River City Ransom EX (Game Boy Advance)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.9 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Jeff Gerstmann
• Reviewed on: 05/27/2004
• Updated on: 05/28/2004
• Released on: 05/25/2004
• Originally published on GameSpot: River City Ransom EX (Game Boy Advance) Review

Nostalgia can be a very devious thing. It has this nasty habit of preventing people from remembering what things--in this case, games--were really like when they were first released. As video games have slowly grown up, we've started to see more and more games play the nostalgia card in attempts to grab fans of old games and give them something new. In some cases, trading off a popular older name works wonders. For instance, just take a look at Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox. Some games go the remake route, sticking closer to the path blazed by the original but adding a few new things along the way. This can be a trickier route to take, because some older games don't always hold up so well to modern standards. Atlus' new beat-'em-up remake, River City Ransom EX, is a pretty faithful remake of a fondly remembered NES game, though this works against its success almost as much as it helps its cause.

River City Ransom originally came to the NES in 1989, and it quickly became a cult hit. The beat-'em-up had a sort of "Double Dragon with high school kids" story to it, and, by letting you run back and forth between screens, it was a lot more open-ended than other games in the genre. It also had a pretty robust character-statistic and shopping system that let you purchase goods (like food) to enhance various stats, like your punching, kicking, defense, or stamina. The game was a little on the short side, and once you knew what you were doing, you--and a friend, if you so desired--could blaze through the game in around an hour. But in this case, all of the fun was in getting there.

Most of these features have been duplicated in River City Ransom EX. The little square-faced dudes still whoop up on tons of rival gangs in their quest to rescue Ryan's girlfriend from the mysterious Slick. You still buy food to build stats and regain stamina, and you still need to save up a lot of money to purchase new fighting techniques. The game does give you a bit of a break now, since Alex starts out with the ever-popular dragon kick technique and Ryan begins with stone hands--though it's now called mach punch. To make up for starting you out with some reasonably powerful fighting moves, the game has a bunch of crazy, new techniques. A levitation power lets you cause nearby weapons to float and then smash into enemies. You'll be able to purchase a head-butt, spinning-weapon attacks, an ability to throw weapons like boomerangs, and more. Some moves are easier to do than others, making you wonder why the game only uses the A and B buttons. Incorporating the shoulder buttons as "move modifiers" or something to that effect probably would have made the move set more manageable.

River City Ransom EX is not a two-player game. The original game was at its best as a cooperative adventure, but this option isn't available here, and it hurts the game a great deal. The game instead allows you to have both players onscreen, and the second player is governed by basic, loosely adjustable artificial intelligence. But this, along with the ability to eventually recruit a posse of gang leaders to have them do your bidding, is a neat idea that is executed poorly. The game's bad AI control--while better than the simulated two-player mode in Million's Double Dragon remake, which had no AI at all and forced you to switch between the two characters all the time--really makes playing with a computer-controlled buddy a real drag, especially if you have "friendly" damage turned on. The AI characters, in this case, will simply attack enemies without regard for your safety. It's more than a little annoying to get killed by an ill-timed giant swing that's executed by one of your so-called allies.

Like the original game, River City Ransom EX isn't a long game. It shouldn't be a problem for players to blaze through the game in a couple of hours, and this number decreases a bit once you've refamiliarized yourself with where you need to go. If the game was longer, it'd make the save system more of a problem. The save system in River City Ransom EX essentially duplicates the original game's password system. You save characters, but you don't save your location or progress. So every time you turn on the game, you'll load up a character (or two, if you want to play with the knucklehead AI at your side) and start your adventure at the beginning. While this may have been acceptable back in 1989, it seems positively draconian in 2004. This is yet another of many instances where Atlus could have improved on the original game but instead seemed to have chosen the path of least resistance.

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