River City Girls Zero Review

River City Girls Zero, the fourth entry in the Kunio-kun series, was originally released as Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-Tachi no Banka exclusively in Japan for the Super Famicom way back in 1994. The Kunio-kun series not only includes beat’em ups but also covers sports games such as soccer with similar character designs. So how does this game hold up almost 30 years later?

River City Girls Zero tells the story of Kunio and Riki who end up framed and convicted of a hit and run and end up imprisoned in a juvenile correction facility. After being imprisoned, Kunio’s friend Hiroshi tells them of suspicious events transpiring in and around Nekketsu High School caused by a boy resembling Kunio. Upon learning this, Kunio and Riki escape the correction facility in order to clear their names.

River City Girls Zero is a typical, pretty straightforward 2D 16-bits beat’em up where players go from point A to point B, beating up everyone in your path and then facing off with a boss before moving on to the next level. As you progress through the game, you’ll find new pals to join your fight. Playing solo, you start as Kunio and then Riki joins you; then both of their girlfriends, Misako and Kyoko, also become playable. When playing solo, you can switch at any time between all 4 characters. So if someone is low on health, you have 3 more to rely on. When playing 2 players, the 2nd player is Riki and you can switch to the ladies.

Given its age, the combat is pretty simple and straightforward. You can punch, run, kick, block, grab and jump. And obviously do jump kicks. Also to mix up the gameplay a bit, the developers included motorcycle levels where you ride around the highways at high speeds trying to not die and kick incoming enemies. Be careful as enemies can also bump into and attack you. It’s a bit counter-intuitive given that the gas and brake buttons are mapped to face buttons instead of triggers.

And as you’d expect, this game wasn’t perfect back then and it’s still not. The first issue is the boss battles. Given the limited combat options, bosses are as cheap as you can expect by interrupting your attacks and sometimes not even leaving you a single chance to land an attack making bosses more frustrating than anything else. Also the Amusement park level is quite some lazy level of design; especially having to fight in the Ferris Wheel section. The motorcycle levels are also annoying as there’s no margin for error. Hit the wall once and it’s game over. Some of those turns come pretty fast so if you were just trying to get close to an enemy to kick him, chances are you’ll ramp straight into the wall.

While the game might have had a great visual presentation back in the day, River City Girls Zero looks OK by today’s standard. While yes the game is a 16-bit 2D beat’em up, some more recent 16-bit style games (hell even 8-bits one) look much better. But the game is colorful with a decent variety of levels. The game also makes use of the then-innovative Mode 7 (in its motorcycle levels) made famous by Star Fox on the Super NES/Super Famicom. The soundtrack is boring and generic, although WayForward called upon the fantastic Megan McDuffee, along with DEMONDICE, to create a few new tunes for this re-release. As with the River City Girls soundtrack, the new tracks are bangers

While I’m happy that River City Girls Zero finally made it out officially out of Japan, unfortunately, this game will only apply to fans of the River City series or die-hard fans of the genre who must play every beat’em up known to man. The game shows its age with the graphics, cheap boss battles, annoying motorcycle areas, and limited offense. However, the game is easy to pick up and being able to control four characters when playing solo is an interesting mechanic. It’s a mix of fun and annoyance and newcomers to the genre should pick up River City Girls as we patiently wait for the sequel.