Some people call this game River City Ransom 2. It’s by the same people, and it’s the same type of game. So I can see why. The only problem is that what I’ve played of it is helluva less fun than the original River City Ransom. The premise is the same as every other brawling game out there. You walk around the streets, subways, buildings and what have you and beat up everyone that isn’t you. Simple, yet effective.

The graphics in this are obviously better than the original RCR, being for the SNES and all… but they took out the shopping part of the game. [s]Stealing[/s] Collecting money and buying stuff was one of the cool things with RCR… It’s just not the same without shops. However, the game is still packed with all the corny dialog you can shake a stick at. If that’s your thing, this game is sure to amuse you for at least a few hours.

There originally wasn’t enough room in the ROM for the English script, so Laxidman just decided to make two patches: one for the first half of the game, and one for the second! It’s kind of ingenious, but also frustrating for the end-user. Fortunately, Laxidman went back and released this all-in-one patch with some additional fixes.

However, be warned this is just an alpha patch any way you slice it. Especially since these patches make the game crash in places, and it’s also not possible to complete the game. Still, English is English I guess.

• File: Shodai Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun (Japan).sfc
• CRC32: 56C05339
• MD5: 089A633C 541CAF3F C7C48FAE 9FBFC8FF
• SHA1: A77A297F C858CD78 B7219DBF 83A9934F E3ECCC7F