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Target: Renegade (1988)

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00:00 Beginning (Theme Song by James!)
05:25 Target: Renegade (Commodore 64; 1988; Imagine Software)
25:30 Target: Renegade (Amstrad CPC; 1988; Imagine Software)
36:09 Target: Renegade (NES; 1990; Software Creations)
57:05 Renegade III: The Final Chapter (Commodore 64; 1989; Imagine Software)
1:22:30 Corsarios (Amiga; 1989; Opera Soft S.A.)
1:30:59 Chinese Kung Fu (NES; 1989; Joyvan)
1:37:30 I Show Greg the Title Screen Music from Solstice

We continue our roundup of pre-1993 games that I overlooked when originally compiling our list! The Goon Tier is eating well this week!

As part of their license to produce a home port of Renegade (specifically Renegade and not Kunio-kun!), Ocean Software got the rights to produce their own sequels, which were developed by subsidiaries.

We start by playing three different versions of Target: Renegade! Each version shares a core disappointing design choice: the opening stages are all about fighting your way down from the top level of a parking garage, so there's no variety to the levels we see: walk to the right in a boring environment, take an elevator down, then walk to the left, and so on...

The Commodore 64 version is mainly distinguished by having the same problem most home computer beat 'em ups ran into: a single-button joystick doesn't mesh well at all with beat 'em up gameplay! This is single-player only, like the original, and it offers nothing of much interest in gameplay or aesthetics. *VERDICT*: GOON Tier!

The Amstrad CPC version, by contrast, is easily the best home computer beat 'em up we've played! It has simultaneous two-player action, single-button joystick fighting that's *not bad*, a varied moveset, and, above all, a general demonstration that the developers understood why beat 'em ups are fun! It's still not a very good game, but we give it the gentlemen's bump up a tier in reflection of the developers' efforts. *VERDICT*: MID Tier!

The NES version has better play control than either home computer version, in addition to a decent chiptune soundtrack. Bizarrely, the player character sprite is clearly just Billy Lee! The game suffers from sloppy fighting and repetitive design, in addition to cheap boss fights (also, the first two levels have the same boss, so "scroll left" is literally the only thing level 2 adds to the mix!). *VERDICT*: GOON Tier!

Back on the Commodore 64, we check out Renegade III: The Final Chapter, which makes the bizarre choice to send the hero on a journey through time to save his girlfriend. We're fighting dinosaurs and mummies and so on. This is a much more aesthetically varied game than any version of Target: Renegade... it's just a shame that the aesthetics are hideous and the gameplay sucks! *VERDICT*: GOON Tier!

Corsarios on the Amiga offers a milieu we've only seen in one other beat 'em up (Hook): pirates on the open seas! Hook is fun, though, and this game is just another clumsily controlled home computer beat 'em up that is infuriatingly difficult for all the wrong reasons. Apparently the game alternates between beat 'em up scenes and naval battles or something, but we'll never know because we're not willing to put in the time to get good enough to beat the first stage. *VERDICT*: GOON Tier!

Finally, we return to the NES for Joyvan's unlicensed Chinese Kung Fu. Credit where it's due: the game has an okay chiptune song in the first stage! What it lacks is decent play control: there are some bizarre choices here, like having jumping be a two-step process that begins with crouching (and then having segments of tricky platform jumping while projectiles fire at you from off screen). Add in that there's no checkpoint to skip the opening slog when you die in the stupid platforming part and... look, we're trying to get back to games that might be good here, so we're willing to give up pretty quickly. *VERDICT*: GOON Tier!

As a coda on our session, I show Greg Tim Follin's absurd title screen theme for the NES isometric puzzle-platformer Solstice, which goes INCREDIBLY hard for a theme song to a game that features no combat!

Next time... we have a few more overlooked games that probably suck to slog through!

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Greg and James Beat 'Em Up is our ongoing exploration of the beat 'em up genre! Broadcast on any Tuesday evening where schedules and Greg's health allow at https://twitch.tv/58DreamStreet

In Phase One, we played 40 "notable or notable-adjacent" beat 'em ups released through the year 1993!

Now, in Phase Two, we're playing the NINETY-EIGHT other beat 'em ups released through the year 1993!

Theme Song composed by James, using Famitracker!