River City Ransom for NES

River City Ransom is probably my fave all-time NES game. It is an extremely special game that should have been copied more by other games. It is a non-linear beat em' up with heavy RPG elements. Graphically, the game has a pretty nice art style. The characters are super deformed with big heads on squat little bodies. River City Ransom doesn't push the NES to the limits as later titles would, but the characters move smoothly and quickly. You can tell that certain characters are just palette swaps and some characters are exactly the same minus small variations in their heads, but the game still looks cool. The bottom of the screen is dedicated to dialogue, which not only happens when you encounter bosses, but also when you fight any enemy in the game or enter any store in the game. You will learn that you are beating enemies until they actually throw up, as indicated by the frequent mentions of "BARF!" 





The combat is fast yet easy to control. The Double Dragon series could learn more than just a thing or two from this game. The combat in this game WORKS and makes sense. A problem with the Double Dragon series is that bosses and enemies can be cheap because they have these additional abilities that are difficult to avoid and are unblockable. In River City Ransom, as your character gets stronger, your ability to break your enemy's block increases as well as your own ability to block enemy attacks. Also, you have the ability to upgrade your character to outfit them with additional moves.


Speaking of additional moves, there are very heavy RPG elements which add to the replay value of the game. You can choose to go to the shopping malls to buy candy, hamburgers, saunas, magazines, books, shoes, chicken, sushi, and anything you can really think of. The game makes you take note of the impact of these items, as you don't know what they do until you've used them. An item could upgrade any number of statistics. When you build your character up, you'll definitely notice it. 

 Super serious cover alert.

There are really only a couple downsides to the game. First of all, the password system is one of the worst. It is pretty ridiculous, not only being 30 characters, but also being letters, numbers, special characters, and even adding apostrophes to certain letters sometimes!

The game's ending is not very satisfying. There's only really a few lines of text and then the credits roll. However, one could make the argument that a game of this type has such a level of interactivity that the journey you take is what makes the game special. Not to mention that fact that many NES games have terrible, horrible endings.

Pick this game up as it is a gem on the system. Unfortunately, it is not as cheap as other games on the NES; I think I paid around 20 for mine. There really isn't much out there like it. If you have XBox Live Arcade, the Scott Pilgrim game is basically an updated version of River City Ransom, and it is a great deal of fun. If you have even the slightest desire to own an NES collection, this game belongs in it.