Bad Dudes Review

Bad Dudes for the NES is a port of the Japanese arcade game of the same name. The game starts out with a fellow who looks a lot like Duke Nukem informing the player that the US President being kidnapped by ninjas and asking if the player is a "bad enough dude to rescue the president."Thus the player sets out to rescue the president from the ninjas. Frankly, I doubt that the guy assigning the mission was actually intended to look like Duke Nukem, but boy, he sure does. I got a good laugh the first time I played the game.

Bad Dudes is a fighting platformer that has gameplay somewhat similar to Double Dragon or Shinobi.Like Shinobi and Double Dragon, the player must fight enemies on multiple levels and use dropped power ups to recharge and fight.While this game does have a two player mode, it is not co-op like the original arcade version, but alternates between players instead. Like Shinobi numerous enemies, sometimes four at a time, come at the player, who must fend them off with jumps, kicks, punches and the occasional weapon power up.

Unfortunately, Bad Dudes has some problems with it that make it a lackluster game.First of all, the main character jerks across the screen with what looks like three frames of walking animation.This makes control seem sluggish. Enemies that come at the player have heavy flicker when they touch him which make them hard to see and interfere with the player character's animation as well.The result is a quick paced mess that gets a little hard on the eyes after a while.I suspect that a lot of this has to do with programing limitations due to the NES hardware which can only display so many sprites at one time (That includes background elements).With such limitations, to emulate the arcade's fast paced gameplay and numerous enemies, the addition of flicker was needed. Regardless, it's distracting and tiring on the eyes.

Because of that and the gameplay design, this game is pretty hard for the player who isn't entirely used to playing this type of game. It's fairly unforgiving in terms of gameplay and the player receives three lives to start out the game. I'm not terrible at platformers, but this took me a bit of work to get very many levels into it. It's a grueling and I'd say, not nearly as fun as the other two games I mentioned earlier.

On the other side of the coin, the musical tracks for Bad Dudes are unique and driving tunes that enhance the gameplay and move the game forward.

Bottom line, however, Bad Dudes is a mediocre title.Perhaps with better character animations and less flicker it wouldn't be quite as obnoxious to watch. Other titles such as Double Dragon are a bit more fun to boot.But really, how critical can a person be about a game published nearly 20 years ago?


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