Episode 22 of the reborn Retronauts podcast was posted over the weekend, which I guest starred on! We spend a good hour and a half or so trying to wade through the massive lineage of Kunio games, beginning with the brawlers (the sub-average Renegade, the cult classic River City Ransom to its various sequels/spinoffs) through the xtreme-ish sports games (beginning with the rad but sluggish Super Dodgeball, and eventually branching out to most other major sports, including the silly USA-based basketball game, Ganbare Dunk Heroes.) There are a few things I wanted to note, partially because we ran out of time, and partially because the Kunio article on the site needs a bit of updating, so consider this an addendum to both:
-I think I quoted the name of the Japanese gangs as "bousouzuka" when it's actually "bousouzoku". Whenever I get around to revamping the Kunio article I want to include a quick dictionary of some of the terms related to this subculture.
-All versions of Renegade are awful, but the Euro-exclusive, Natsume-developed Sega Master System port is the least awful. Maybe the upcoming 3DS remake will be better, but it sounds ridiculously thin given that it's a retail release.
-Here is a picture of the referenced title screen for Renegade III:
Yes, it is awful. Here's a longplay to show you why.
-And here is a picture of Nijiiro Dodge Ball: Otome Tachi no Seishun:
As you can see, it's more or less identical to the Kunio dodgeball games, but with an all girl squad.
On an unrelated note, www.hardcoregaming101.net seems to be busted and I don't know why...I'm assuming it's something with the domain registrar. In the meantime, the direct URL, http://hg101.kontek.net will work OK. Same deal with the Castlevania Dungeon - http://castlevania.kontek.net is good to go. What an excellent day for Go Daddy to screw up, right on the 25th anniversary of the series. In fact, hopefully you can view this post through somewhere that isn't just a news reader. I guess we'll see!
UPDATE: Turns out my ISP is having issues with DNS forwarding, or something like that. So if you have Optimum Online like I do you may have issues, otherwise it's business as usual!
Odd, "hardcoregaming101.net" (without the "www.") seems to work fine, it's what I used to access this blog.
ReplyDeleteDomain seems to work again/here.
ReplyDeleteMany Brits love Renegade, for some baffling/annoying reason. Must be a leftover from the days of the 8-bit Micros.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand all of the hate for Renegade. Sure, every single home port is terrible, but I love the arcade game. At least, Kunio-kun. I haven't played the US/World releases much, so maybe they made some stupid changes? I mean, it's basically a single-player Double Dragon without the scrolling, but with more moves. Admittedly, it's not as good as Double Dragon, but why should it be? It's a year older.
ReplyDeleteOh hey, Nijiiro Dodge Ball. I briefly tried that two or three years ago; looked like fun. Didn't get too deep into it, though; the sim-elements would probably require some work to understand the system behind it.
ReplyDeleteI remember writing the Kunio-kun article decades ago, at least half of it. I was pretty immature since then and didn't gather all the information I could, I didn't even know Japanese, but by playing the Kunio-kun games I learned to read the hiragana table at least. I am currently working on a more thorough version, though there are games I still cannot play and I don't know if I will be able to provide the information to the site again. Maybe I'll ask for help and have someone assist me to make things faster. Currently I am working on Renegade an Super Dodge Ball.
ReplyDeleteAnd I am sorry for saying that Renegade sucked. I didn't play it for too long back in the day and since now I want to get a lot of info about it I am playing it a lot. I want to map out the maze of the NES game on all difficulties too. Finally, I'd like to make a character section. River City Sports Challenge All Stars Special seems to cover the characters well.
I want to thank Kurt for giving me the chance to work on the article all those years ago, I plan to make it better as some sort of personal redemption project, then put it on the site if someone else has yet to work on it. Anyone who wants to help can direct me somewhere or post in here.