Retro Review: “River City Ransom” NES
- Scott
- Mar 8, 2019
- 2 min read
One of the easiest original Nintendo games for me personally to fall back into time and time again.
River City Ransom. This is one of those games that I played over and over again, never really caring about how short it is (or how short you could make it). I remember playing this one with a friend A LOT over the course of about a day and a half. I don’t think it was even a continuous play, I think we played it, stopped then played more starting from the beginning.
This game was memorable for a huge list of small quirks that just made it so much fun, for instance, the fact that the main characters were Alex and Ryan, pretty simple boring everyday names. Also, the “story” revolved around you getting through River City then defeating the man behind the take over of River City High School named Slick. In defeating Slick you also rescued Ryan’s girlfriend Cyndi. That was pretty much the entire plot.
This game also managed to hide the fact that it was a beat-em-up wrapped around an RPG. Inside the various stores, you were able to purchase food, books, and other accessories. Food ranged from egg rolls to pizza, and the books had titles like “Stone Hands” and “Dragon Feet”. Buying books and sometimes different foods would boost your stats, as well as giving you a permanent upgrade to your attacks and defense.
Also, this game was just a huge time sink if you wanted it to be. I can remember playing for hours on end just taking one player with a stick and one with a rock and just playing stickball in the game. Probably now what the developers had in mind with those two weapons but, I am sure I am not alone in using them for that purpose.
The interaction between the enemies and heroes was pretty good too; I can’t remember any specific lines of dialogue. However, I do remember that the names of the gangs were hilarious. You had the “Generic Dudes” the “Frat Boys”, and more specifically you had guys named “Moose” that you fought against. Oh and sometimes when they died, if they didn’t run away, they would say things like “Barf!”. Hilarious!
I can hear this screenshot.
The music also has a way of working its way into my head from time to time. So much so that I actually took the music from the store interior and made it my ring tone on my cell phone.
Like with the previous games I have listed in this section of my blog, I would love to see another more updated version. Again, however, I don’t want some slapped together shadow of a game. If they can’t make one worth the time of the fans of the original, don’t bother. I am happy just playing the Virtual Console version of the NES cart for the time being.
*Originally posted on some terrible blog of mine 10+ years ago.
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