Urban Champion

It's impossible to overlook the fact that many of the earlier NES releases were extremely simple in design and took very few chances when it came to gameplay design and visual substance. While many of the games were classic arcade titles from Nintendo, there were a handful of original releases that tried to up the ante. Urban Champion is one of the earlier attempts at the beat'em up genre and, while it features some interesting ideas, the execution is what ultimately lets the package down.

There's really not much to the gameplay of Urban Champion, since the majority of what you do will require little more than pummeling your opponent with various punches in order to drive them out of the screen. And while you will have to watch out for the occasional manhole or someone dropping flower pots down on your head, there's not much else to the whole affair.

Urban Champion is back, and is a menace to society. It's a danger to young gamers for two reasons. If you're the type of gamer that thinks brutality and violence has no place in a title played by children, this tale of brawling 8-bit thugs bringing mayhem to the streets is a primitive but potent example of those vices. If, more realistically, you're a gamer that thinks rubbish games shouldn't be released to be played by inadvertent newcomers, then this is a download to avoid at all costs.

The fact that this game has previously returned on the Wii Virtual Console and, to the bemusement of many, the 3D Classics range, boggles the mind. It's acceptable for early NES games from the mid '80s to be primitive and, on occasion, awful, as they were produced under challenging circumstances. Quite why we have to endure them in 2013, however, is another matter.

 Urban Champion was a dumb game when it was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System back in the mid-'80s, but since standards were a bit lower back in those days, there's a chance that you might have somewhat fond memories of playing the original release. Now this dumb street-fighting game is available on the Wii, and it's a perfect emulation that faithfully re-creates everything that made the NES game so one-dimensional. If you hold some kind of weird nostalgia for this game, playing it over again on the Wii will provide exactly two "what was I thinking?" moments. The first one comes when you realize that Urban Champion isn't much fun. The second moment hits when you realize you just blew 500 Wii points on this stinker.

We heard that if you get to level 99, your fighter finds a laser gun. That would make the game way easier, but unfortunately, we're lying.

Urban Champion is part of the Nintendo Entertainment System’s Black Box series. These were the earliest titles released for the NES in the U.S., and they included some memorable classics like Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Balloon Fight, and Excite Bike, just to name a few. The Black Box NES games were, for the most part, basic arcade-like games. It was a simpler time – a time when the U.S. was recovering from the greatest crisis this country had faced: The Video Game Crash of 1983. Back then, the Atari 2600 and 5200, ColecoVision, and Intellivision were the biggest names in the video game market, setting a standard for the many wonders home consoles would bring to families all over.

This new 3D Classics edition tries to add a little something extra to the game's bland and rudimentary street fights, with a splash of fresh 3D giving the visuals a bit of modern pop. It's only a bit, though – the 3D effect here is noticeably weaker than it was for 3D Classics: Excitebike or 3D Classics: Xevious, as the stationary storefront backgrounds that frame your urban brawls just don't do anything interesting.

Since you're only able to move from side to side, you'll use the up and down directions on the D-Pad to control your blocks and punches. Pressing up will allow you to block high and connect on punches to your opponents head. Likewise, pressing DOWN allows you to guard your body and inflict body blows on your opponent. The two action buttons allow for both weak punches, which can be executed more rapidly in succession, and stronger punches, which take longer to execute but do more damage. You'll have to mix things up a bit as the difficulty increases and your opponents becomes a bit less predictable.

To say that the controls in Urban Champion are sluggish would be a gross understatement. Even pulling off the quicker punches feels far too unresponsive and pulling off a strong punch is more a matter of blind luck than any type of real playing skill. Combine all of this with the same basic level repeated over and over with only a few background changes and what you have is a game that is every bit as repetitive as it sounds.

Visually, Urban Champion has some nicely detailed backdrops, but each one is so similar to the others that it ends up being merely colour palette swaps as you progress through the handful of levels. The musical score is very similar in that you'll get a couple of interesting NES chiptune tracks to enjoy, but little more in the audio department beyond that. If you've played any of the earlier NES releases, you should know exactly what to expect from this one.

Summarising Urban Champion is easy, as its simplicity makes free flash games and the very worst shovelware look complex and well thought out. You face off with a coloured clone, running right before aiming a soft or powerful blows at the head or stomach. When holding up or down to aim punches you also block the equivalent area, while you can also dodge away from attacks. A side-on Punch-Out!! this 'ain't, however, as little strategy is necessary. Yes, you have limited stamina, but unless you get drawn into a tough bout many rounds in you're unlikely to see it hit zero. The goal is to push your enemy off the screen twice, before the third time punching them into a manhole; they do the same to you, and that's it.

There are a couple of small extra details. Distressed citizens occasionally hurl flowerpots from above, while occasionally a police car will drive past as the two brawlers whistle and look innocent. The latter is charming, but aside from these diversions this is a button tapping spam-fest. If you try and get strategic you'll get bored due to the simplicity of the enemy AI, so we found that a rhythm of heavy punches constantly to the head or body — it varies per enemy — often does the trick. The brain disengages after quite a few bouts — you just keep going on and on — so by the time tougher enemies come, you're likely to be in a zombified state that leads to eventual death. Death brings a sweet embrace. You could play two-player, but who wants to play this with a friend?

Urban Champion takes place on the hard, gritty streets. You play as a dude that fights. You have to fight another dude that also fights. Your moves include punching, blocking, and, well, punching. You have two punch strengths, and you can throw those punches either high or low. When not punching, your fighter blocks, and you can block high or low. Your goal is to punch your opponent repeatedly, which knocks him back a bit. The winner of the round is the fighter that can punch the other guy all the way off the block. The computer-controlled opponents you face are idiots and are very good at walking directly into your fists if you time your punches just right. Since you're generally causing a ruckus and fighting on a street, second-floor residents will occasionally pop out and drop flowerpots, attempting to disable you. Also, the cops occasionally roll by, which causes both fighters to separate and return to opposite sides of the block and whistle like there's no funny business going on. If one of your nearby friends is also a glutton for punishment, you can opt for the two-player mode.

An extra visual mode will swing the camera around to display the action at an angle, which gives these city blocks a bit more depth. It isn't turned on by default, though, and also doesn't even activate until you've already cleared one round of fighting – so even this slightly interesting addition is flawed.

And, finally, it goes without saying that the actual gameplay will only put you to sleep. You control a generic street fighter going up against an equally vanilla opponent, and you can throw either strong or weak punches at either your foe's face or gut – while guarding against his identical counterattacks and occasionally dodging a falling flower pot.

It's the skeletal structure of a combat design that would go on to inspire the much more satisfying and complex fighting engine of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but it's just no fun playing this rough draft version of that much better game.

This is an early NES game, so the graphics and variety are more in line with other early stuff, like Donkey Kong. So the animation is limited and the graphics are drab, even for an 8-bit game. The presentation might have been passable in 1984 or 1985, but it was quickly surpassed by later NES games, and it really doesn't hold up today. This may have been a mediocre game upon its initial release, but now it's pretty much impossible to enjoy unless you're operating on some ultraironic level where you can only appreciate games if they're truly awful. But Urban Champion doesn't even succeed on that level. It's not so lame that it's funny--it's just lame. Don't waste your time with it.

The beat'em up genre of games has come a long way since its humble beginnings and no game better highlights that fact than this early effort. Sluggish controls and redundant gameplay end up making the game more a lesson in futility than any type of engaging gaming experience. Unless you just can't pass up a Nintendo title, you're likely much better off staying as far away from this inherently uninspired stinker as possible.
When Urban Champion was released it would surely have been mediocre even for its time, but played in the modern era it's painfully bad. It's rubbish, and we'd rather take to the streets and pick random fights — which we'd in all likelihood lose — than play this again. Ding ding, let this be the final bell for this one.