Game Over: River City Ransom

I’ve got a confession to make: I’ve never really liked beat ‘em ups before. Sure, when I was a youngin’, I really got into this one Power Rangers game on my family’s SNES, but I was never good at it. I only managed to beat the first boss on a whim this past year and I didn’t manage to get much further then. I’ve made it through a few others since then through liberal usage of save states, but they just didn’t spark joy for me; I never got into the rhythm necessary to consistently beat down on my opponents and avoid damage in return and thus the harder enemies quickly chewed me up and spat me out.

Not so with my new favourite NES title and the first beat ‘em up to feel genuinely great to me: River City Ransom. Developed by Technōs Japan and originally released in Japan in 1989 (though I experienced the North American localisation released in 1990), this third game in the long-running Kunio-kun series is sort of an open-world title, where you can walk around from street to street like a real city. You can also get attacked by roving gang members (changed from rivalling schools’ students in the original release), but never fear, because you can punch and kick them right back, earning a bit of coin for your trouble. Then you can go to shops and exchange that money for healing items, new equipable gear like boots, brand new techniques to use, and other stat-boosting items. You can also get a cute smile for free, featuring a waitress turning to the camera and grinning before your own character blushes. Is that a little weird? Sure, but it’s also fun and a cute inclusion that helps to give River City Ransom a lot of character.

That character is further supported by the various boss fights you can find around the city. Each one is on its own screen, some nestled away in a side path, and some on roads right outside of a city. When you approach them, text pops on the screen with some boastful dialogue, and once they’re defeated, they instead moan and complain about their losses. Each set of dialogue is unique and fun, and then they get new dialogue whenever you head back to their arena for another match. It’s very funny to see these tough guys be all like “How could I lose again?!” and such. The best part, though, is how these tough guys find their dialogue to be of paramount importance even though it doesn’t take place in a cutscene. You are freely able to move and sucker punch every one of these bosses while they’re still talking, resulting in some very cheesy combos.

As funny as these details can be, however, the main aspect of River City Ransom that kept me engaged was the character building. As stated, you can save up money to go to town and boost your stats or learn new moves. Sure, it’s sometimes a tad grindy to build up enough money to get the best equipment, but the colourful areas and talkative boss fights make it a pleasant gameplay loop, and the new moves make the gameplay fresh and interesting, while the stat boosts help make the tougher enemies more manageable. New locations have better gear as well, so there’s never really a moment where it feels like your best bet is to just do nothing but grind and buy the same few things.

Overall, I wound up with a more fun and manageable experience than any other beat ‘em up I’ve given a chance, which is incredibly impressive because I’ve been going through the NES’s library and most titles have been a bit too clunky or simple for my tastes. It feels very nice to be proven wrong by seeing such an unambiguously incredible game on the platform. Sure, I played it through an emulator with Nintendo Switch Online and that means I absolutely used and abused the rewind feature to get through the tougher moments, but nowhere near the extent I had to use it on other NES titles. River City Ransom is a beat ‘em up I could genuinely sink my teeth into and I am excited to try more in the series.