River City Girls was a great success for WayForward, enough to warrant the development of a sequel, but Adam also wanted to give series fans a chance to experience a definitive version of the original game behind it all. Thus there was a heavy design emphasis on storytelling through action scenes, comic motion manga, and an explosive vibe to the combat and progression. The goal was to create a high-energy game appealing to WayForward’s established fan base. if you look at that game the characters are just so appealing, and their animation and personality, Misako and Kyōko, it’s really about they’re the third and fourth playable characters behind Ricky and Kunio, and I fell in love with the girls.” The team built a proposal around a new art style by Priscilla Hamby, and Arc was immediately on board to partner up. I had recently become aware of the Super Famicom Game. “Knowing that Arc was one of the places we were going to be talking with,” he said, “I think this was back in 2017. “Then a few years ago,” he continued, “we starting actually going to Japan when I took over biz dev for the company and doing Tokyo game Show, and that was really a big opportunity opener for the company, because now instead of having to go just through the US branch of these major companies (and also smaller companies), we could go directly to people in Japan.”Īdam sensed an opportunity to build something new around the franchise’s characters. “I’ve been at the company for a long time,” Adam told me, “and I remember that River City games in particular especially River City Ransom, which was on NES was always one of those games where me and Matt Bozon our creative director would just say ‘ah it would be great to get our hands on one of those.’” You can listen right here or on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or other places!Īdam’s a delight, and he shared a lot about how the whole River City Girls saga unfolded at WayForward, including the birth of River City Girls and how they brought Zero to America. On today’s episode of Runtime: The Limited Run Games Podcast, I talked with Adam Tierney or WayForward about how the project came together, what to expect, and how Zero ties into the original WayForward River City Girls and the upcoming River City Girls 2. The cast of characters grew and developed as the series matured, until 1994’s Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka thrust the spotlight on two soon-to-be-fan-favorites: series regular Misako, and newcomer Kyōko-The River City Girls!įor the first time in America, you’ll be able to play Misako and Kyōko’s origin story in River City Girls Zero, now available for pre-order at Limited Run Games. Hardly content to stick to mere street fighting, the intrepid high schoolers branched out to historical stage plays, zany pseudo-Olympic competitions, team sports, and a proto-Smash Bros four-player free-for-all. This is a hill I will die on: With few exceptions (I’m looking at you Battletoads ), brawlers are just better with others along for the ride. It also kept the two-player elements of brawling intact to boot. In River City Ransom, Kunio and company injected RPG elements, exploration, emergent gameplay, quippy dialogue, and character progression into brawlers, and did it far more successfully than the weird NES port of Double Dragon managed. But it was on the NES, and even more so on the Famicom, that brawlers started developing substance that exceeded style. The best brawlers oozed style, like Double Dragon ’s weird post-apocalyptic mix of 50s biker gangs and 80s fashion, or Final Fight ’s glossy, awesome sense of optimistic gangland mayhem-a world where a pro wrestler mayor taking justice into his own meaty hands almost makes sense. I’m old enough to remember when walking to the right and punching things was a revolutionary idea in video games, and we’ve come a long, long way since the heady arcade zenith of belt-scrollers.
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