Future Classic: River City Girls
Robert Zak explains while you’ll be returning to this excellent brawler in years to come
Of all the old-school genres to have enjoyed a renaissance, arcadestyle beat-’em-ups have proven most resistant to change. These often still feel like they’re from an era of arcade cabinets with built-in ashtrays. River City Girls is mostly overlooked, but it’s one of the best of them
THE BACKGROUND
River City Girls is the latest in a procession of sequels and spin-offs to the 1989 NES beat-’em-up River City Ransom, and the most successful breakaway from the 8-bit stumpy art style that was the Kunio-kun series’ calling card for so many years. River City Ransom was a game ahead of its time, with non-linear exploration and RPG elements woven through all the fisticuffs. By going for 32-bit-inspired pixel art and layering the game’s prescient systems with brash characters and personality, River City Girls revitalises the series for the modern day.
The game still follows the deliberately anachronistic conventions of the genre – the moonwalk glides up and down the screen to avoid enemy attacks, the suplexes, the improvised punch-kick combos to stunlock your enemies. Such staid mechanics are no doubt one of the reasons why beat-’em-ups have retreated from their prime position in Nineties arcades and 16-bit consoles into a niche today. But it’s also precisely that rhythmic familiarity that draws us devout fans to this largely forgotten corner of gaming. There’s also the fact that these games remain one of the best ways to couch co-op with a friend, which River City Girls’ feisty heroines and their dynamite dynamic cater for with style.
THE GAME
The chaotic good driving forces behind the game are Kyoko and Misako, who are searching the titular city for their kidnapped boyfriends – and series’ usual frontmen – Riki and Kunio. They’re a compelling pair, with Kyoko’s ditsy cutesiness bouncing effortlessly off Misako’s brusque tomboy charms during their encounters with the city’s colourful denizens (which usually end in a scrap instigated by our love-crazed heroines).
Each run-in with a school friend or boss, each visit to a shop or dojo, is something to look forward to – a flamboyant encounter written with the goofy comedic panache of a great anime series. The bin-dwelling Godai and eccentric emo boss Yamada are standouts, but really every bit of dialogue and accompanying hand-drawn anime characters are something to relish rather than skip past (and how many other beat-’emups can you really say that about?). Naturally, you spend most of the game fighting your way through
the rowdy streets of River City, exploring its distinct areas with the help of a map and pummelling (almost) everyone in sight using a repertoire of combos that expands as you spend your hard-fought money.
You have a choice about which moves to buy, and perishable foods that you purchase in shops have the added benefit of permanently boosting stats. As with the original game, it’s not the most transparent upgrade system, but still gives you some welcome agency over your character, which is amplified by the girls’ visually distinct movesets.
The combos and other power moves you pick up along the way are marginally more complex than in your average beat-’em-up, but there’s no pressure to memorise all of them, as improvised chains of kicks and punches, as well as an assortment of swingable and throwable weapons can be effectively combined to stunlock your enemies into oblivion (though with the high density of enemies on-screen, you need to keep doing that elusive up-down moonwalk to ensure they don’t do the same to you).
Your fist-swinging, high-kicking romp through River City is punctuated by a punchy soundtrack, which includes some dreamy vocal tracks by synthwave singer Megan Mcduffee. Inevitably, all these stylistic flourishes mean that the game doesn’t look or sound like the original River City Ransom or its rudimentary followups, but acts as a gleaming tribute to it. It’s appropriate that this is the first mainline series game to omit the ‘Ransom’ from the title, because River City Girls breaks aways from its series’ rigid stylings to create something that feels true to the past but presents like a modern game whose developers had a lot of fun making it.
There’s definitely something to be said for Japanese publisher Arc System Works handing development over to Wayforward, an American studio with a track record of forward-thinking pixel-based games (Shantae series) and collaborating with Japanese studios looking to tap into the indie scene (Bloodstained: Ritual Of
The Night). While recent River City games developed in-house have tried to capitalise on popular trends like battle royales and party game mashups, the entries outsourced to Western studios have given new angles on the series’ seminal origins. River City Girls feels fresh, like it’s been made by talented fans rather than publishers trying to cash in on a tiring IP.
WHY IT’S A FUTURE CLASSIC River City Girls parodies arcade beat-’em-ups and celebrates them at the same time. Does it move the genre forward? Not really, but then this is a genre that thrives on its connection with the past, taking us back to a certain time and place through the comforts of modern design ideas. Not that River City Girls is stuck in the past – it solidifies the series’ best ideas, polishes the mechanics and imbues River City with a personality and vibrancy that it’s long needed.
It’s great to hear that Wayforward looks like it’s going to run with the River City IP for a few games, because in its hands – and with this fresh pair of female leads – the series can be revived. River City Girls is a shining example of how to make a forgotten franchise relevant again: identify what makes the series great, don’t be ensnared by the weaker trappings of the past, and (in the absence of one in the first place) don’t be afraid to flip the script.
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