{"id":22139,"date":"2022-03-18T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2022-03-18T00:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=22139"},"modified":"2022-03-08T13:43:25","modified_gmt":"2022-03-08T13:43:25","slug":"river-city-girls-zero-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/18\/river-city-girls-zero-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"River City Girls Zero (Switch)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In Japan there is a popular series of games starring Kunio-kun<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 Kunio is a hot-blooded high school student who sometimes gets into fights and trouble, but he always stands up for his friends and against bullies.\u00a0 And when he\u2019s not doing that, he competes in sports.\u00a0 Some of these games were brought to the US under name and graphical changes, so if you\u2019ve ever played Renegade, River City Ransom, or Super Dodge Ball, you\u2019ve played a Kunio game and may not have even known it!\u00a0 A few years ago, game maker WayForward came out with River City Girls, a game that played like River City Ransom, but starred Kunio\u2019s and his pal Riki\u2019s girlfriends as they fought to save their guys!\u00a0 And now they\u2019ve ported over a River City Ransom sequel that came out on the Super Famicom but never in the US.\u00a0 In the game, Kunio and Riki have been framed and sent to prison, but they break out and team up with their girlfriends to fight the gang that caused all this.\u00a0 Supposedly this was the game that inspired WayForward to make River City Girls.\u00a0 Huh, that\u2019s interesting, I didn\u2019t even know that!\u00a0 Anyway, WayForward added an intro, cutscenes, and an English translation to the Super Famicom game and called it River City Girls Zero.\u00a0 It\u2019ll be available on more consoles later, but as of this writing, it\u2019s only available on Switch.<\/p>\n

River City Girls Zero plays like a side scrolling beat \u2018em up similar to other titles like Double Dragon (also made by the same folks).\u00a0 You can jump, punch, kick, and do a backwards kick if you get surrounded.\u00a0 You\u2019ll start out being able to switch between Kunio and Riki, but as you meet up with their girlfriends, you\u2019ll be able to play as them, too.\u00a0 You\u2019ll want to switch between characters before you run out of energy as one, because if you do, you\u2019ll get a Game Over and have to start over at the last checkpoint.\u00a0 You\u2019ll fight in places like a prison, crumbling high school, amusement park, night club, and more!\u00a0 You can do single player or two player co-op.<\/p>\n

WayForward and Arc Systems Works gussied this game up with a lot of special features and additions.\u00a0 There is a neat anime styled intro at the beginning with a funny Saturday morning style theme song playing alongside it.\u00a0 When you start the game, a fully voiced comic book intro explains the story of the game, with a lot of fourth wall breaking.\u00a0 Seems the girlfriends have found an old cartridge and video game system to play it on, and it turns out this game stars their boyfriends and them, so they decide to play it!\u00a0 And that\u2019s the story.\u00a0 Although I am a little mad at WayForward for making me feel old!\u00a0 You can also access a new menu anytime while playing to adjust the screen size, view a gallery, and save at any time.\u00a0 The game also has a password system so you can use that, too.\u00a0 The game is also fully translated in English, so WayForward and Arc Systems Works gets an A for effort.<\/p>\n

The game does have a few problems, but most just stem from the original game itself.\u00a0 There are two difficulty settings, but even on Easy the game is pretty tough.\u00a0 But the challenge comes from poor hit detection mostly.\u00a0 Players who may be expecting a game more like River City Ransom or River City Girls may be disappointed here, because there is no exploration in this game, nor do you buy healing items in shops and you can\u2019t even pick up weapons to use.\u00a0 It\u2019s more of a straight up brawler and akin to the original Kunio game Renegade.\u00a0 There are even some motorcycle stages like the NES version.<\/p>\n

They do a good job explaining the controls, but not explicit enough to explain things like how to grab onto ledges, which you need to do to climb the Ferris wheel in the amusement park stage.\u00a0 Turns out you have to press an attack button to do that.\u00a0 Also, the gallery has a scan of the printed instruction booklet, which is neat to see all the artwork.\u00a0 But it\u2019s all in Japanese.\u00a0 It\u2019s a minor quibble, but it would\u2019ve been nice if WayForward went the extra mile and translated it like the rest of the game.<\/p>\n

Even so, I\u2019m a huge Super Nintendo fan so I\u2019m always interested in playing 16-bit titles on it like this that never came out over here before.\u00a0 I certainly would\u2019ve at least rented it back in the day if it had come out in the US.\u00a0 In a way I can kind of see why it didn\u2019t come out over here, though.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good game, don\u2019t get me wrong, but it would\u2019ve had to compete with the glut of other 2-D sidescrolling beat \u2018em ups out at the time.\u00a0 So if you\u2019re a die-hard fan of Kunio-kun games and want something to tide you over until River City Girls 2 comes out (can\u2019t wait for that one), you may want to check this one out.\u00a0 Now if only we could get WayForward to make a new Super Dodge Ball game!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

River City Girls Zero is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Language.\u00a0 You do punch and kick bad guys that fall over and disappear and say \u201cArgh\u201d when defeated.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t notice any bad language in the game story text, but the intro song at the beginning of the game say that Kunio and Riki are \u2018hella pissed\u2019 so maybe that\u2019s the bad language to get the rating.\u00a0 But I grew up playing games like this and I think I turned out OK.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for some of the text, and younger gamers may find it too difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Japan there is a popular series of games starring Kunio-kun.\u00a0 Kunio is a hot-blooded high school student who sometimes gets into fights and trouble, but he always stands up for his friends and against bullies.\u00a0 And when he\u2019s not doing that, he competes in sports.\u00a0 Some of these games were brought to the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22139"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22141,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22139\/revisions\/22141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}