The Learning Curve: 5 Hours with River City Ransom

The legendary hype surrounding this game has haunted me since bygone days of yore.  It was a Double Dragon RPG that combined everything you loved about scrolling fighting games and everything you loved about Final Fantasy.  People used to talk about it at school like it was the ultimate game. Yet I never got a chance to play it in its original era. It wasn’t until I was an adult gamer that I managed to track down a copy to finally find out what all the 30 year old buzz was about.  And I couldn’t have been less impressed.  Sure it played like a really great Double Dragon game, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to level up, or what I was supposed to buy at the mall.  It doesn’t help that I didn’t have an instruction manual, but that is easily remedied these days with the internet, so that’s not a valid excuse.  Despite numerous attempts to immerse myself in the world, I just couldn’t get River City Ransom to click, which makes it a perfect candidate for The Learning Curve!  So let’s spend 5 good hours with River City Ransom and see if I can recapture the magic I heard so much about all those years ago…

Hour 1:  

Having played this before, I know the general gist:  You roam the neighborhood fighting gang (the late 80’s high school kind, not the scary late 90’s LBC kind) members and taking their lunch money (who’s the bully now?!).  You can then go to the mall and buy stuff to help you be a better fighter.  A quick run through of the instruction manual confirms all of this, gives some insight to what you might want to buy at the mall, and provides a litany of moves to learn with the promise of more possibilities in the game.  Most importantly it outlines the objective of the game:  defeat the gang bosses, gain access to River City High School and rescue your girlfriend from Slick.  Things are always so much clearer when you read the manual…

That said, the first hour of game play still feels rather pointless.  Every street or area is occupied by a random gang, steadily increasing in difficulty as you progress.  Mini-boss battles are announced only by a change in music and an increased chattiness of the characters.  But ALL battles in this game are COMPLETELY optional.  Don’t want to fight Moose right now?  No big deal, just walk past him and exit the area.  On the one hand, this is kind of great.  You must beat all of the bosses to progress, so you can skip all you want, you’re not getting to the end of the game until you fight them.  One the other hand, this makes it really hard to know where you need to go and what you need to do next.  

The game is also very frustrating out of the gate.  Prepare to “die” a lot.  And your pocket money is cut in half every time you die.  So everything in the game is prohibitively expensive.  One of the keys to success is buying books and gear to improve your fighting stats, but when beating a bad guy nets you 25 cents and the book costs $25 and you die pretty regularly, amassing $25 is a monumental task.  It’s hard enough scraping up enough dough to buy some food to stay alive.  This means that for my first hour I am spending most of my time beating up bad guys, getting my butt kicked, and using all of my savings to eat enough to stay alive.  Sadly, due to the penalty for dying, this is a process of diminishing returns.

Since your stats only improve by eating the right foods, reading the right books or equipping the right gear, “leveling up” is very slow and very tedious.  I spent a great deal of my first hour grinding with very little pay off.

On the up side, the game really is the Double Dragon RPG you always wanted.  The game plays silky smooth and while the combat, at least for now, feels like a lot of button mashing, there are a lot of moves to learn and execute.  I like the design and feel of the game quite a bit, I’m just very frustrated at an hour spent with not much progress.  I managed to defeat the first boss and buy the Arc Circus jump attack, but that’s about it.  Let’s hope Hour 2 brings more progress.

Hour 2:  

Considering my frustration at the lack of progress in Hour 1, I decided to spend all of Hour 2 grinding.  Just good ol’ fashioned, slow and monotonous grinding to try and get enough money to improve my stats, learn some new moves, and get some gear.  It was slow going, but I was able to eat enough stuff to boost a few stats. This is not as easy as it sounds either, because eating certain food will boost your stats, but since it doesn’t happen on the stats screen you don’t really get an appreciation for what improved right away.  Considering the number of food options it is also tricky to remember exactly what food boosts which stat, so I spent a lot of time just eating everything and trying to boost whatever I could.  Eventually I noticed that my weapon stat was getting pretty high, as was my kick stat.  Whatever food I was eating to stay alive was giving me strong upgrades in those departments.

I also bought the Dragon Feet technique which essentially gives you Chun-Li kicking powers.  This is MUCH better than the Arc Circus move and should have been my first purchase.  It makes grinding much, much easier.  As you fight better enemies you make more money, so your buying power increases dramatically, but getting to that point takes a lot of work.  I think I’ve pinpointed this as the Learning Curve for this game, but we shall see.  I’m still only barely covering my food expenses, but slowly I am getting better at combat and improving my cash flow.  I did buy some sneakers and that has improved by kick power.

Not much actual progress towards the goal, though.  I think I may have gone one screen farther than I had in the last hour…

Hour 3:

Do NOT save your money.  Every time you get to a mall, spend it ALL.  When you die you get to keep your items, but your cash is cut in half.  Considering how often I die in this game, trying to save up money, when not actually grinding, is always a losing proposition.  So when you make it to the next mall, buy whatever you need.  Buy take-out food, because you can keep it and use it, even if you die.  That is Lesson #1 from Hour 3.

Lesson #2:  Spam Dragon Feet.  And spam it like crazy.  Even the toughest foes who block it constantly will eventually fall to its rapid barrage.  Also, because my weapon stat is so high: spam weapon attacks.  Basically my strategy during Hour 3 has been to enter a screen, fend off as many bad guys as I can with a bat or whip, then, should one get close enough to knock the weapon free, spam with Dragon Feet until all are dead or I can retrieve my weapon.  This strategy has made the game infinitely easier.

Employing this new cheesy technique I was able to make enough money to buy the Army Boots dramatically improving my kick skill.  I was also able to fight my way to the gates of River City High School, however, I clearly have missed several bosses along the way because the gates remain locked.  Bosses seem to appear after you have cleared all the regular goons from a screen, so I need to go back and clear all the screens to uncover the bosses I have missed.

Also, I went to the sauna, paid $3.50 and got to see Alex’s bare ass.

Ummmm....

Hour 4:

The Boss fights all start with a long winded speech by the boss during which they are immobile.  Use that time to wail on them, pin them against a wall, and blammo! instant win.  At least mostly.

This combined with the spamming strategy from Hour 3 allowed me to beat this game in about 15 minutes during Hour 4.  I tracked down each boss (when you beat a boss, they will tell you where to find the next one), pounced on them as soon as they appeared and started yakking.  Weapons kept the earlier, slower foes at bay, Dragon Feet handled the rest.  Once I got in to the school things got dramatically tougher, but I was still able to take out all three (four really) bosses on two tries with little difficulty.  The increased strength and speed of the foes inside the school took me by surprise the first time, but I went back in with plenty of food to keep me going and pretty much walked to the end on the back of spamming Dragon Feet.

Hour 5:  

With River City Ransom beaten I decided to use my extra hour to play a little Adventure of Link.  It’s been a few years and I’m WAY rustier than I used to be at this game.  Once upon a time I could beat it in a single sitting and usually with only one, maybe two continues.  Now I find myself exploring the palaces like it’s the first time and I’m already 7 continues deep.  With my 5th hour I was able to take out the fourth palace and get the general exploration of the Eastern Continent completed.  Love this game!

Brave New World!

Dating in Hyrule is super easy!

I like to pretend this guy is the Evil Magician from story in the Instruction Manual

Final Appraisal:  

I totally get it.  I can totally see the charm of this game.  It truly is a Double Dragon RPG and once you understand how to progress against the bosses and how to grind for money, it’s a lot of fun.  However, it is also EXTREMELY short.  Knowing what I know now, I’m willing to bet I could beat it in under 2 hours.  Buy Dragon Feet, grind while spamming DF to amass enough money to buy the army boots and boost kick stat, beat all bosses, THE END.  But I now completely understand the charm of the game and why so many people like it.  

Learning Curve:  

Even though it took me 3 hours to really get a feel for what’s going on, I’m going to cut that in half and say that you can get over the learning curve in this game in 1.5 hours.  I feel it would take the uninitiated that long to get used to the way the combat works, grind their way up to a level of competency, and get a feel for how to best use trips to the mall.  Just make sure you read the instruction manual first.  Once you get over the learning curve, this game won’t take long to beat.

(Editor's Note:  As a mini-proof, I was able to beat all of the bosses and the game in about 10 minutes while taking screenshots for this article, so add about an hour of grinding, and I think it's an easy beat)

Will I Finish It?  

Already did.  Will I play it again?  Most definitely.  I can easily see River City Ransom being a fun afternoon’s diversion in much the same way I play through something like Castlevania or Legend of Zelda.  Great game.  Although I will say it’s worth finishing in a single sitting because it has a ridiculously long password for saving your game…

And this password doesn't even include the ridiculous punctuation some of the letters have!

Homebrew of the Month: Titan Axe

Titan Axe

Developer: Papa

Available: Not Currently Available for Sale

Long ago in days of yore a compatriot of mine told me that I could not fit an entire Dairy Queen double cheeseburger in my mouth.  For those of you that know, the DQ double cheeseburger, at least circa 1993, was huge in comparison to other competing fast food burgers.  Stuffing the entirety of one of those babies into one’s pie hole was no small feat.  Yet I felt compelled to prove my friend wrong, and therefore, I crammed the entire meat sandwich into my gaping maw.  It was uncomfortable, unpleasant, and my eyes teared up from the strain.  I nearly gagged as I tried to work my mandibles and process that half pound of bread and beef with the hope of sneaking improperly sized hunks of it down my throat.  It took several minutes but eventually I did it.  My friend was impressed, I reveled in my newfound glory, and we all agreed that while it was something to behold, it probably wasn’t the best idea and was definitely more than I should have been capable of, even though I did it.

Titan Axe feels like that cheeseburger.  It’s ambitious, it goes beyond what the VCS has historically been capable of, and at times it is a little uncomfortable, but yet it has been done.  Long time 2600 fans know that there is a real dearth of beat ‘em up style games for the system.  Perhaps the shining example of why is Double Dragon.  Many don’t even realize there is a Double Dragon game for the Atari and that’s probably because, except for the most die-hard player, it’s not very good.  Using a single button for a beat ‘em up game is extremely challenging.  You have to make creative use of the joystick and joystick-button combos.  The result in DD is a game that looks and sounds really good, but with gameplay that is very clunky and most of the strategy relies heavily upon striking your opponent and then running away.  Titan Axe, sadly, doesn’t seem to be able to transcend that limitation, but I’ll get into that in a minute.

How’s It Play?

First let’s lay out the premise of the game.  Evil bad guy, Oblivius has pulled evil technology from the future and is capturing fairies to drive the monsters across the world in devastation and conquest. He must be stopped and you must make a difficult journey to confront him and defeat him.  Pretty standard plot for a game of this sort.  Your journey takes you through a wide variety of landscapes and pits you against myriad foes bent on your destruction.  Your only recourse is to vanquish these villains, one-on-one, as they block your path and work your way to the final confrontation.  You may choose to be a Dwarven or Amazonian warrior, but no matter which role you assume, you will have several ways to battle your enemies:  standard attack, jump attack, special attack, magic attack.  Those alone will not be enough to take down some of the more powerful foes.  You’ll need to develop combos using several different attacks if you are to survive.  You can use each attack as many times as you need, no limits for magic (except that using magic costs 1 health container) or special attacks, but just spamming a single kind of attack will not yield positive results.  Defeat a foe and you’ll move to the next screen.

So it’s a fairly simple game on its face.  The key to the whole thing is a great combat mechanic.  If the combat mechanics are solid this game will soar.  Sadly as mentioned above, the limitations of the system, specifically the controller, shackle Titan Axe and keep it from reaching the heights it so desperately wishes to achieve.  To put it bluntly, the fighting system is clunky at best and rage-inducing at worst.  To execute a basic attack you must press the button and move the joystick left or right simultaneously.  Not such a big deal, but it can be really hard to see if you’ve actually executed the move because the sprite doesn’t change dramatically to represent the move.  As the Dwarf, if you swing your axe, the axes doesn’t extend out past your body.  It looks like the Dwarf has T-Rex arms and can only swing his little axe a tiny bit.  This isn’t the fault of the game developer, this is purely a limitation of how sprites can be generated by the VCS.  So you may be pressing the button and joystick like crazy, but have no idea if the move is being executed.  The special attack is a little more clear as the Dwarf does some kind of crazy attack where he rolls around on the ground and the Amazon does a spinning sword slash.  These animations are much easier to see, however they also open you up to counterattack, so you better be sure they hit.  Jump attacks are a little confusing.  The jump part is pretty clear as your character raises its weapon high above its head, but the attack part is harder to see because the weapon drops and gets lost in the sprite.  I’m still not sure if I have ever successfully landed a jump attack.  Part of this obscurity is also due to the enemy sprite’s lack of response to being attacked.  When you hit the enemy it is supposed to be knocked back away from you.  This only happens sometimes and the amount of knockback is so small that the enemy is almost upon you again, unless you retreat.  So it can be extremely difficult to know if you have landed a hit at all.  To confuse matters even more, the enemy attack is really more of a “run up and stick to you” attack than anything like sword slash or punch.  Think Kung-Fu.  

So the average attack screen goes something like this:  You enter. The enemy spawns from the right and runs at you.  You attempt to execute an attack move.  The enemy runs up to you and sticks to you.  If you are lucky, you hit the enemy and it moves back slightly, then attempts to stick to you again.  You attack again.  This time the enemy doesn’t move and maybe even hits you (the screen flashes to indicate an enemy hit and you lose 1 health container).  You retreat hoping to get away from the enemy, but by now he is solidly stuck to you and maybe even overlapping your sprite.  You execute a magic attack.  If you are lucky the enemy is destroyed.  If not, then the battle goes on as above until one of you are dead.

That’s not exactly the ideal fight mechanic for a beat ‘em up.  And it led to me, more than once, quitting the game and questioning whether or not I would go back to it.

BUT

Titan Axe does get a lot of things right.  I would dare say that it gets everything else right and surrounds the troubled battle system with enough good stuff to make this a game to not overlook.  Let’s start with the overall project.  There simply aren’t enough of this kind of game for the Atari 2600.  Even if they aren’t executed to perfection, it’s nice to have some diversity in the catalog. Bonus points for making it fantasy themed.  Second, the scope of the world is pretty huge with 64 screens of game play.  The backdrop for every battle screen is uniquely rendered and the instruction manual features a listing of each screen (because it’s the VCS and playfield graphics aren’t always going to be of NES quality).  The backgrounds aren’t always static either, with flowing waterfalls, erupting volcanoes and statues with eyes that watch your every move.  A couple of screens even push the boundaries of what you would expect from an Atari 2600 game, like the battle that takes place on the back of a giant eagle in flight.  Watch your step or you could plummet into the forest below!  The game also features many hidden secrets, some listed in the manual and some not.  These include warp zones to take you forward (and sometimes backwards) on the path and much needed full health refills.  All of this helps to create a very real and immersive environment.  My first few runs I played with the instruction manual open in front of me so I could get the full scoop on each screen as I encountered it.  Really boosted the fun.

The variety of enemy sprites is also great.  There are many different kinds of enemies to battle and while most use the aforementioned “stick like glue” battle tactic, a few are capable of magical attacks and the final boss can literally rain down death upon you.  That’s another great thing, Titan Axe features mini-bosses, a final boss fight, and an end screen. Things that you only get from some of the more advanced and impressive VCS games of yore (or heck sometimes even today).  So there is a lot here to really enjoy and be impressed with.  Don’t make the mistake of dismissing this game just because it can be rather difficult to get into the game play.

Whistles and Bells

Titan Axe gives you the ability to select from two possible characters with which to play, not something you often get in a VCS game.  It also features the ability to toggle the music off and on.  I opted to leave it on, but having the option is nice as the music is all deep tones and can become a bit monotonous during long play sessions.  You may continue indefinitely on the journey should you be defeated.  Playing on Difficulty A starts you further back on the path after a defeat, while Difficulty B moves you back a few screens.  This allows you to determine the level of frustration you can deal with, a necessary option.  However, the game also features two different endings depending on which Difficulty level you complete it on, so that’s a big plus.  I was able to complete the game on easy, and I plan to return to get the “good” ending another time.

The game comes with a beautiful full color manual with retro styling and a gorgeous cover by ATARIBOY.  The cartridge label features the same striking artwork and will stand out in any collection.

Final Assessment

Titan Axe is an ambitious game that really pushes the limits of what can be expected from the Atari 2600.  It is only held back, not by lack of vision or ability of the programmer, but simply by the limitations of trying to adapt a beat ‘em up style game to a joystick with one button.  The core fight mechanic is the game’s only weak spot and there is plenty of good stuff surrounding it.   This is not a pick-up-and-play game for the casual gamer.  Much like Double Dragon, this is a game for someone who is enamored enough with the concept and the theming to dig in, master the mechanics, and see the game through to the end.  So if you are considering this game, gird yourself for a fight, and not necessarily just the one in the game.

Tip and Tricks

Be ready to die.  A lot.

The instruction manual gives you the best tip of all:  Stick and Move.  Like with similar games, your best combat strategy is to attack the enemy and then run away.  Let them come to you, attack and run.  Repeat until enemy is defeated.  This is just about the only way to have success in this game.  It also helps to stay low on the screen where you can hit the enemy before they can hit you.

Start your attack early.  If the enemy is close to you, it’s too late.  Start your attack when the enemy is about mid-way across the screen.  The hit box on the enemy sprite is big and you want to hit it with as much room to spare as possible so the tiny bit of knock back you get is maximized and you have more time to get another hit in or retreat. 

On the non-combat screens when shurikens come at you. stay toward the bottom of the screen and they will fly over your head.  Trying to time jumps over them is nearly impossible.  But don’t get lazy, as many of these screens hide secrets…

Some enemies move quickly, so enter each screen ready to attack.  Look at the scenery after you defeat the foe.

The instruction manual suggests a combo JUMP + SPECIAL ATTACK as a good strategy for taking down tougher foes.  I have never, to my knowledge, successfully executed this combo.

The manual goes on and on about secrets in the game, but gives no indication of how to activate them.  Here's a spoiler free tip. Secrets are activated by moving UP at the right time on certain screens.  Good luck!

Summon your Dragon ally to crush the stronger foes!

Use magic sparingly.  Any time you see a Dark Warrior or Skeleton, use magic.  These are tough enemies that will kill you quickly.  Typically the magic will wound them without taking them out, if you are worried about losing a health refill.  But if you attack a couple of times and then hit them with magic they will usually perish.  Remember: using magic costs 1 health container.

The same enemies drop health refills every time.  Remember which ones those are so you don’t accidentally destroy the health refill with a magic attack.

The magic curse in the Emerald City boss fight is real.  Stick to physical attacks unless you like repeating a lot of screens.

I had the most success with the Dwarf.  Even though he moves like jittery mud, his attacks seem to hit more reliably and he seems stronger.  I prefer the Amazon for her speed and sprite clarity, but she seems to be made of paper.

This game plays much better and much cleaner in emulation than it does on actual hardware.  When I was playing the game for screenshots on my computer I found the battle mechanic and sprites to be far less muddy.  This was encouraging, but I had much less success playing with a D-pad instead of a joystick. Lots of unintended jumping.  Go figure.

I wasn't sure if I was being congratulated or just encouraged to be the best I could be...

So there you have it!  Titan Axe for the Atari 2600 is a game that bites off more than the VCS can chew and comes away with some impressive trappings, but the core game play goes beyond what might be possible for the system.  Dedicated gamers will be able to push through and enjoy a rich experience, casual gamers will throw this game into the unplayable pile along with Double Dragon.

Join me next month for a guilty pleasure, a game I already know I like and have been looking to add to the collection:  Stay Frosty 2.  How far can I get before I melt?