Bad Street Brawler

aka: Bop' N Rumble, Street Hassle
Moby ID: 291
DOS Specs
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Description official description

In Bad Street Brawler, players take the role of the former punk rocker and current martial artist Duke Dunnegan, or alternatively the wrestler Gorgeous George (Bop N' Wrestle) or as a high school teacher pushed to far (Street Hassle) who finds he is the only one in the position to clean the mean streets from various thugs and loonies.

Gameplay involves walking through the streets and taking out any enemies that get in the way. Kicks and punches are your basic moves at first, but as the game progresses, new moves and attacks become available, and new enemy types to beat up as well.

Groups +

Screenshots

Credits (DOS version)

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 48% (based on 11 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.1 out of 5 (based on 36 ratings with 5 reviews)

Unusual, your name is 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.

NES · by Arejarn (7353) · 2008

Eternally cute.

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.

DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 1999

Ridiculous game. As in ridiculously bad.

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.

DOS · by Roedie (5239) · 2003

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Amiga

Unlike the other versions, the Amiga version was not an official release by Beam Software & Melbourne House. It was instead made by the Polish company World Software, whose developers enjoyed Bad Street Brawler so much they decided to make their own version for the Amiga using, among others, sprites ripped from the ZX spectrum version.

NES version

In the NES version, some enemy sprites are changed: the blind man was changed to a thug, grandma is now a small Italian, the basketball player is white and the skull on a bomb was removed.

Power Glove

Bad Street Brawler was along with Super Glove Ball the only games designed to showcase the Power Glove that were released. Two other additional titles were scrapped.

Sprites

Bad Street Brawler uses sprites that are doubled in height and width before being displayed. This results in big sprites, but they look blocky.

Stages

After stage 10 Bad Street Brawler goes into infinite repeat mode; stage 11 is the same as stage 6. However even the stages 6 to 10 are nothing more but rehashes of the stages 1 to 5 with more & tougher enemies.

Information also contributed by Apogee IV and Roedie.

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  • MobyGames ID: 291
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Tomer Gabel.

Commodore 64 added by B.L. Stryker. NES added by POMAH. ZX Spectrum added by Martin Smith. Antstream added by lights out party.

Additional contributors: Corn Popper, tbuteler, Martin Smith, Patrick Bregger.

Game added September 25, 1999. Last modified February 13, 2024.