Bad Street Brawler

The Good
Well, to be honest: the concept of this game confuses me. I suppose that some of the elements of Bad Street Brawler are original while also being very, very strange.

The Bad
First of all, lets talk about the main character. Now on the first screen, he looks okay. But when you go into gameplay, he just looks plain stupid! Who decided to make him wear a yellow tank top, extra short shorts (which are also yellow) and short yellow TIGHTS!

I think I said enough about him (for now). When you try to fight, you are given new moves each stage and some of them just don't work or they are plain ridiculous and you have to try to get used to them right after you got used to the last set of attacks you had.

The music is frustrating especially when you die. But that's not it. You are submitted to a 40 second loop of rubbish music which will wear down on your brain cells. One last thing, the enemies. Who even THOUGHT it would be a good idea to put skateboarders, basketball players and hip hop dancers in a fighting game.

There are many more enemies which I am failing to mention, but let's leave this game alone for now. I might come back to it in a few years time to see how we improved in gaming technology since the time of the NES.

The Bottom Line
Bad Street Brawler, is a very abnormal game, but not in a good way. This game may seem "cute" and "funny". But it is not worth your time or money. if you were looking for a good fighting game, you better pop street fighter 2 in your gaming console and enjoy that. Trust me, it took a very long time to enjoy Bad Street Brawler.

The Good
Aah - I used to play this thing for hours on the ole XT... the graphics are OK (completely ridiculous, but that's the whole point), perhaps the sprites are a bit on the blocky side. The ingame music is really cute too, but gets annoying after a while; the gameplay is really fun, at least at first.

The Bad
Well, like Jim said, the sprites are blocky, which is really annoying... the ingame music also gets to you after a while. And the enemies are mostly dumb.

The Bottom Line
A really, really cute XT game with pros and cons.

The Good
I was able to shut this game off before dying from hysterical laughter. Maybe it's the fact that practically EVERY single character here looks like a bunch of old folks trying to cane and gum each other to death as opposed to freaks and weirdos trying to slice one another's throats has something to do with it.

Or is it the fact that your character walks with his arms so low to his sides that he faintly resembles a lowland gorilla? Or perhaps it's those old women who beat the bejeebies out of you when you hit them. Oh, sweet revenge....grin

Or maybe it could also be that goofy as hell music that played when you were fighting geriatric punks on the street (the NES version's music not much better)!

Whatever case, I was laughing way too much at this.

The Bad
If you laugh too hard at this game, you may cause severe problems to your health.

Plus, there's that one factor too: the gameplay, graphics, sounds, and a music are all pitiful. End of story.

The Bottom Line
Bad Street Brawler: friends do not let friends play BSB alone. Make sure two people are there so they can laugh themselves silly (and hopefully not too much). It's either that or they'll just drop dead on the spot from the horrible gameplay.

This game deserves to have its girly butt kicked out the door! It's a stinky, stinky, port (and game) that should be outlawed and shot in the back.

The Good
An initially cute concept--clean up the streets so that Grandma can walk safely home. The graphics are well suited to the purpose of being a comic book in motion (if a bit blocky--see below). The street locations are nicely varied for a game of that era.

The Bad
A minor problem for me was the graphics; the character sprites were drawn a 1/4th their actual size and are doubled in size when plotted to the screen. The end result is that they are--understandably--blocky.

The main problem with the game, though is the gameplay. Once you learn all of the moves you can do, the normal enemies are way too easy--and the end-level bossess remain very tough.

The Bottom Line
If you like simple games that can frustrate you just as you're doing well, try it.

The Good
This game is complete nonsense. It's a campy side-scrolling beat 'em-up in which you play a wrestler who has to clean the streets of the city, beating up large amounts of enemies (including psychotic old, blind men with canes) so grandma can cross the street safely. I'd rather have this concept than another game with Billy Lee clones.

There are five different levels (levels 6 to 10 are rehashes of the first five levels and after level 10 the game goes into infinite repeat mode; level 11 = level 6) and the moves available to you depend on the level you're playing. Besides the standard kick you also got two other attacks per level. Most of these attacks are ridiculously over-the-top, just take a look at the screenshots. Anyway, I thought it was a good idea to change the moves after each level as it adds some variety.

Yes the graphics are blocky, but I kind of liked them. They give the game a bit of a comic book look. Especially with the text bulbs that appear every now and then.

The Bad
A lot, let's see:

• The ingame music is annoying.
• The controls are somewhat sluggish & unresponsive.
• Not much is done with the grandmother-concept. Enemies don't attack her so you really don't need to protect her, she enters and leaves the screen at will and she never reaches a destination. It would have made more sense if you had to escort her to her home or something. Now grandma is just annoying as she constantly gets in the way.
• It's frustrating as you can suddenly get your ass kicked within seconds. In my opinion the game quickly becomes insanely difficult. I never got past level 5 until I started messing around with a hex editor.
• The fact that the game goes into infinite repeat mode instead of having a decent ending (well I guess since they made the game so difficult, you're not supposed to get that far anyway).
• In level 6 (which is just level 1 with more enemies) and every level after it you can't use your basic kick anymore. That's right, not only do you have to play the same levels again but you also can't perform your best attack anymore. How cheap!
• In nearly all of these games you can move to the forefront or the background to evade enemies. Not in Bad Street Brawler (looking at the NES screenshots, I think this feature is available in the NES version). Also you can't pick up any weapons or garbage cans to throw at your enemies.

The Bottom Line
At first I wanted to write something like "it's so bad it's good" but that would be rubbish. It's just plain bad... bad, campy & silly with terrible gameplay. One of the worst games I've played.