Bad Dudes

The Good
Bright and breezy gameplay. Lots of dudes to kick.

The Bad
A relatively short experience.

The Bottom Line
It's very good. Play It.

The Good
At the time when it came out for the NES, I must have been about nine or ten. I was just glad to see it come out for my Nintendo. I'd moved away from the city and couldn't get to the pool hall anymore. The graphics were okay (for their day) and the same goes for the sound. There is even some audio saying: "I'm Bad." But it's poor quality, even for back then. I had fun playing it, despite what it lacks compared to its arcade predecessor.

The Bad
The movement of the enemy, along with the controls in general. It's easy to get killed, because it's choppy. The NES version is also not two players simultaneous, where the arcade is. You also get three lives and that's it.

The Bottom Line
II remember this game. I first played it in 1987: in the arcade, I think it was around that time. It seems like a long time ago now.

I used to live down the street from a pool hall called: The Cadillac. I had a friend who used to take me there to play arcade games, whenever I got good marks in school. We would spend hours playing games. There were times when we would spend upwards of 30 dollars. Out of all the arcade games I used to play, Bad Dudes is one of my all time favourites. It's really a classic (in my opinion) and came out right in the middle of the whole martial arts fascination that carried over from the 70's.

The plot of the game is a simple one:

The Dragon Ninja Clan has kidnapped the President of the United States, and it's your job to rescue him. The game is a fairly simple side-scroller fighting game, where you just kick and punch ninjas. That's pretty much it. The NES version of the game can't hold a candle to the arcade version. At the time that I played it, I found it more difficult the one in the arcade. The game has 6 levels. (I think it does anyway, it's been a while.)

The Good
The arcade original is an action filled macho game, inspired by movies of the time with their cheesy martial arts tropes. You beat up hordes of ninjas to save the president. All kind of coolness is packed into, it like fighting on the top of moving trucks and trains among others. The backgrounds/environments are pretty distinguishable on each level.

Ocean handled the home computer conversions and released it under the Imagine label. That makes me automatically think of quality stuff (even if there are numerous examples to the contrary). Technically it's a good conversion. Graphics are up to their standards, with colorful high-resolution sprites, 50FPS smoothness, and the various environments are intact. Jonathan Dunn delivers awesome music, and there is also jamming tune along with sound effects simultaneously during gameplay. It captures the essence of the arcade game. It looks like there is everything given for a good action game.

The Bad
THEN WHY IS IT STILL BORING!?

It's dull, very dull to play! It's kind of a chore to kick/punch every foe. Your attack is short ranged while the enemies move very fast. Get close and kick them, they get stunned for a millisecond and continue running around, repeat twice and they die. But then immediately spawns another one. There is at least a million of them!

As the game progresses, it doesn't really get harder, and the gameplay doesn't change much either. The bosses just take more hits. Winning the game isn't a matter of skill, more like patience, how long are you willing to sit and do this repetitive task.

Beside all these, is also something off with the hit detection's functionality. I can't put my finger on it. It's not effecting much, but it always looms there to annoy my senses.

Bad "Dudes"... and the 2 player mode has been left out.

The Bottom Line
A good conversion. Too bad the arcade original appears to be just as mind-numbingly dull to begin with.

Bad Dudes Vs Dragon Ninja. More like Bad Game Vs Oriental Cliches!