From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Renegade - Hangin' with Mr. K
Why it was always worth the time to stomp our way through the mean streets and toss around some hooligans.

When you're a kid, it's usually the case that you form an uncritical bond with the first game, or the first handful of games, that you play on your brand new console. There's just something about these games and the manner in which they give you your first glimpse into a new world of technology--something about the awe-inspiring novelty of the way in which they convey a new platform's values--that makes an indelible impact and insofar fills you with such deeply rooted fondness that you're destined to forevermore remain under their spell and therein absolutely blind to any shortcomings they might have.

The truth is that many of our "first games"--particularly those that are early-generation products--are often flawed in a number of ways. It could be that their controls and level design are half-baked. Maybe their mechanics are underdeveloped and thus susceptible to exploitation. Perhaps their gameplay is too experimental and thus lacking for refinement. Or it's likely that they're just plain middling in quality.

But for us, none of that will ever matter: For reasons that defy common sense and sound judgement, we consider these games to be beyond reproach. There's no questioning our bond with them. We just know that we love them even though we can't convincingly articulate why.

That's how it is with me and Renegade, which was one of the first NES games I personally owned. It gets a lot of flak and is usually regarded as rubbish, but, really, I don't care. I just like it. I like it a lot. It is now as it was then an essential piece of my NES library.

Let me tell you about it.

So one random day, my friend Dominick and I went with my father to a local department store following one of our regular group activities (it's either that we saw a movie or had lunch at a diner). It was one of those joints that sometimes had select NES titles up for purchase. Knowing this, we broke off from my father and sought out the games section; we did so with a feeling of indifference, since we knew that stores like this one, if they indeed did sell NES games, were never likely to offer much beyond the popular titles that everyone already owned--the usual Marios, Zeldas and those same black-box games you'd see everywhere.

But today was different. As we neared the display in question, my eyes happened upon an unfamiliar title called "Renegade." Instantly I was drawn to its box art, which depicted your typical video-game tough guy beating down a bunch of street thugs on a subway platform. More than anything, I was taken with the setting, the visual of which got my imagination a-churnin'; immediately it evoked images of Double Dragon and Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja--two of my favorite arcade beat-'em-ups--and the types of places those games took me. For that reason alone (in a belated victory for Taito's marketing department), I decided that I had to have Renegade. So I asked my father to buy it for me, sensing that he might entertain the idea, since the game was on sale for a paltry $20.

"Sure," he said, as usual generous to a fault.

Honestly, I didn't feel too guilty about making such a request. I mean, it had been--what--about a week since he bought that last game for me? (He really should have learned to say "no.")

So we took it back to my house and spent the rest of the afternoon getting to know Renegade, which as far as I knew was yet another NES original (I hadn't seen the original creation in arcades, nor would I ever; I'll continue to assume that its absence had something to do with Brooklyn arcade-owners' inability to recognize greatness and certainly not with any of that "common sense and sound judgement" stuff I talked about earlier).

And from moment one, I liked what I saw. In particular, I was enamored with the game's 8-bit portrayal of a vacated subway system, with its barred exit, stationary train, the repeating beer and R&B ads, and all of those little touches that conveyed to me that Renegade with brimming with the type of rough, hard-boiled personality that I expected my beat-'em-ups to possess. This opening scene was everything I hoped it would be--a solid match for the images that came to mind as I was further inspecting the box art's depiction during the ride home.

I was also quick to become a fan of its music; its 1950s greaser-style doo-wop did well to capture the spirit of period pieces like West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause (whose main character, Jim stark, kinda resembles Renegade's protagonist). The developers at Technos, I later read, were apparently enamored with 1950s-era American gang movies, which explains why the music--and, really, every other aspect of Renegade--feels so true to its source material. To the 11-year-old me, it had a powerfully authentic feel to it, and that went a long way in shaping how I perceived the game. And since I, too, grew up enjoying those very same movies--especially their musical scores--I had an extra appreciation for what the composer was able to accomplish. Those were some hot tunes, I tell you!

That's just the way it was with me: I always loved the ways in which developers depicted bygone eras in 8-bit form--how they were able to craft such wonderfully romanticized, imagination-stoking interpretations of time-periods we only read about (like, say, the world as it's rendered in Deja vu and its sequel, both of which are set in the 1940s).

Renegade wasn't large in scope, no. Its stage number was limited to four, and none of the stages' total area ever stretched beyond a mere handful of screens. But it was able to cover for its lack of content by making good use of what it had on display. In particular, it had more in the way of interesting settings--the type my friends and I found so visually appealing that we couldn't help but comment on them and interpret them as we were beating down the baddies. Our doing so became an integral part of the experience; it played a huge role in shaping our shared memories of the game.

We'd never forget the details of Mission 2's parking lot, with its city coastline, stacked girders, and range of parked vehicles--a couple of motorcycles and a hot rod, all of which were property to the pink-gied karate guys who liked to convene here. The stage's endpoint, from what we could tell, was an elevated, railed-off rest spot that overlooked a forest; it served as domain for the mohawked Joel, who was waiting by his 1950s Lincoln Town Car. We couldn't imagine this rest stop existing anywhere but in a video game, which accounted for its allure.

Forevermore we'd vividly recall Mission 3's back-alley scene, with its leaning "Beer" sign, numerous trash cans, and shady-feeling atmosphere. Upon dispatching the area's female gang members, we were always sure to enter the establishment on the left--the one that displayed the huge "Kado" sign; it was a bar wherein we'd fight more of the purse- and chain-armed women while its weirdly disproportional owner looked on, smiling and showing himself to be somehow completely unaffected by the huge brawl that had the potential to level the place and completely destroy his business.

And then there were the oddly furnished interior portions of Mission 4's accessible buildings. Both belonged to the gang's leader, who packed them with TVs, couches, large pictures, plants, and other items that you wouldn't normally find in a crime boss' hideout. Gauging their curious arrangement--how each item was strictly flush--we could only conclude that the decorator had a penchant for wall-hugging.

We'd discuss these details and laugh about them even when we weren't playing Renegade--whenever referencing them seemed appropriate, which was pretty much always. For as long as we lived, we swore, we'd remember each and every one of these settings down to the minutiae, and we'd continue to include them in our daily conversations.

That's the way it was: We'd spend so much time with these games that their every pixel would be burned into our memory.

Admittedly it wasn't all sunshine and roses. In our very first session, we had a little trouble acclimating ourselves to Renegade's gameplay. It had its share of immediately obvious shortcomings: For one, it didn't feature much variety in terms of minor enemies. There were a mere four or five thug types, and only a single type would appear in each stage; there was never a mix of them or even a swapping of types between sections (at least until the final stage). We were pummeling what appeared to be an army of clones, each battle characterized by the identical-looking miscreants who were rushing onto the scene one after another; this created for a high level of visual repetition and was honestly a bit off-putting. Hell--it was even true that the very first enemy type encountered bore a remarkable resemblance to our protagonist, Mr. K! It was glaring in an awkward way and stoked our suspicion that Renegade might have had a low budget.

Though, to be fair, some inter-group members did carry weapons, like, um, s-sticks.

I mean, that's something, right?

Also, Renegade employed Technos' unorthodox, often-confounding beat-'em-up control scheme, which swapped the inputs for the punch and back-kick attacks whenever you switched directions. At the time, it was so new to me that I couldn't grasp it; my inability to adequately adapt kept led to repeated scenarios wherein I was throwing kicks at the empty space behind me rather than punching the thug who was right up in my face; and then I'd be wide open to a stiff jab and an inevitable follow-up attack. It could be so frustrating, and for a while there I was convinced that I simply lacked the adaptive skills necessary to get a solid handle on this control scheme. "Why would they program it like this?!" I'd often exclaim.

And the basic attacks were largely ineffective. In any encounter that entailed exchanging punches or kicks, the enemy in question would simply absorb my standard strikes and otherwise our-prioritize them with his or her own--effectively pick me apart slowly. So during any play-through, I was forced to rely mainly on the jumpkick, which in contrast was quite potent; I discovered that it allowed for me to inflict damage on foes and at the same time enter them into a stunned state, which left them prone for grabs and the knee strikes and throws you could administer in following. We came to terms with the fact that only by abusing jumpkicks and grabs would we be able to advance. That's when we necessarily developed our main fighting tactic: connect with a jumpkick, grab the prone enemy, deliver two knee strikes (three in the later stages), execute a throw, and if required finish off a still-conscious subject with a series of seated punches. From then on, that's how we progressed through Renegade.

Yet despite all that, we couldn't help but laugh and smile as we played it. We found that the game's flaws were no deterrent to our enjoyment. Ultimately they proved to be trivial, their presence rendered irrelevant in the face of Renegade's overpowering charm.

We just liked it. To us, it was fun to both look at and play.

Renegade was a short game (you could finish it in about ten minutes), yes, but by no means easy (not even the easiest difficulty). It took us two days to finish it. That's mainly because we were continually thwarted by the final boss, Sabu, who was capable of killing Mr. K with only one shot from his pistol. On our average attempt, he'd deplete our entire life-stock in seconds. This made for the most stressful beat-'em-up boss fight we'd ever engaged in. If you hesitated for a second or botched an input, it was over. Then you'd have to spend ten minutes getting back to him. Finally we were able to take him down with our strategy of striking with two jumpkicks and delivering seated punches when subsequently he was knocked to the ground, but still our victory felt tenuous, as if we were merely lucky.

This, too, would never change: No matter how good we got at Renegade, the Sabu fight would always prove to be a legitimate challenge, the encounter as demanding as it was nerve-wracking. There was no such thing as a guaranteed victory; failure was just as likely as success.

Equally jarring was how the game ended: You killed Sabu, and that was it. There was no ending sequence or even a simple "Congratulations!" screen. Rather, it instantly cut to the credits, leaving you no opportunity to savor your victory. I'd never seen anything like that in a video game before, so I didn't know to feel about it. I still don't. I recognize it as something undoubtedly unique--as being striking in its bluntness--and wonder if it's meant to be a metaphor for the unceremonious finality of death.

Or maybe the developers were just too lazy to whip up an animation. Who knows?

I've always liked the credits theme, though. It's quite an emotive tune. It does the job of telling us a story about how one feels after exacting revenge. I rank it as a top-twenty NES ending theme.

You think I'm joking about all of this, don't you? Well, I'm not. I really do like this game.

No, seriously.

I mean, yeah--Renegade was limited in content, mechanically sloppy, and pretty repetitive, but for my friends and I, all of those issues were far outweighed by the aspects we found to be most appealing. Its world was a playground, and we had great fun operating within it and observing it. For us, there was nothing more stimulating than manipulating the subway-lurking goons--including the more-resilient stage boss, Jack--over to the platform's edge and tossing them down to the level below, into what was apparently a scorching pit of death; depositing karate bikers into the sea was even more satisfying because doing so came with the bonus of hearing them violently splash as they hit the surface! In beat-'em-ups, tossing hooligans into gaps or off of buildings and mountains was the most gratifying action one could take, and Renegade gave us plenty of opportunity to extract that kind of pleasure.

It was a game we could play through again and again if not just to make fun of it. "Why is the bar owner's head twice as large as anyone else's?" we'd wonder while snickering. "And who's that sorry specimen--that mouthless muppet with a monstrous noggin--depicted in the picture to the right? Is that his dad?"

Then there was the really funny stuff, like when we'd joke about how much of a "Ginetta" Kim, the Mission 3 boss, was. (I'll tell you why it's so "hilarious" in a future piece.)

Half the time, we didn't know what the hell was going on in this game, so we attempted to fill the gaps with our humorous observations. We'd lovingly question every design choice: "Why are the Lifepier building's rooms so ridiculously spacious? Was its architect an extreme claustrophobic?" "Who places a TV in the corner of a 50'-by-'50 room that has no chairs of couches? Do the gangsters crowd into the corner, squeezing together in a huge mass, and then just stand there watchin' the toob?" "What kind of maniac drives around on a motorcycle, at speeds of up to 100MPH, indoors?"

And tell me something: What jackass on the design team thought it was funny to have those Mission 4 doors send you back not only to the stage's starting point but also to the beginning of the previous stage? How does that even work?

These are the types of weird, wacky visuals and events that could only appear or occur within video-game worlds, and thank goodness for them; they're a huge part of the reason why I so fondly remember many of these games.

Certainly Renegade ranked near the top when it came to games whose simple-but-charming aesthetics could inspire me to imagine--to fill in the gaps and provide them further substance. I liked to wonder about the nature of its spaces and the types of people who might occupy them; I'd think about the ways in which people might operate within them. The game helped by providing me a solid foundation--a whole bunch of wondrous settings. Really, all of these games did. They had a way of making the mundane seem fantastical. In the real world, back alleys were cramped, particularly dreary places, but in video games they were vast, mysterious wonderlands!

That's how I viewed them, anyway.

One of my best Renegade memories, and sources of embarrassment, occurred as a result of banter shared between my friend Dominick and I the first time we encountered the female gangsters in Mission 3. Upon seeing them, Dominick pointed at the screen and made the curious comment "Haha--hookers!" I'd never heard that term before, so I failed to catch his drift; my reaction could best be described as a "confused silence."

A couple of hours later, we went downstairs, to the kitchen, where our mothers were engaging in parting conversation. When we moved in close to them, I decided, suddenly, to interject with a question that was likely perceived as the most inappropriate non sequitur ever. I asked, "Mom--what's a 'hooker'?"

Her instant physical reaction--namely the way she tilted her head sideways and squinted uneasily, as if she were in the process of watching a trailer for a new Michael Bay Ninja Turtles film--told the whole story long before a single word could be uttered. Now, I don't remember what her explanation was or if she responded at all, but I certainly recall how the exchange terminated--how in following I endured the most painfully awkward slink-away-slowly moment ever.

Thanks again, Dom!

As it is in the case of Trojan, my more recent interactions with Renegade have been with the arcade original. It's been interesting spending time with the beat-'em-up genre's forefather--learning about the ways in which it established the mechanics and formulas that so many fighters in following would adopt--though I can't say that it's quite as endearing as its NES counterpart. It's better-looking and features superior sound design, sure (though, I still prefer the NES tunes' instrumentation), but it's also insanely difficult and not much fun. Much like Haunted Castle, Bionic Commando, the aforementioned Trojan, and a lot of other mid-80s releases, it speaks of an era when Japanese companies were still learning how to make enticing action-based coin-op games; it shows that they hadn't yet realized that an arcade game didn't need to be brutally difficult right from the start--that it works out best if in the opening moments the player is given some time to fiddle around with the controls and get a sense of how the game's systems function. "Let's acclimate 'em with an inviting, easy-to-dominate first stage, and then start ramping up the difficulty," someone should have said.

Instead, games of that ilk waste no time in flooding the screen with hyper-aggressive enemies; and naturally your attempts to mount offense invariably prove futile, because each and every one of the enemies' attacks have priority over yours.

Well, that's arcade Renegade in a nutshell. Here's a game where you constantly find yourself sandwiched between two sets of ceaselessly-in-your-face hoods who have absolutely no intent on ever letting you execute a successive strike or even a simple jump. It's plain obnoxious.

Such instances will surely come to form my lasting memory of the game, and the certainty of their repeating will likely become my reason for avoiding it in the future.

There are some key differences in how the game's action and stage-setup are presented: (1) All of a mission's action takes place in a single area; there are no transitions into train interiors, bars or buildings (save for in the final stage). (2) All of a stage's enemies are present onscreen from the very start, including the boss, though he or she won't become directly involved in the action until a certain number of goons have been dispatched. (3) There's a greater variety of enemy types, and the game is apt to mix them together. (4) And there can be up to six minor enemies on the screen at once, whereas in the NES version there could only be three.

Otherwise, it has a three-button setup and consequently a dedicated jump button. It doesn't contain the Mission-2 motorcycle-riding sequence (it's exclusive to the home versions), and the phase wherein the motorcycle-riding thugs attack is instead positioned as the stage's first segment. And it's devoid of 1up symbols (hearts, as they're styled in the NES version), so you can only earn extra lives by arriving at specific point-totals.

Everything else is pretty much the same or at least very similar.

All things considered, the most significant difference turns out to be the difficulty-level, which is extreme in comparison. I mean, this game is rough, man. If I hope to advance, I have to rely strictly on the cheap tactic of tossing enemies out of bounds (off of the subway platform and into the sea). Since Missions 3 and 4 are walled in, I have to instead abuse the rebounding jumpkick, which if I'm lucky connects about 50% of the time. It's good that the move reliably saps one unit from the bosses' health meter, but the downside is that bosses always find a way to land a simultaneous strike. So jumpkick abuse is only a viable tactic in the rare instances where you have more health than the boss.

I hate to say it, but arcade Renegade is simply unplayable, which is a shame, since it has all of the ingredients necessary to be a decent beat-'em-up. It looks and sounds nice, it controls well, it employs a lot of interesting mechanics, and it's loaded with soul. But none of that matters because the game is intent on disposing of you long before you can even realize that any of the aforementioned is true. It's just too damned difficult.

Granted, the NES version can't exactly be said to be immune from this type of criticism. It does, after all, feature two higher difficulties that come dangerously close to reaching a level of unplayability. Good luck beating Level-3, which can be particularly nightmarish thanks to a now-infuriating motorcycle sequence and an exponentially tougher Mission-4 labyrinth, which tasks you with enduring series of completely unfair multi-person boss gauntlets. You know--because asking a player to take out four Kims in two minutes is, like, really reasonable.

But at least you have the option to steer clear of its higher difficulties and stick to the sensibly arranged default difficulty. The arcade version gives you no such option. What it puts in front of you is all there is and all there will ever be.

The NES version wins the battle pretty easily. It's much more accessible, much more realized, and much more fun to play. I can say without hesitation that it's hands down the better product.

"But is it the best version of Renegade in existence?" you excitedly ask.

Well, friend, I can't declare such a thing at this point in time, since I haven't yet played any of the other console or computer versions of the game. I don't know when or if I'm going to, so you might have to wait a while for my answer. I can say that I've had my eye on the Master System version for a long, long time, so in some sense the gears are already in motion.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep on returning to the Renegade with which I grew up. To the one that provided my friends and I fun times, a ton of laughs, and a whole lot of memories. To the one that still brings me enjoyment to this day. It'll have a place with me as long as I live.

It is, as I've stated, an essential piece of my NES library, and I can also say that it's my favorite entry in the Hot-Blooded Tough Guy Kunio series. (Renegade, which is otherwise known as Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun, is of course the progenitor of the Kunio series. For the purpose of rendering it more palatable to American audiences, Technos' North American publishing partners removed all of its Japanese-centric elements and overlaid a Warriors-style motif, effectively severing the connection. Thanks to the Internet, we've since learned the truth about its origin).

Now, I can understand why a more-critical-minded person would dismiss Renegade as junk and furthermore conclude that I'm insane for speaking so highly of it. It's fine if you think that way. What's in your head ain't none of my business. But if it was an argument between us, I'd defend my stance and maintain that Renegade has clear value; it's rich with nostalgic vibes--the type that so wonderfully communicate the atmosphere of the the 80s-era gaming scene--and it has a lot to offer to those who are thirsty for short, satisfying action-game experiences. Give it a chance and you'll see.

If Linus of Charlie Brown fame could pick up a gamepad and give Renegade a go, I'm sure that he'd gaze at it intently, with a big smile on face, and in all sincerity say to us, "It's not such a bad little game."

And he'd be spot on.