Renegade

The Good
I'm reviewing Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun, not the westernised Renegade. So you play the role of Kunio, high school student and street fighter. The opening strongly resembles Marian's capture at the start of Double Dragon, one of the gang members punching out a friend of the hero, backed up by gangmates, but in this game the friend is a red-headed schoolmate of Kunio and he isn't captured. Kunio runs after the attackers to avenge his friend and this happens at the start of every stage, each time a new gang attacking. I like the idea of the hero defending his friend, supposedly bullied because of his red hair, a change from "rescuing the girl".

So the game is clearly Technos practicing their idea of a street fighting, beat-'em-up game, which they would of course practice again the following year to great success with Double Dragon and again in 1990 with The Combatribes. Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun actually resembles The Combatribes more than Double Dragon in that the fighting is around an "arena" rather than while progressing rightward through a scene and in that you face a new gang in each stage, but it also resembles Double Dragon II in that the attack buttons perform either punch or back-kick, depending on the direction you're facing. So the overall idea of the game is good I think, it's fun having cartoonish, Japanese teenage gang fights.

The Bad
I found the difficulty a huge problem. When your life bar runs down and you're beaten, you have to start the stage again, but if you're too careful, you fall afoul of the strict two-minute time limit and have to start again. So I think the game too quickly demands too much speed and accuracy. Another issue is that you can't jump towards an enemy and hence can't launch a flying kick towards them, you can only perform a stationary, "defensive flying kick".

The Bottom Line
Fun, but needs to be hacked so that you have more time to complete each stage ;)

The Good
As a fighting game, Renegade for me ticks pretty much every box needed to be a great one, in fact it stands out as one of the finest fighting games on the Spectrum.

It's a conversion of an arcade game by Technos which was much more popular in Japan. The arcade game was a bit of a confusing mess control wise, thankfully however the controls are much simple here and are quite effective.

The graphics are nice and up to the usual Spectrum standards. The character sprites and the level designs are very well designed and replicates the arcade game well. The music is really good and sets up a good atmosphere...unless if you bought the Hit-Squad budget release like me where the music was removed...bah!

The Bad
There's not a whole lot wrong with this game actually, but one thing rather bothering is that the controls, though much easier to manage than the arcade game, still have a habit of turning on you. Sometimes when you go for your jumping kick, he doesn't, leaving you a sitting duck to get hit when you land, especially in level four where you die with one hit.

Also, some of the graphics prove to be too complex for the humble Speccy, for instance level three's boss Big Bertha looks less like a big, angry woman and more like a badly designed robot with a bad case of depression...probably realises her fate.

The Bottom Line
Renegade is an excellent arcade conversion and so much better than the arcade version. Well worth a look.