Bad Street Brawler

"There's more enjoyment to be had by poking fun at this subpar brawler than actually playing it."

As much as I love the beat 'em up genre, some of these games take a real toll on me to play through to the point where I can summarize it for a Gamefaqs review. However, I've been slacking off on my workload and I've got a rep here to hold onto. Without further ado..

Story ?/10

I didn't get an instruction manual with my cart, but from the looks of things the plot follows the protagonist Duke Davis as he cleans up the mean streets from some of the least threatening gang-bangers even to step foot in a video game. He also takes the time to dispense proverbs and wise sayings between levels and give a shout-out to his mom.

Graphics 6/10

The visuals aren't astonishing by any means, but they're up to the 1989 NES standards and the level backgrounds wouldn't look out of place in a Double Dragon game. The character models aren't as impressive, especially in the area of art design. Duke Davis looks like a wimpy Duke Nukem wearing a mustard-colored wife-beater/gym shorts combo and a face that's been run into a wall a few times. The ridiculous enemies consist of everything from standard thugs and punks to nonsense like bulldogs, tigers and gorillas. I'm not sure what pulled together such a ragtag crew from every walk of life to commit crime - but most of them aren't animated very well. Despite that, the there are over a dozen different types of baddies and in a real rare case for the beat 'em up genre - no lazy, recolored palette swaps. Duke himself has half-decent animation considering he has roughly two-dozens moves he can use throughout the game, despite half of them coming off like he's molesting his enemies with them. The graphics are the best feature in this game, and with the aforementioned gripes I have concerning them - that isn't a good thing.

Sound 4/10

Most of the music is grating showtune-style noise, and the themes get interrupted by beeps and bloops every time you attack. It doesn't help when there are only three or so musical tracks spread across the 15 stages, and that one of those songs is also the main title theme. The sound effects themselves aren't anything to brag about themselves - giving this entire area of the review rather low marks on the scoreboard.

Control 7/10

Most of the maneuvers you use feel rather rigid, and the enemies don't show much of terms of impact. Jumping is also a bit unfocused but since it isn't used except for avoiding a couple attacks or grabbing an item I won't complain too much.

Game-play 4/10

Like Kung-Fu Master and The Ninja Warriors - Bad Street Brawler is a single-plane beat 'em up that has enemies pouring in from either side. You can skip most of the cannon-fodder, however - by simply running and jumping past them until the screen stops scrolling and you're forced to fight a couple of bad guys before the boss appears. Some of the enemies are also a bit unenthusiastic for combat, as they will constantly attack you once then travel off the screen. Prior to each level, you are assigned three different moves which are never quite the same per stage. While I do appreciate an otherwise mediocre game adding some variety to the combat - I ended up only using two moves out of the three each time, if not one. As I mentioned earlier, there are over a dozen different bad guys to fight, but most of them follow the same spam-an-attack-until-I-die methods of defeat. The only real threat comes in from project using baddies and powerful opponents like the gorillas who can drain your health-bar in a couple of hits. Most of the bosses can be disposed of in the same fashion as the common enemies - and following each boss fight you toss weapons collected from fallen foes into a dumpster for seemingly worthless points. There isn't much in terms of enemy tactics - as the game goes on more baddies get onto the screen at once but you never see the kind of ambushes games like Final Fight dish out. I wouldn't classify the game-play as terrible, but it is definitely below average even for an older beat 'em up using 8-bit hardware.

Replay value 1/10

I couldn't even bring myself to beat the game once, so going back to it would require a masochistic sense of amusement. At least there is a surprisingly large amount of enemy designs for an otherwise drab combat experience. I might as well mention that although the game advertises two player game-play, it's really just having one person play until he dies and the other person then getting a chance - kind of like the early Super Mario Bros. titles.

Overall 4/10

Unless you're starving for beat 'em up action on the NES, I would suggest putting Bad Street Brawler on the lower tier of desirable brawler titles. I only bought a copy for collector purposes and to eventually write a review on it.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/25/08

Game Release: Bad Street Brawler (US, September 1989)