By ZZZ
Practically everybody remembers Konami's licensed beat-em-ups, but few are even aware that they made five games with completely original themes. Metamorphic Force has four characters that could change into anthropomorphic animals, and was similar to their licensed games in both gameplay and quality. Second is Gaiapolis, which is by far their most original beat-em-up, with its sort-of-isometric perspective and RPG elements. The other three are part of a series called "Crime Fighters".
Most of Konami's entires in the beat-em-up genre, especially their licensed games, simplified their gameplay even more than Final Fight did, and play more like Sega's Golden Axe than anything else. They generally lack any extra weapons or fancy combos, instead just giving players a basic attack, a jump attack, and a powerful move that drains a portion of your health meter. A few of them have other methods of attacking - like team-up attacks in Simpsons, or the ability to attack downed opponents in Metamorphic Force - but for the most part, Konami always preferred to go with hack-and-slash-style simplicity. The original Crime Fighters is about as complex as the first two Final Fights, and the other two games are by far the most indepth beat-em-ups that Konami ever made.
There haven't been any ports of any installment in the trilogy, so you'll almost definitely have to fire up MAME to play any of these games. It's well worth you time - the first game is best forgotten, but the other two are fantastic on variety of levels.
Crime Fighters
Vendetta
Vendetta
Crime Fighters - Arcade (1989)
So it's obviously off to a promising start. Beat the crap out of a horrible villain deserving only the title of Fat Toad, and... what the hell - enforce vigilante-style justice while you're at it. Disappointingly, it's all downhill from there.
Given that Crime Fighters was released the same year as Final Fight, it's possible that it was at least partially in development when Capcom's game was released. Konami took a few obvious inspirations from the Double Dragon series and made a game with movesets a bit more extensive than Final Fight's. Crime Fighters has your standard two button arcade cabinet - the first button punches, the second button kicks. In a nod to Double Dragon 2, you can kick backward by pushing the kick button if there is an enemy standing directly behind your character. What this means, however, is that there isn't a button for jumping. To make up for this somewhat, you can execute a jumping knee attack by pushing Punch and Kick at once, or perform a jump kick by pushing both Punch and Kick together with Left or Right on the joystick. Taking even more inspiration from Technos' beat-em-ups, you also have the ability to attack downed opponents by pushing kick while standing over them.
You can't really grapple in a conventional sense, but if you repeatedly punch an enemy, your character may throw them. Whereas, if you repeatedly kick an enemy ,your character will grab them, knee them in the face twice, and then either kick them or knee them in the groin, followed by them hopping away in pain. Like in Johnny Cage's split punch in Mortal Kombat, you can't perform this attack against female opponents - in fact, you can't even grab female opponents - but it strangely doesn't work against larger male opponents either. There are three kinds of weapons in total: a knife, a gun, and the most cliched beat-em-up weapon of all, a lead pipe. Knives and pipes can be found on nearly every stage, but guns are much rarer. The only problem is that your weapon disappears immediately when you're hit, which is certainly a questionable design decision. If you have a gun, you can shoot downed opponents if you are standing near them - which is freaking awesome - but they can attack while getting up, so it's very risky.
This all seems pretty promising so far - decent sized movesets, weapons, and four player co-operative play - but it just doesn't control well, at all. The physics, the hit detection, and the overall feel of the game are noticeably poor. Worst of them all is the hit detection, which the game doesn't seem to be capable of making up its mind about. It will often look like you should be hitting your opponent when you aren't, or it'll be the exact opposite, and you'll hit them from distances where the sprites don't seem to actually be making contact. Enemies don't seem to have this same problem, so it's virtually impossible to avoid getting hit. The bosses are especially difficult, and the hit detection seems even weirder against them. Despite the size of the movesets, the game is as horribly repetitive as even the worst examples of the genre, and will quickly become a chore.
As much as there is wrong with Crime Fighters at a technical level, these problems don't begin to describe how horrible the game they make for is. Imagine a beat-em-up where it takes longer to get past a wave of enemies than it takes to get past entire levels in Final Fight. Or where it takes that long to get past individual enemies. Or where you get knocked down five times before you can escape and do anything at all. Or where kicking is too slow to get a hit in before you get hit yourself, thus rendering the move virtually worthless. Crime Fighters is just that bad. I was sore from mashing punch for a good hour and a half, and it took me well over seventy credits to finish this piece of trash. Crime Fighters is inarguably both the worst beat-em-up ever made. It also has inarguably the most annoying enemy in video game history - a kung fu guy who is virtually impossible to hit and will takes ages to defeat. Congratulations, Konami, you assholes.
Crime Fighters' presentation doesn't exactly make things any better. Its music is best described as generic, and its graphics are just ugly. A few bosses are based on horror movie villains, but that's not nearly enough to make it an interesting looking game. Given the excellent presentation of Final Fight, which was setting the arcades on fire at the time, it's doubtful that this game really stood out visually. Its graphics have a gritty look to them, but completely lack the Fist of the North Star-inspired aesthetic that made Double Dragon's grit so interesting.
The only saving grace to its presentation is the slapstick, lightly bawdy humor that Konami's designers injected into the game. For example, in the first level, if the giant, and rather risque for 1989, billboard falls on your characters, they will get squashed and waddle away before reverting to their original form. In the second level, all of the women depicted on the posters in the train are animated, and among them is a women who reveals a portion of her ass - though only in the Japanese version. There are vehicles that will squash your character into a pancake if they are run over, and billboards that will electrocute them. If you go near the poster in level six that shows huge lips your character will get licked by it - though, again, only in the Japanese version. Level seven begins outside an abandoned building, where you'll find a homeless man scratching their ass while another takes a swig from a beer bottle. In level eight, there are boxes that can fall on your character and leave them squashed, like with the billboard in the first level.
The third level has the most complicated of these animations by far, but it's also the most entertaining. After you get to the dance club at the end of level three, you'll be able to see a woman through the window of a door. If your character gets too close to the door, they'll move over to it and gawk at her. She will look the other way when she notices that she's being ogled, and a man will walk to the door and shove it open, squashing your character behind it. After it closes, your character will be shown pancaked against the wall, before dripping down into a puddle on the pavement. In a final bit of humor/complete insanity, after you beat the game, you get inarguably the greatest ending in video game history - your character is shown with all the women that were kidnapped and he says "Sorry for keeping you waiting, girls. Do you mind being kidnapped again... by me!?". I swear, I'm not making this up.
Also, there's an extra level after you finish the game where you fight each boss, but it's probably even worse than the rest of the game. Lastly, if you beat the game twice consecutively, it will give you infinite credits. Pretty interesting, but more or less worthless given how long, and how much money that would take.
Given that Konami never ported several of their massively popular beat-em-ups, it's not exactly a surprise that this got left in the arcades. We aren't exactly missing out on anything, so no big deal. It's really a disappointment that its gameplay just doesn't stand up on any level, because the whole "Benny Hill Beat Down" thing that Konami was going for is genuinely novel.
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters
Crime Fighters
Vendetta / Crime Fighters 2 - Arcade (1991)
Vendetta can be played by up to four players. Each of the game's four characters - Blood, Hawk, Boomer, and Sledge - are assigned to a specific controller, so you can't change characters without inserting a credit into a different slot. Sledge has Mr T.'s hair stylings (facial hair included), and Hawk is pretty much Hulk Hogan in sprite art form. I've seen Boomer compared to Jean Claude Van Damme, but that's only fair in that he's a blond martial artist who kicks a lot. Blood is probably based on Mike Tyson. These four guys make up a gang called the Cobras, but they hardly look intimidating. The Final Fight knock-off plot is that their rivals, the Dead End Gang, have kidnapped Hawk's sister. These guys obviously never saw Suburban Commando. As would be expected, Hawkamania ran wild on the Dead End Gang, and brought his Hawkamaniacs (ie. the other three guys) with him. Yes, the Cobras have only four members, but that's all they need - one leg drop and the Dead End Gang is finished. Oh, and its intro is even better than Crime Fighters'...
The movesets are similar to those from Crime Fighters, but they've been expanded, and benefit from greatly improved controls and physics. You still have only two attack buttons, with the first executing punches, and the second for kicks. Pushing both buttons with the joystick in neutral will perform a strong attack, and both buttons at once with the joystick to the left or right will execute a jumping attack. You can also perform a quick backward attack by pushing kick and moving the joystick backward at once. Attacking downed opponents is again possible, and is performed by pushing kick while above them. You still can't jump - which will always seem odd if you've played your share of beat-em-ups - but Vendetta plays so great and controls so well that it's no big deal.
Enemies can be grabbed this time, and you can knee them while grappling by pushing Kick, or throw them by holding the joystick in either direction and pushing Punch. Falls can be recovered from quicker by shaking the joystick while your character is downed, and you can attack while on the ground by pushing either attack button. With multiple players, it's possible to put your opponent in a hold by pushing Forward and Punch while standing directly behind them. This doesn't do anything by itself, other than immobilizing them, but with another player, they can pummel away without any chance of them fighting back. However, this leaves the character doing the holding vulnerable. While the move commands are identical for every character, most commands will actually perform a different move depending on who you're playing as, though they always have the same basic effect. There are slightly different levels of speed and strength for their moves as well, so certain characters might be better in certain scenarios than others, especially against bosses.
Beat-em-ups like "Battle Circuit" and "Shin Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun - Kunio Tachi No Banka" prove that you can make a masterpiece beat-em-up without any weapons at all. Vendetta takes the exact opposite approach - the weapons practically make the game. The variation in, and amount of, weapons is possibly the highest for any beat-em-up ever made. There are weapons everywhere, and virtually anything that isn't part of the background or nailed to the floor can be made into a weapon. You can blast away at foes with a shotgun, whip them with a chain, set them ablaze with a molotov cocktail, send them flying face first into the background with a baseball bat, break a beer bottle over their head - and that's less than half the available weapons. There aren't any crappy weapons either - it's ALWAYS beneficial to immediately go for a weapon when you find it, as they all work even better than your standard moves. Like in a bazillion other beat-em-ups made after Final Fight, you can find food in crates to replenish your health, but here they double as a weapon and can be hurled at enemies. Moreover, each character strikes with slightly different speed and range when wielding the same weapon - a rarity for the genre - though the actual attacks are still the same kind.
Konami didn't slack off when it came to animating the game, either. It's much smoother than most other beat-em-ups, and every weapon has its own attacking animation. What really makes the presentation of Vendetta so fantastic is the "barfight brawl" sense that it creates - most of which comes from its excessive, goofy, over-the-top animations. There are quite a few different ways to wreak havoc, and many different enemy and background animations that you can trigger. You can knock foes off a bridge, and as they dangle on the edge, punch them in the face to send them plummeting downward. You can break certain platforms that enemies are standing on (the game will point them out to you) and make them tumble to the ground. Your opponents can even occasionally break glass in the background if they are knocked into it, and they'll cough up blood after they get back up from many of your attacks. It's all more Three Stooges than Bruce Lee, and gives the game a refreshing sense of humor that's quite rare in the genre.
The music ranges from relaxed to energetic, and is pretty good for what it is. The audio effects are interesting ,to say the least - a brick to the face will produce a gruesomely painful noise, but when your character gets beat down they will scream like a castrato on helium (no joke). An odd mix, that's for certain, but it's perfect for the game's violent slapstick humor.
There is slight censorship in the versions released outside Japan. Specifically, an enemy that wears sparse leather clothing and dry humps the playable characters (think of this as a prototype to the infamous Japanese quasi-celebrity Hard Gay) which was removed in other versions. Additionally, certain versions of Vendetta allow for only two players, but allow you to choose your character and change characters after continuing. Like the rest of the Crime Fighters series, this has never been ported. It's a damn shame, too - everyone at the time was hoping for ports of Konami's more popular beat-em-ups like X-Men, but I would take this over those games any day.
Vendetta
Vendetta
Vendetta
Vendetta
Vendetta
Vendetta
Vendetta
Crime Fighters 2
Violent Storm - Arcade (1993)
There are only three characters, with up to three players at the same time, depending on the tpe of machine. Wade is the balanced guy, Boris is the tank, and Kyle is the high-speed-low-power fighter. Their friend, Sheena, has been kidnapped by the Geld Gang, which, naturally, is led by a guy named Geld. So these three vigilantes have to go rescue Sheena. It does, however, have a gloriously ludicrous intro where all three heroes drive through a giant metal gate at full speed and blow the gate to bits, which merely causes cosmetic damage to their car.
Your movesets are quite different from either of the two previous games - they're more like a more expansive version of the movesets from the first two Final Fight games. Like that series, you have a lone attack button, and a second button for jumping. There are four different aerial attacks, depending on the direction you're jumping. It's possible to hit foes behind you by pushing attack and backward at once, which is quicker than merely facing the other direction. Pushing Jump and moving the joystick to the Down-Forward position at once will execute a dashing attack, which Kyle can follow up with another move by pushing Attack while holding Up. If you push Down on the joystick and Attack at once, you'll perform a low strike that can hit downed opponents. It's also possible to wall jump, like Chun-Li in the Street Fighter games, by jumping at a wall, pushing the joystick toward it, and pushing Jump again.
Each character has their own special as well. Wade can perform an uppercut by pushing Up and Attack at once. Kyle has a rapid kicking move that's identical to Chun-Li's, and is performed by rapidly tapping Attack. Each character also has a Final Fight-style move that's performed by pushing both buttons at once, which will cause massive damage to foes at the expense of a bit of your own health. In another nod to Street Fighter, each of these high powered health draining moves is identical to specials from SFII. Every character can grapple opponents from the front or from the back, and either attack them while grappling, or throw them either direction. Both of Boris' special attacks are throws - after he grabs an enemy, he can also slam them into the ground by pushing Up and Attack at once, slam them over his knee by jumping straight up and pushing Attack, or execute a piledriver by pushing Attack after jumping to the left or right.
There are still weapons in Violent Storm, but there are only a few of them, and they're nowhere near as plentiful. As far as conventional weapons go, other than your standard lead pipe, you've also got a knives, barrels, jugs, potted plants, and chairs as well. The only other weapon is the best of them all by far - a football. After you throw this at an enemy, it will awkwardly bounce around in a manner similar to a real football, and you have to wait for it to come to a rest before you can throw it again. In the train level, there's a group of piglets that can be grabbed, which will make them change into footballs (!!!). A few bits or pieces of the terrain can be destroyed, but not in any way that effects enemies. It's a good thing that Violent Storm has good sized movesets and great gameplay, because it's a bit of a disappointment to have so few weapons after Vendetta's extensive selection.
Violent Storm has been given a total graphical overhaul that's even more severe than the change from Crime Fighters to Vendetta. Its graphics kind of resemble Final Fight drawn with the style of Konami's TMNT: Turtles in Time arcade game. The sprites are absolutely gigantic - probably at least as big as in any beat-em-up - but every character in the game is dressed in the most ridiculous wardrobe you have ever seen. I'm talking "Road House: Beyond Thunderdome" kind of silliness. They look that goofy.
However, the downside is that Konami opted to lose the "Three Stooges Knuckle Up" approach that made Vendetta's havoc so memorable. A few of the ways that you can acquire health items are pretty creative. If you knock an enemy off a pier into the water, the resulting splash will send a fish flying, which can then be consumed. You can also knock fruit out of a tree and take pizza from a character in the background. The best enemies in the game are hobos that blow themselves up with their own bombs, and a boss that looks like a Ninja Turtle. There's a section where these giant metal things move from the ceiling to the floor and can squash enemies that they hit. The best detail in the entire game by far, however, are the two arcade cabinets for Scramble and a fictional game starring Penta the penguin from Antarctic Adventure. To make it even cooler, you can destroy both machines. It's also a bit gorier than the others, and there are almost Mortal Kombat sized splashes of blood that occasionally follow attacks.
Like the first two Crime Fighters installments, Violent Sstorm has never been ported. Despite this, it's a fine end to Konami's extremely obscure series.. The original Crime Fighters might only be noteworthy for its humor, but Vendetta and Violent Storm easily rank among the better beat-em-ups out there.
Violent Storm
Violent Storm
Violent Storm
Violent Storm
Violent Storm
Violent Storm
As far as beat-em-ups go, there are only four developers that really cranked out a number of decent ones. Capcom and Technos are kind of like the "big two" of the genre, with Technos having developed Double Dragon and the Nekketsu High School beat-em-ups, and Capcom having been responsible for Final Fight and craploads of other games. Then there's Sega, who made Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, and a handful of totally irrelevant beat-em-ups like Alien Storm. And then there's Konami. In fact, Konami was actually the second biggest name in the genre in the arcades in the early 1990's, after Technos had mostly moved their focus to consoles. Konami combined solid game design with popular licenses, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or X-Men, into games that allowed as much as six players at once on the same machine. The end results were a few big hits in the arcades, and a few popular ports and originals for consoles.
American Flyer
Japanese Flyer
Crime Fighters
Humorous Moments
Crime Fighters was released in the arcades by Konami in 1989 - the same year as Final Fight, as well as their infinitely more popular arcade beat-em-up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Like that game, you can play with up to four players at once, with each player controlling a palette swapped character, while you set out through the game's eight levels moving right and kicking ass. Crime Fighters sticks to the time tested late 1980's post-Super Mario Bros. video game plot of "female gets kidnapped, playable character(s) have to save her". Except Crime Fighters cranks it up to 11 and makes it a whole harem of ladies, as its gloriously awesome intro explains...
American Flyer
European Flyer
Vendetta
Crime Fighters wasn't exactly a huge hit in the arcades, but somebody at Konami decided it was worth revisiting anyway. They obviously realized that the original is a complete piece of trash, because they completely reinvented absolutely everything for its sequel, Vendetta (Crime Fighters 2 in Japan). It's a damn good thing they did, too, because Vendetta is easily among the better beat-em-ups out there, and is arguably Konami's best game in the genre by far.
American Flyer
Violent Storm
Violent Storm
The final installment of Konami's Crime Fighters series is a bit of a step down from its predecessor, but it's still a pretty great game. Yet again, the series has been completely reinvented - this time much more so than before. Violent Storm leaves behind its prequels' inspirations from Double Dragon, and is a blatant Final Fight clone on every level.
