Bad Dudes

"Considering the word Bad appears in the title, I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise..."

If you've ever played arcade games like Double Dragon or The Simpsons, then you know what a good side-scrolling fighter can be. You might also know that a popular money-making scheme in the early to mid-90s was to take a successful arcade game and bring it to home systems. Some of these games, like Double Dragon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mortal Kombat, and Contra mirrored their arcade counterparts well enough that most, if not all, of the concepts that made the original fun to play were intact, despite being on a much less powerful system. With this in mind, the extremely entertaining and underrated arcade game Bad Dudes soon followed the trend and was ported to the NES, but the end result is a game that resembles the original in name and story only.

Not that side scrolling fighters are known for their plots, but Bad Dudes takes two steps forward before stumbling back about eighteen. Rather than rescuing a damsel in distress, your character is out to save the President of the United States. Any important background information we need to know is summarized in one screen by a generic Secret Service agent wearing aviators, who delivers the popular line, “The President has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?” Who the two main characters are and why this is a job that the military can't handle, naturally, isn't important enough to be explained. After this one screen introduction, the player is thrown into the game to prove that he is in fact a bad enough dude, and any hints of a story are long forgotten...

In terms of graphics, Bad Dudes is about what you would expect from a NES game. It's certainly not as clean as the arcade version, but no one's expectations should be that high. One aspect that's worth mentioning is the backgrounds, though. For some reason, all of the background scenes are tilted forwards so that they're almost overhead. This means that images such as lakes or buildings will appear at a ninety degree angle, which makes it looks like either the foreground or background is sideways. It certainly doesn't make or break the game, but there are definitely moments where you'll pause and think to yourself how utterly bizarre it looks. Other than that, character animations are fairly below average, so all of your jumps, kicks, and even the walking animation comes off as choppy and awkward. That, and all of the ninjas you'll encounter are little more than the same ninja sprite with the occasional palate swap.

The sounds, both the background music and sound effects themselves, are also pretty disappointing. They aren't necessarily awful, but the few already-repetitive rhythms there are have been overused to the point where it's just more bearable to simply mute your TV rather than listen to the same ten second clip for the umpteenth time. The sound effects are also reused to the point where the only two thoughts in your mind are “How much longer do I have to listen to this?” and “Why does everything sound exactly the same?” It's also worth noting that Bad Dudes tries to replicate the “I'm bad!” sound byte that your character yells out after completing a level. Unfortunately, the NES isn't capable of this, and the result is a distorted sound effect that can only be understood due to the speech caption that appears from the mouth of your character.

Gameplay-wise, Bad Dudes is a mess. At the start of the game, you're given the choice of playing as either Blade or Striker, but unlike other games such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they all look, control, and fight exactly the same – poorly. Blade and Striker stumble through the levels awkwardly, punching, kicking, and jumping with the grace and agility of a sumo wrestler. You can pick up weapons like nunchucks and knives, which do little more than change your attack animation. Not that anyone should have reasonably expected anything more, considering that your entire arsenal of attacks consist of a punch, a low punch, and a kick that's basically the same as a punch. You can also pick up a soda can item to restore your life and a clock that adds five seconds to your time limit, not that you'll ever have trouble meeting the time restriction, or that an additional five seconds would even be useful if you did.

Luckily for the player, the enemy AI is equally as appalling. From what I've heard and read, ninjas in feudal Japan would go through rigorous training and were extremely agile, skillful, and deadly. But after playing Bad Dudes, all of that seems to have been lost in their transition to the West, as the American ninjas you encounter are brain dead morons that choose to simply run at you as opposed to actually doing something useful like, say, fight, although occasionally an enemy will throw a shuriken at you before running across the screen.

Fortunately, ninety-nine percent of all of the enemies you'll encounter can be killed within one or two punches, but considering that there are endless swarms of ninjas that will continue to respawn, the easiest way to get from Point A to Point B ends up being to simply run (or trudge, as it turns out) through the level until you encounter a boss. Speaking of which, the bosses at the end of each level, which include a fat guy, a midget, and a green ninja that can replicate itself, are unique in appearance, but still do very little than run back and forth across the screen, occasionally using a special attack that more often than not you can figure out how to avoid within a few seconds. This even goes for the leader of the Dragon Clan, who you fight on the landing gear of a helicopter, as the strategy for defeating him can be summed up with “crouch and punch a lot before he attacks”. As a matter of fact, that can be applied to all of the bosses.

In reality, the only part of Bad Dudes that works is the game's difficulty, and that's only once you've gotten past the sloppy gameplay. But the controls aside, the game really is fairly balanced in terms of not being too easy or impossibly difficult, albeit usually leaning more towards the easy end of the spectrum. However, that being said, it takes quite enough effort to actually learn to deal with the controls to make up for any lost challenge.

There is just not enough that's done well in Bad Dudes to give it any sort of praise. Without comparing it to the arcade version or even other fighters, this is simply not a very fun game. Ignoring the incredibly weak story, the uninspiring music, and sub par music, any game with gameplay that involves little more than sticking out a fist and waiting for enemies to walk it into is not worth playing, and doesn't nearly live up to the hype of being better than its competition, Double Dragon, as it was advertised. On the positive side, Bad Dudes is so ridiculous and just plain insulting that no one in their right mind would have to play it for more than a few minutes before realizing this. But Data East could have done everyone a favor and switched the word “Dudes” with “Game” in the title and saved us all of that time and money.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/20/04, Updated 09/10/07

Game Release: Bad Dudes (US, July 1990)