Urban Champion

"Avoid like the plague"

Street Fighting games, we all love 'em, right? Well...maybe not all of them are great. Street Fighter 2 unquestionably redifined the street fighting genre. But fighting games did exist before Street Fighter. There have been several horrible fighting games made before and after Street Fighter, but unquestionably, Urban Champion is the worst of them all. You want good graphics? A nice variety of characters? The ability to do more than punch?Well, Urban Champion has absolutely none of those.

The object of Urban Champion is simple: punch the other guy. That's right, punch. You don't get to kick, but, you get to punch high and low, hard or soft. This is all irrelevant however, because the computer's so easy, any kind of punch will do it in. A hard punch takes longer, but you'll knock your opponent (who is just a pallette swap of you) back a ways. A soft punch is quicker, but hardly knocks your opponent back. By pressing up or down, you can switch from high defense of low defense. When you're in high defense, you're invicible to high punches, but vulnerable to low and vice versa. Depending on if you're in high or low defense determines if you punch high or low. If you punch the guy to the end of the screen you get to fight another guy who is pretty much exactly the same. And for no known reason, people in apartment buildings drop plants on your head...but these are easy to dodge. If your friend wants to join in on the snooze fest, there's a two player mode as well.

The graphics of this game are bland and uninteresting. There are two fighting characters, and they don't even get the liberty of having their own sprites, they're just pallette swapped. The music is also pretty ho-hum. The graphics and sound will remind you of other early Nintendo games, particularly Hogan's Alley.

My advice is to not play this game. Don't rent it and certainly don't buy it. If you have a friend who has this game, don't even borrow it. The only reason this game isn't getting a "1" rating is because it deserves a little bit of a break, since it's a first generation game, but at least Super Mario Bros. was fun! If you want to see how bad a game can be, pick this up. If not, just try to pretend it doesn't exist (shouldn't be too tough).

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 08/07/01