Bad Dudes

The Good
The arcade original is an action filled macho game, inspired by movies of the time with their cheesy martial arts tropes. You beat up hordes of ninjas to save the president. All kind of coolness is packed into, it like fighting on the top of moving trucks and trains among others. The backgrounds/environments are pretty distinguishable on each level.

Ocean handled the home computer conversions and released it under the Imagine label. That makes me automatically think of quality stuff (even if there are numerous examples to the contrary). Technically it's a good conversion. Graphics are up to their standards, with colorful high-resolution sprites, 50FPS smoothness, and the various environments are intact. Jonathan Dunn delivers awesome music, and there is also jamming tune along with sound effects simultaneously during gameplay. It captures the essence of the arcade game. It looks like there is everything given for a good action game.

The Bad
THEN WHY IS IT STILL BORING!?

It's dull, very dull to play! It's kind of a chore to kick/punch every foe. Your attack is short ranged while the enemies move very fast. Get close and kick them, they get stunned for a millisecond and continue running around, repeat twice and they die. But then immediately spawns another one. There is at least a million of them!

As the game progresses, it doesn't really get harder, and the gameplay doesn't change much either. The bosses just take more hits. Winning the game isn't a matter of skill, more like patience, how long are you willing to sit and do this repetitive task.

Beside all these, is also something off with the hit detection's functionality. I can't put my finger on it. It's not effecting much, but it always looms there to annoy my senses.

Bad "Dudes"... and the 2 player mode has been left out.

The Bottom Line
A good conversion. Too bad the arcade original appears to be just as mind-numbingly dull to begin with.

Bad Dudes Vs Dragon Ninja. More like Bad Game Vs Oriental Cliches!