, so too did they follow up their run-n-gun attempt with Robocop 2. The sequel played out as you would expect, the publisher took some liberties with the characters and locations but followed the general direction of the movie including turning Cain into the nemesis. The game was actually more like a brawler as it provided 2-player action and free roaming levels. The game was notable for the limited use of depth in the game. If the two player-controlled Robocops came at the intersection of a street or an alley, they could actually shoot at opponents in the distance as well as those to the immediate left or right.

Licenses were hot for many of the arcade brawlers, one of the biggest licenses from 1988, Superman was again developed by Taito. Unfortunately this arcade game was very simplistic. It was a 2D brawler that had side scrolling levels where Superman could kick and punch his opponents as well as flying levels where he could shoot his heat vision and even energy punches at meteors and helicopters.

The reason I would consider this a brawler was because it was actually a 2-player game. The second person could play as "Red Superman." He was nothing more than a palette swap of the original character. Same powers, same strength, same everything. Which was a shame really. My brothers and I would pretend that he was actually Valor, an alien from the far future that had powers and abilities that were comparable to Superman. DC had actually featured Red Superman characters for some time, not including Shazam / Captain Marvel. The best part of the game was probably the soundtrack which was a digitized version of the classic John Williams soundtrack.

A slightly better 2D brawler based on a comic book appeared in 1991. SNK published Eightman, a game based on a classic manga and anime character. Eightman was a cyborg that could move super fast. He was defending humanity from rogue robots and cyborgs. The character was very influential and helped inspire cyborgs like Robocop and even some of the villains in Mega Man.

The game had a unique power up system which allowed Eightman to gain stronger attacks and even get screen-clearing moves. Player-2 in the game took control of Nineman, the red palette-swap version. The two fought in futuristic landscapes. On some stages of the game they ran quickly along the ground, racing cars and fighting other high speed villains. It was a great effect that was even better than the flying sequences in the Superman game.

Post 1991 the side scrolling brawler, run-and-gun and even hack-and-slash were not long for the arcades. The formats were kept alive on home consoles through the early 90's but trends were quickly shifting. The next blog will highlight the last great hurrah from the hack-and-slash brawlers. I hope to see you back for that. As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Abridged History of the Brawler, Part 6

The start of the new decade, 1991, was a gold rush. Every arcade company wanted to make their fortune on a brawler. Data East saw the runaway success that Konami enjoyed with their licensed titles and decided to secure a high profile Western license for themselves as well. The result, Captain America and the Avengers, was without a doubt the biggest quarter-waster my brothers and I had the misfortune of playing.

The game featured Captain America, Iron Man, Vision and Hawkeye taking on the Red Skull and a collection of villains from Marvel Comics. Unfortunately the people at Marvel seemed to have little creative control once they signed up with Data East. The game played as if the Japanese developers flipped through some comic books in the lobby of Marvel studios and then never looked at them again. The character sprites were small and not detailed, possibly so players in the USA would not be offended by the gross disregard to the legendary designs. Playing as the characters was fun, I am not going to lie about that. Each character had ranged attacks and close up strikes. The first time I threw Captain America’s shield into the head of a robot and watched it bounce back to me I was quite giddy. I’ve enjoyed almost all of Data East’s arcade releases however this game left me disappointed.

The game ate quarters like mad. Every strike from rivals seemed to eat up health at an alarming rate. Quite honestly it probably ate quarters faster than P.O.W. Back then SNK had an excuse, the genre was just getting started. The line between difficulty for the sake of challenge and difficulty for the sake or ripping off players hadn’t been established yet. Data East had no excuse. Once they were out of health the characters would drop to their knees and exclaim “I can’t move…” at which point my brothers and I would yell out “Feed me another quarter!” The more time I spend talking about this game the more disappointed I get. So let’s move instead to another company that let me down and then redeemed themselves in the same year.

My friends know that I am passionate about Sega games, however D.D. Crew, the first traditional brawler from the publisher left me cold. Visually it was impressive. The size of the sprites, the level of detail and animations were pretty good. However watching Sega appropriate early Hip Hop culture and try to make a brawler “urban” and “street” was painful to watch, or rather listen to. The soundtrack consisted of an endless loop that sounded like a rip-off of a Whodini song with Tracy Morgan saying “Shut up already” over and over.

The game was as formulaic as it could be. There were four named characters, the buff King, the cool cop F.F., the black boxer Buster (possibly named after James “Buster” Douglas for which Sega had just released a Genesis game) and the elderly kung-fu master Gung Ho. They fought wave after wave of typical baddies on a way to fight yet another crime lord. The nonsensical phrases the bosses spouted off was laughable. There were two things I did enjoy with the game, the level set atop of a cable car which was great design. Too bad they had to fight a Bruce Lee clone. The other thing I enjoyed was being able to hurl opponents straight up in the air and watch them come crashing down a few seconds later. Other than that the game didn’t hold my attention, or the interest of the rest of the public for that matter. Sega managed to do far more for the genre in a game on a platform with less memory and processing power that same year.

Streets of Rage by most estimations, or at the very least the passionate Sega community, began the best console brawler series ever released. The variations on the formula were subtle but well executed. There were three playable characters, all undercover police officers and one of which was Blaze, a female cop. A strong female lead in a brawler hadn’t been seen since Tyris in Golden Axe. The three characters played more or less the same. Sega did not follow the conventions of having one being the slow strong one, the small fast one or one in the middle. Those character archetypes would be featured in the sequels.

Streets of Rage was a great game. The officers were on the trail of a crime lord. They had to beat up the gangs he controlled in order to get to him. The city was slightly futuristic and fairly original. I always felt that the rival designs were poached a bit much from Final Fight but it was still a great game. Where it innovated was in the use of crowd clearing moves. Players could earn special attacks which consisted of radioing for backup and having a cop car shoot a round of flaming mortar shells which rained down on opponents. This acted similarly to the magic spells in Golden Axe which affected all opponents on screen. By comparison Final Fight and other brawlers featured characters that could perform a crowd clearing move at the cost of some health points. I enjoyed the Sega mechanic much more.

1991 started out a bit rough for the arcades but things quickly improved. While not all the titles were winners, the majority were memorable. Sega showed that the arcade was no longer the exclusive domain of a great brawling experience. They managed to pick up where River City Ransom left off and brought the brawler into glorious 16-bit life at home . As for Capcom and Konami the rivalry to claim the title as greatest arcade developer would reach a fever pitch. The next blog will look at the single greatest year that both studios had in the arcade. As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Abridged History of the Brawler, Part 1

The Brawling genre, also known as the Beat-Em-Up among arcade aficionados, has been a part of gaming history for over 30 years. Players can identify the genre thanks to some trademark elements. The games traditionally consist of one or more players taking on waves of opponents using mostly punches and kicks. Players can usually pick up health and weapons along the way. At some point a boss or sub boss appears to fight the players. The game basically repeats this formula until the end, or until the player runs out of continues.

Some of the most enjoyable gaming experiences are connected to long-running titles, many of which are saturated with murder, violence, tragedy and revenge. The genre remains popular despite the (sometimes) graphic content because the titles are among the easiest to get into, play and enjoy. The mechanics of a great brawling experience are rooted in very simple gameplay elements. A joystick and two buttons are usually all that is required to begin playing, navigating and interacting with any number of virtual worlds. A player that has mastered one good brawler has probably experienced the best elements of all of them. The key to the success for most in the genre has been accessibility. The fantastic premises, over-the-top characters and simple control schemes could make players feel like they were literally taking on the world. The repetitive nature of the combat system and sheer number of opponents made gamers believe that they were advancing through a rich narrative even though the gameplay remained the same from beginning to end. These lessons would be applied to other genres and helped shape the gaming industry. However before we talk about what became of the brawler we have to go back to the beginning. Where did the brawler come from?

The brawler as you can imagine is closely related to the fighting game. Traditional one-on-one combat was made popular in Karate Champ, released by Data East in 1984. This game established the concepts of traveling to challenge other masters, two-player vs combat and even mini games to break up the monotony. In 1985 the concepts behind Karate Champ were expanded. New narratives, fighting mechanics and character designs were explored in Yie Ar Kung Fu. Released by Konami this new game had more in tune with modern fighting games. It featured a colorful cast of masters in different styles of kung fu, instead of the singular karate style from Data East. Most of the rivals had fantastic abilities such as being able to fly through the air.

These characters were inspired by archetypes featured in kung-fu cinema and based on legendary heroes from past dynasties. Some of the masters in Yie Ar used weapons against the players, adding a bit of a challenge and forcing the player to adapt to those styles of combat. The addition of digitized voices, spouting one-word statements, helped add dimension to the game. Both Karate Champ and Yie Ar Kung-Fu predated the original Street Fighter by years. They made player vs computer combat possible and more important, entertaining. They helped lay the foundation for brawling games however they were not the biggest influence on the creation of the genre.

If you were to poll a gamer old enough to remember the golden age of the arcade what the first brawler was there would be an almost unanimous title. Double Dragon, developed by Technos and under license from Taito, was released in 1987. This game heralded the introduction of a genre that would explode in popularity and then fade quickly as the arcade and home console markets transitioned through the late 80's and early 90's.

The game was unlike anything that arcade visitors had ever seen before. It began with a scene of a girl getting punched in the gut and kidnapped by a gang of pseudo-futuristic thugs. This intro was shocking to most gamers. It gave young gamers a dose of sex on top of violence as the pixelated panties of the damsel were clearly visible as she was thrown over the shoulders of a gang member. Right after the kidnapping the main characters Billy and Jimmy Lee appeared from a garage to chase down the attackers.

The rest of the game was a textbook example of brawling design. Rival characters fought with certain techniques, the larger characters had greater range and could often do more damage to players so they had to be kept at bay. Smaller characters could be rushed by players. Players could even battle female gang members. It was the first equal opportunity brawler! The control was simple, there were only three buttons; jump, punch and kick. Players could move in any direction on the screen but their character would always face either right or left. The same thing applied for opponents. This allowed the player to focus on attacks on a 2D plane and not worry about directional attacks from below or above the character. The fighting system was quite robust for only using a few buttons. A player could switch between punches and kicks and find which combination of attacks worked best to drop different sized opponents. Players could stun rivals with a punch and then throw an elbow at an opponent sneaking up behind them, then return to the original attacker with a kick. Players could even perform grapple attacks by pressing toward opponents and pressing the right action button. The player could grab the opponent by the hair and smash a knee into their face or perform a judo throw and toss the opponents over their shoulder. Players could also interact with the environment, such as throwing objects at opponents and even take weapons from rivals to use against them.

Visually the game was vey stylized. Characters didn't quite have Eastern animé or Western comic book proportions but instead something in the middle. The muscles were exaggerated on most of the characters and especially on the rival characters to make them appear more imposing. Each character was given a solid color choice to make them easy to identify on screen especially when a half dozen or more characters were engaged in battle. The world of Double Dragon was urban and just a hint futuristic with the choice of gang outfits and vehicles on the stages. The stages and environments shifted from the streets to the countryside and even the underground of the dystopian world. Players could take advantage of the level designs and throw opponents into rivers or down spike pits. The changing scenery and interactive environments would become a staple of all brawling games. Players felt as if they were on the ultimate quest for revenge as they battled nonstop through a city. For young gamers, especially boys, the experience could be exhilarating.

Gamers assumed the role of the ultimate tough guys. They fought off wave after wave of gang members coming at them from every direction. Using everything they could to fend off attackers and fighting just as dirty as their opponents. Double Dragon allowed players to turn into digital representations of martial arts movie stars and live out the fantasy in one extended battle sequence.

Unlike the legendary non-stop 4 minute fight sequence featuring Tony Jaa in the film Tom Young Goong aka the Protector, many brawling games were anywhere from a half hour to an hour of nonstop fighting. This level of intense engagement (and monetary investment) gave players that beat the game a strong emotional attachment to the characters and title itself. Yet most of the seasoned arcade players would be surprised to learn that Double Dragon was not the original brawling game, at least not by the definition we’ve explored here.

This series will go over some of the most important, some of the worst and some of the most unique brawling games released over the past three decades. The series is in no way meant to be comprehensive or even cover all the sub-genres associated with the brawler. Additionally this series deals mostly with the original titles and will rarely bring up sequels. The blogs will go chronologically through the years, so if I fail to bring up a title please be patient. Chances are I'll mention a few fan-favorite games through the course of the series. Next time I shall talk about the brawling game that predated Double Dragon and got a generation started on beat-em-ups. I hope to see you back for that. As always if you enjoyed this blog and would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!