#51 - Bad Street Brawler

Power Glove, eh? I'm sure that worked well...

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Dear God...

Many game developers on the NES thought that they could get away with murder. "Who cares if our games suck and have little to no gameplay? If we convince the kids it has 'TUDE, they'll come out in droves." Bad Street Brawler tries desperately to convince children it has tude with its yellow-spandexed aficionado, Duke Davis. He has SUNGLASSES. He wears LITTLE TO NO CLOTHES. He has a SQUARE JAW (that kind of makes him look like an old person during the game). He has BAD POSTURE (another contributing factor towards old person syndrome). Mattel tried its hardest, but they couldn't sell me on this rehash of every brawler game ever made.

To its credit, it does do one unique thing: every stage, you get a different set of moves. For example, in the first stage, you have a traditional punch and a low kick. In the second stage, you have a high kick and the ability to knock people off their feet. In the third stage, it keeps going on and so forth. It's not a huge deal, as the moves all pretty much do the same thing, but it is nice to see some variety in the otherwise monotonous levels.

The levels and the enemies that come at you are strange, to say the least. You have about eight little sections to go through each level, and I do mean little. Walking from one side of the screen to the other constitutes one section. The strange thing is, there's not enemies in every section. Sometimes you can walk through two whole sections before facing off against any bald midgets or punk rockers. There doesn't seem to be any point in partitioning off the level into these sections, other than to give you the whereabouts of the end of the level. There is also a time limit, which is stupid and pointless. I guess it was the only way they could make this game challenging, as the enemies are pretty stupid. Many of them come at you briefly only to run away, when you go towards them. One enemy that I hate is the gorilla. One punch from that fool can take off half your life! Yeah, it's annoying, and if you don't have your little midget friend throwing you some meat to replenish your health, you're toast. I also don't understand how the boss is just one of the enemies with extra health. I guess that's just Mattel going the extra mile...

The potatoes of the game are just as poorly made as the meat. Character designs in this game are atrocious, especially that of our hero. His bad posture and square jaw make him look like a retarded old person, which is a type of person that, God bless 'em, I don't particularly want to play as in a video game. Music is the same looped MIDI sample over and over again; you learn to ignore it. Controls are OK, except some of the punches and kicks didn't connect like I felt they should have.

The main problem with this game though, is the lack of variety and lack of a two-player mode. Each stage is essentially the same, with different backgrounds: run right, punch/kick strange humans/gorillas, call it a day. I understand that the focus is supposed to be on Duke Davis and not Duke and "friend," but every brawler needs a two-player mode; especially when they're fighting on bad streets such as these.

C-