COMPLETE: River City Ransom

This came from the Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun Retro Brawler Bundle, an absolutely massive Legacy Collection-like Switch title that includes, from what I can tell, literally every Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun franchise game made for the NES and Famicom (and the previously unreleased-in-North America Famicom games even have translations!) It's a fantastic collection, all told, but of course the first thing I had to do when we bought it was see if I could get through River City Ransom, a game with which younger me often struggled.

This is one of those games that I probably shouldn't have to explain because everyone knows it already, but just in case: You are Kunio and Riki Alex and Ryan, and the local high school students led by the evil Slick have kidnapped Riki/Ryan's girlfriend, formed the most colorful themed gangs since The Warriors, and are now out to take over all of River City. You beat up gangs, take the money they drop, use it to buy things that raise your stats, and follow the chain of "beating this boss sets the event flag that makes that boss spawn over there, and beating him unlocks this other boss" all the way until you're allowed into River City High School, at which point you beat up a few more bosses as you climb up its floors, and then beat up Slick in a final battle on the roof.

River City Ransom sure is a gang-fighting brawler, and despite the more chibi Kunio-kun style graphics, it fits right in alongside the Double Dragon games in the collection. However, RCR has more RPG elements to it (money, shops, stats that can be raised) and a more open map complete with backtracking rather than individual stages or levels. I adored this game as a child, but found it brutally hard. Young me remembers completely skipping the fight against the Dragon Twins in RC High 4th floor because I just could never beat them, even though that appears not to be possible given that even current world-record TAS speedrunners still have to stop and fight them. Tex, the boss of RC High 2nd floor, is optional, but the Dragon Twins aren't. I swear I remember beating the game but never being able to beat the Dragon Twins, though, somehow. Memories are weird, fallible things. The memory of calling the Nintendo Power hotline to get help on how to beat Turk is probably true, though. (They recommended spamming Acro Circus, which is... not... uh... see below.)

As an adult who has a better understanding of how stat grinding works and (thanks to several walkthroughs) what the stats actually do, I found the game's difficulty... unbalanced? Though it has RPG elements, at no point does RCR follow the mechanics of "becoming stronger turns once-overpowered enemies into a balanced and fair fight." Instead, high-level encounters appear to be contests of whether you or your opponent gets the "cheap you to death" strategy off first. There is no stat that does anything about how every enemy in the game, all the way down to the lowly minions in the Generic Dudes gang, hits like a truck and can combo you for half your health or more. (You'd think that'd be what Defense does, but that just increases your percent chance odds of blocking an opponent's attack when you hit the attack button at the same time.) At any point, in any room, this can happen. But so long as it doesn't happen, you are a death-dealing machine, completely ruthless and unstoppable (and cheap as hell) until someone hits you once. Every boss (including the Dragon Twins!) is all about spamming the attack that knocks them down, and hitting them with it again when they get back up to knock them down again, and just repeating and stun-locking them until they die.

In other words, this is one of those games where beating the game the actual normal legitimate developer-intended way feels like cheating, because there's just no balance whatsoever. The balance is that random gangs can do the same to you, I guess. I used to think that the Dragon Twins were the hardest fight in the game (even more so than Slick,) but I now understand the true challenge is any time you have to clear an entire room of gang members (either for grinding purposes or to make a boss appear after defeating all the minions.) Even the Generic Dudes. The bosses, though? They're are all laughable once you knock them down once. The Dragon Twins can be a little tricky since there are two of them and theoretically one can attack you while you're engaging the other, but by then you have the Grand Slam technique and a weapon, they spawn standing next to each other, and you can generally keep them together and keep them too stun-locked to split up.

Anyway, that's a childhood game played with adult eyes, I guess. A lot of it hasn't aged well, though it's still charming despite its (apparently more than I remembered) flaws. I'm glad I got to experience it again. I may even go through the translated Famicom version also included in the bundle just to see the differences. On the other hand, I'm also very much intrigued by the "Downtown Special Kunio-kun's Historical Period Drama!" game that's also included. It's basically River City Ransom 2, complete with a lot of quality of life adjustments that would eventually find their way into the River City Ransom EX Game Boy Advance remake (displaying the numerical amounts of damage you do, AI partners, a Defense stat that actually affects incoming damage, etc.) only set in ancient feudal Japan. If I want more River City Ransom without the rough edges, that could be a promising lead.