365//365: Day 075 – River City Ransom (NES) [Quickie]

Quick — name five must have NES games!

Super Mario Bros. 3
The Legend of Zelda
Double Dragon
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
….River City Ransom?

That’s right, River City Ransom. One of the greatest titles on the NES, and one of the most timeless classics gamers could ever play. Its one part beat em up, one part RPG, but a thousand parts awesome.

You can play as Alex, or his brother Ryan. Ryan’s girlfriend is kidnapped by Slick, the head gang boss in town. You have to reach the roof of your high school and defeat Slick. Along the way, various gangs try to stop you and take you down. Defeat them and you collect the “milk money” that they drop, which can buy you food that increases certain stats, or books that enable you to learn new abilities. You can also pick up various weapons, from a rock, to a garbage can, to even a tire. The game its self is a lot less complicated than it seems. You have a punch button, a kick button and pressing both lets you jump. You will be able to earn the ability to have rapid punches, rapid kicks, throw people like they are a javelin, and so on, via skill book purchases through the game.

The gameplay is so elementary, yet so damn addicting.

Your enemies are pretty mindless until the end. That doesn’t deter the joy whatsoever. Some of the weaker enemies will flat out run away from you. The bosses are mostly push overs until you hit the high school. the second to last boss, the Dragon Twins, will tear you a new one, all to the theme of Double Dragon.

Oh, I should also mention that this game is two player co-op, and one of the best co-op games ever. You can pick your brother up and throw him at your enemies while he swings his weapon wildly. Alternatively, you can pick up a tire, have the second player jump on top of the tire, and throw it at an enemy, and watch him run on the tire while running over your enemies. You could try to play nice or you can be a jerk and kill your partner off and not advance to the next section, cutting his money total by half. It’s a blast and a half single player, but my God is it amusing and entertaining as anything out there now, when a second player is added.

The only two issues I ever had with River City Ransom, were the length of the game, and the password system. The whole game can be beaten in 45 minutes or possibly less if you just plow through and not really try to have fun. If you take your time, have fun and try to skill up as much as possible, the game does last a little longer. The password system is just painful. This might be the worst password system ever in video game history. The amount of characters required and the diverse number of characters used could almost take as long to put in as the game takes to beat if you rush through. In reality, there’s no real reason to use passwords anyway, given the length of the game at hand.

No caption needed.

Regardless of the games length and somewhat lazy AI, the thrills and amusement provided by River City Ransom rivals even the big budget titles of this generation. It’s one of the premiere NES titles, and one of the gaming world’s most elementary, yet finest masterpieces. If you enjoy having fun in life, River City Ransom will provide you that fun in an electronic form.

Rating: 8.7