Bad Dudes

"I love this game... I don't know why."

Seeing the huge success of Double Dragon, one named company Data East tried to pick up after it and make their own side-scrolling beat-em-up game.

Choose from Blade or Striker (I go with Striker ^^;) at the onset.

''The President has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?''

A very Duke Nukem type character appears and tells you that little bit. So now we know where he resided before he started kicking ass and chewing bubble gum.

So anyway, the game is exactly what you would expect from a side-scroller. You begin armed with only your hands and feet and whatever fighting skills your character acquired to make him applicable for the job to rescue the President. Yeah. Then... ninjas attack! There are blue ninjas, which die after one punch, gray ninjas that die after two, and green ninjas that die after two and drop something one of the following items for you to use: clock (extra time), can (extra health), knife, or nunchucks. If you have the knife or nunchucks though, everything dies in one hit. There are seven levels for you to traverse through, beating up the ninjas and stuff, with a boss at the end of every level. All of the bosses require some simple pattern for you to defeat them by, but after the first boss, Karnov, it's pretty much damned near impossible to defeat a boss without losing a life if you don't have a weapon. They all have simple patters, but they also have an incredible attacking range, and that's where they get you... especially that ball and chain boss at the end of the train level, ugh, I hate that guy. At the end of the last level you fight the head honcho ninja, or whatever, and save the President, or something. Really crappy ending too, I might add.

The graphics are... well... they leave something to be desired. The animation is very slow and choppy. The truck and train levels move by themselves and require you to simply ''follow'' the level... and that's really slowly. The ninjas have some degree of detail on them, but it's nothing spectacular. The only thing that lets you discern between them is the color - and I'm thankful that Data East chose distinguishing colors, at that. Oh, that reminds me... everything moves slow in the game except for those dogs... those damn dogs will dash at you from across the screen with very fast speed and bite your butt. As far as your attacks go... punching is just an extension of your characters body. Interestingly enough, if your character is holding a nunchucks or a knife, you can see it in their hands.

The music for the levels is pretty boring. It's the same thing every level, and it isn't even at all catchy. The boss music is actually pretty good, even though it too is the same. There should have been a different music for the final boss I think, but hey, what can you do. The sound effects pretty much consist of a thwacking sound when someone makes contact with an attack, and your character getting hit. That's about it. But wait... we can't forget that horrifically loud ''I'M BAD!!!'' shout at the end of every level. You have to turn your TV up really loud to hear everything else, then that crap blasts through at the end.

Overall: 6/10
This game is pretty fun to play through the first time if you're a fan of side-scrolling beat-em-up games like Double Dragon or Final Fight, but once you've done it once (and it's not that hard to do either), there's really no need to do it again. Fans of other genres should stay away. Still.. I love this game. Perhaps someone else could shed some light onto that mystery for me.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/02/02, Updated 12/02/02