Konami's first belt-scrolling brawler^, and it's essentially FINAL FIGHT with a little dash of Looney Tunes, for some reason. The setup is as standard as can be, with a bland cop or two punching their way through punks in the city, onto a subway car, etc., etc., to eventually face the rich guy villain, but all with a goofy, somewhat lewd cartoon sensibility laid over it. You've got bikini babe billboards that come to life, people turning flat after getting hit by swinging doors or run over by steamrollers, a "ding" sound effect for nut shots, and no less than two enemy types who attack by humping. (And don't worry, only one of them is a mincing leather daddy caricature! (The other is a dog.))

I certainly don't have a problem with this in theory, but I think that, if anything, they should have gone a little further with it - for consistency's sake. Despite how I described it, all those goofy moments are actually kind of few and far between, especially given the game's length. Aside from the presence of a couple droll enemy types like a Fonzie guy who's always fixing his hair as he approaches you, there are long stretches of nothing but very basic brawler business, and that causes the two tones to clash more than they should.

And if the game was better at the meat-and-potatoes stuff, it might not be an issue, but it isn't. Despite this being Konami (in the same year that would see TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES!) the moment-to-moment gameplay is kind of rough. The field is huge for a brawler, with all these tiiiiny little sprites running around it. You can get a lot of guys comfortably onscreen at once like this, but trust me, you do not want that, because the hit detection on all your attacks is horrendous. You have to be pixel perfect vertically to hit anything at all and it is so, so frustrating at times, especially with crowds or the fast enemy types. You will be ripping your hair out while dudes just swarm around you and you hammer the attack buttons, hitting nothing but air like you're punching between raindrops. This especially makes your jump kick and weapons^^ useless, as you have to commit to those attacks more and by the time they (would) land, the enemy has moved a millimeter downwards and might as well be in another arcade cabinet. It's surmountable - you just have to be precise - but you could tell they were still figuring out the tuning for this type of game.

Despite it feeling a little bit amateur-hour, you will recognize Konami in the music and the art, both of which are quite good. The animation is limited, but the individual frames of the characters are very expressive and well-done, and the backgrounds are detailed and lively.

Overall, you can see why these guys would be good at this genre and specifically marrying it to famous cartoon properties down the road, but they're not quite there yet. Still an okay time, though.


^I think?

^^The weapons mostly suck except for the handgun, which is hilarious to use because it works the exact opposite of how it would in any other game like this. It does about as much damage as your standard punch(!) but you have infinite ammo and it never goes away unless it gets knocked out of your hands, so if you get one the level is essentially over, as you can just sit on one side of the screen and dump chip damage until everybody including the boss is dead. Lol.