From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Reflections: "Renegade III: The Final Chapter" (Commodore 64)

OK--now what the hell happened here?

Now, normally I use these opening paragraphs to set up the piece--to tell you about how I came across the game in question, what it is, and why I'm writing about it--but I have to be honest with you, man: I find that I'm not able to capably organize and express such thoughts when I'm dealing with this particular subject. For a number of reasons, I find it impossible to remain composed and clear-headed when I attempt to talk about Renegade III: The Final Chapter.

And if you're not sure why I've been rendered so incapable, then do yourself a favor: Take a look at that screenshot. I mean, just look at it. Now tell me something: What in God's name is going on in that image? What is any of that? Who's that stiff with the jeans and the leather vest? What in the world are Captain Caveman and Mini Godzilla doing there, and why are they attacking that fellow? Why have the involved parties gathered into a pre-historic-looking cave? And what does any of it have to do with Renegade? You know--the series about a street brawler who battles gangs of thugs in back alleys?

Those are the questions with which I fruitlessly grappled the first time I saw Renegade III in action. I couldn't even begin to comprehend what I was seeing. I was completely bewildered by what was being displayed on my screen.

Frankly, I'm still at a loss for words.

So as you may know, I'm quite a fan of the Renegade series. I have a great fondness for the NES version of Renegade, which I maintain is a fun, satisfying action game that has been unfairly maligned by the enthusiast community, and I enjoy playing its sequel, Target: Renegade, even though I have some issues with it. The Renegade series has been with me for a long, long time; we came together in 1989, and ever since then, it has continued to provide me reliably fun entertainment. I have nothing but love for the series. So you can understand why I was genuinely intrigued when I discovered that there was a third game in the series and that it was developed for the Commodore 64, one of my all-time-favorite video-game platforms.

I randomly learned of Renegade III while I was watching a Twitch stream (one of the chatters mentioned it, if I recall correctly), and immediately I started to wonder how it was that I'd never heard of a "Renegade III."

"I've been a fan of this series for over two decades," I thought to myself. "So how could this game's existence have gone unknown to me all this time?"

It didn't make any sense. "How could I have been so oblivious?" I continued to wonder.

But then I played it, and I understood why I never knew that there was a Renegade III.

I was so flummoxed by the experience, in fact, that I couldn't bring myself to give the game a second look. I decided that it wasn't worth the additional emotional trauma. And for the sake of maintaining my mental health, I took an extra step and did what I could to push Renegade III to the margin of my consciousness--did what I felt was necessary to prevent its memory from haunting me.

It's only now, four years later, that I've recovered enough to where I feel comfortable entertaining thoughts about the game. It's only now that I'm finding enough courage to finally face down Renegade III and get a clear sense of what it is and why it exists.

So let's do this! Let's put on our fighting gear, steel our wills, and engage this game head on!

 First let's try to make some sense out of all of this. Here's what the manual tells us: Apparently Renegade's girlfriend has been kidnapped by "forces from the future," who, in their final attempt to "thwart the martial arts hero," have taken their hostage back in time to the pre-historic age when cavemen and dinosaurs ruled the land. If Renegade is to rescue his beloved, we're told, he'll have to head back in time, locate her captors, and then chase them from there, advancing his way through history--from the ancient Egyptian era to the medieval period of knights and dragons and finally to the distant future. Along the way, he'll have to battle each era's inhabitants, all of which brandish weapons that are associated with the respective period. But you have to be hasty in your effort, the manual warns; if you tarry too long, Renegade will find himself trapped in history forever!

Now, at no point does the manual answer the most pertinent questions, like: How, exactly, is Renegade able to travel through time on his own? Why are "forces from the future" hatching a plan to transport themselves and the girlfriend back in time and then immediately turn around and head back to the future, where they already are? Why waste all that time and the energy luring Renegade to past eras when you can just transport him to the future and kill him there with your advanced weapons? Also, why are these "forces from the future" choosing to go to war with a street brawler from the 20th century? Is he like the John Connor of street brawlers who will one day lead other street brawlers to victory over emerging robot gangs? And, my God, what the hell does any of this have to do with Renegade?

 Our protagonist is Renegade (not "Mr. K," as he was named in the NES and Master System versions of Renegade), looking pretty much nothing like he did in previous series games. Rather, The Final Chapter's Renegade has the appearance of a musclebound 80s action hero who mistakenly visited the wardrobe room on the set of The Outsiders, which is to say that he bears no real resemblance to the scrappy, boyish Kunio-kun protagonists of yore. (For that matter, he doesn't bear any resemblance to the guy seen on the box and the title screen, either. Though, I won't get on the game's case for that, since, really, it's far from the only one to use misrepresentative artwork; that was just standard practice in the 80s and 90s.)

No--this Renegade has been completely Americanized, maybe intentionally--perhaps to finally complete Technos' effort to sever the connection between Renegade and the series from which it spawned. Or maybe it's that none of the developers at Ocean Software ever bothered to play a Renegade game and just, like, didn't give a damn. I can't say for sure.

Whatever the case, Renegade III's protagonist bears absolutely no resemblance to the one we remember from the previous games, and that, on its own, is instantly off-putting. It's the video-game equivalent of "same character, different actor," and as said phenomenon is oft to do, it breaks your immersion and prevents you from emotionally investing in the hero's journey, since you're never able to convince yourself that he's that same guy. Hell--even calling him the "same guy" feels like a stretch; nothing about how he looks or operates is faithful to the original.

 So because Renegade III focuses purely on time-travel, we abandon modern, archetypal settings like city streets, parking lots, subway platforms, back alleys and building interiors in favor of environments that are indicative of different historical eras. The mission takes us to four stages--four separate points in history: the pre-historic era, the ancient Egyptian era, the medieval period, and the distant future. The goal in each stage is the same: fight your way to the end and do so before the timer expires. This is surprisingly in line with what preceding Renegade games demand.

Though, the moment the action starts, you'll discover that the similarities end right about there.

Immediately you'll notice that Renegade III's is a weird tonal shift--that the previous games' harsh, mostly serious world has been fully supplanted by one that's entirely goofy. Most jarringly, the depictions of each era are highly caricaturized and look as though they were ripped directly from Hanna-Barbera cartoons, whose bright-and-cheery visual style is of course far removed from Renegade's cold and bleak presentation. I'm not saying that the previous games were "realistic," no, but they did have a clear edge to them. That's why it's so baffling that here, in Renegade III, nothing is presented seriously.

Naturally, all four of its stages are populated by cartoony, completely bizarre enemy characters. In Stage 1, as we saw earlier, we find ourselves fighting not proportionally accurate Neanderthals and large, menacing T-Rexes but instead farcically rendered cavemen and dino people that look like those you'd see in The Flintstones or in fantasy-themed video games like Bonk's Adventure and Joe & Mac.

And that's how it continues: In the following stages, you'll encounter mummies; the omnipresent Set--Egyptian god of confusion and disorder; knights (including, of course, the type that rides along on hobby horses); jesters; robots; aliens; and moon men. And if any of that sounds ridiculous to you, then, well, that's because it is--all of it.

If you were to play this game absent of context, you would never guess that you were playing a Renegade sequel; rather, you'd think that it was just another weirdly random 1980s computer game.

 None of this is meant to infer that Renegade III is a bad-looking game, no. It isn't. Honestly, it looks OK--better than your average Commodore 64 game. It's just that there are certain stretches during which it looks unsightly. A few of its environments (particularly those seen in the opening stage) are grainy in appearance, their texturing akin to pixelized cat vomit, and some others feature poorly chosen color-schemes that work to render them an unpleasant combination of loud and washed-out-looking. Those of their type can be hard on the eyes, especially when you view them while in motion.

Still, most of its environments are crisply rendered and nicely detailed. The same is true of its characters, who, for however strange they look, are cleanly textured and well-shaded. Also, they animate pretty well; all of their walking and movement animations are a standard four frames--the exact number needed to provide them fluid-looking motion--and they're quite expressive when they attack. And, generally, characters and objects are easily identifiable.

The game's technical performance is acceptable, though it has one potentially troublesome issue: It's possible to become permanently stuck on objects (like the skeletal remains in Stage 1) when you're pushing up against them. If such a thing happens, your only way out will be to let yourself die--let the enemies bludgeon you to death or wait for time to expire. Otherwise, there are times when Renegade's climbing animation starts on the wrong pixel and he basically ascends up solid wall; though, honestly, this amounts to nothing more than an awkward visual; it won't cause you any real inconvenience.

So yeah--Renegade III looks OK. It's neither a bad-looking nor a great-looking game. It's solidly better-than-average-looking. Nothing more, nothing less.

 And because Renegade III has little regard for series tradition, it eschews the series' hallmark 1950s greaser-style doo-wop music and replaces it with a highly synthesized trance/techno type. And, actually, a lot of it is pretty damn good. The game's opening theme is especially jammin'. It's a fully-formed piece of music complete with an intro, multiple verses, a bridge, and a fade out--a finely composed three-minute tune that's worth listening to in full. Surely it'll get you in the fighting spirit (which may not last long after you see what the game actually is, no, but still you'll appreciate what it does).

It's cool, also, that each stage theme has unique instrumentation that corresponds to the respective era's musical style. The pre-historic theme's percussion strains are created using bongos. The ancient Egyptian theme uses mizmars, arghuls and sistrums to create an appropriately haunting ambience. And the inspiriting medieval theme is composed using harps, psalteries, trumpets and other instruments we associate with the Middle Ages. If there's anything genuine about this game, it's these stage themes and how they work earnestly to provide flavor to their respective settings. (The distant future, disappointingly, simply recycles the game's main theme.)

Renegade III's is classic Commodore 64-style music and great for what it is. It's just not "Renegade" music. Never once will it bring to mind images of beating down thugs in train cars, parks and shady bars.

I'd like to tell you that Renegade's pummeling blows are punctuated with sharp-sounding, viscerally pleasing smashes, thuds and thwacks, but I can't because, well, Renegade III lacks for attack sounds. In fact, it lacks for sound effects of any kind. Its action is completely silent. Really, I can't blame the sound designer for that because the Commodore 64 wasn't capable of producing music and sound effects simultaneously--not without one interrupting the other. Still, that's yet another essential Renegade element that's missing from the package. I mean, you can't have a brawler without the sweet sounds of violence; that's just improper! And it suggests that maybe the C64 wasn't right platform for this type of game.

 Not surprisingly, the game's control scheme poses a problem. Renegade III, like all games in the series, has multiple fighting moves, but Commodore 64 input devices only have one functioning action button/key. So Renegade III necessarily becomes one of those games in which you have to execute moves by hitting the action button/key (the "fire" button, as the game's manual calls it) while applying directional input. Here's what it asks you to do: Press fire while stationary to punch. Press fire while holding left or right to deliver a shin kick. Press fire while holding down to deliver a low punch. Press fire while holding up to deliver a jumping front kick (rather than his usual jumping side kick). And press fire while holding diagonally upward to deliver a forward-moving variant of the jump kick that functions foremost as an attack, yes, but also serves as Renegade's means for jumping over deadly obstacles.

That's a lot of commands packed into a mere two inputs; we're talkin' about five moves assigned to a single button/key! And, predictably, this control scheme comes off as frustratingly unintuitive. There problem is that there's simply too much possibility for control conflict; in a game that has you moving in all directions, the heavy emphasis on directional input inevitably creates scenarios in which you repeatedly execute unintended maneuvers and become flustered as the hyper-aggressive enemies take advantage of your confusion and quickly beat you into submission.

I would complain that none of the classic Renegade moves made it in--that it doesn't make sense to exclude dash-punches; running and rebounding jump kicks; grabbing, grab-strikes and throws; and sit-down punches--but I know better than to do that. I know that their exclusion is for the best considering that (a) there are already too many moves packed into one input and (b) it's tough enough to become acclimated to the control scheme as is. The fact of the matter is that the Commodore 64 simply wasn't designed for beat-'em-ups and other similarly complex action games.

There are weapons you can pick up, yes, but they're only to be found in the first stage. Occasionally a slain cavemen will leave behind its clubs. If you pick it up, your stationary punch will be replaced by a hammering club-strike. You'll remain in possession of it for as long as you stay alive (there's no way to drop it) and thus potentially for the entire game (which is very unlikely to happen for reasons I'll list in a bit). Though, really, there's no actual advantage to possessing a club, since it has the exact same range and damage-output as the stationary punch, which is already a largely useless move. So its only purpose, then, is to introduce a slight visual alteration. And none of this matters, anyway, since chances are you'll never put a procured club to use.

Welcome to Renegade III, everyone!

 The most interesting thing about Renegade III is its style of level design: Its stages all for you to travel along on either of two separate planes. At certain points in stages, you're given the option to travel along on either a two-dimensional upper path or the lower three-dimensional space. Sometimes, much like in the Double Dragon games, switching between planes becomes mandatory, since doing so is the only way to work around obstacles--the type that are too wide or too tall to clear with a jump. So, for instance, if an entire section of the 3D plane's floor is comprised of spikes, you can safely pass over it by climbing up to the 2D plane (or transporting up to it, when you're in the future) and advancing from there.

When it's purely optional, you'll always want to take the 2D path, since being on a flat plane eliminates the possibility of being surrounded on all sides and consequently overwhelmed. And, generally, a few less enemies pile into the 2D paths. So the overall benefit to traveling a 2D path is that you take merely a large beating instead of an enormous one! Talk about an advantage! I mean, what other game is nice enough to give you that type of option? That's right: none of them. Only Renegade III can be so kind.

I gotta tell ya, man: I'll be amazed if anyone ever reads this far.

So let's just leave it at this: It's an interesting style of level design, yes, but it would have meant so much more had it been implemented into a better game.

 If you want to survive for long, you're going to have to learn how to effectively deal with the different enemy types. Each is susceptible to specific moves. You'll want to attack the shorter, smaller enemies (cavemen, baby mummies, flying creatures, and such) with shin kicks and low punches, which damage and repel them, and you'll want to attack the normal-sized enemies (anthropomorphic dinosaurs, knights, aliens, et al.) with your vertical and diagonal jump kicks, which kill them in one hit. Remember that smaller enemies are adept at avoiding jump kicks and larger enemies can absorb weak attacks like the low punch and shin kick and even power through them. If you use the wrong moves or lose focus because you've become discombobulated by the controls, the enemies will surely use that opportunity to swarm all around you and hastily pick you apart.

Though, even if you get all of that down, you'll still have no effective strategy for dealing with the game's most troublesome adversary: its erratic hit-detection. A lot of the time, characters' hitboxes can be anything from spotty to barely active. Enemies both large and small are constantly (a) jumping, flying and charging their way right through your attacks' hitboxes and (b) completing their attacks after you strike them, doing which is supposed to repel them regardless of which animation sequence they're currently in the middle of. So even if you do become adept at executing moves with perfect timing and technique, you're still going to be on the receiving end of plenty of damaging blows.

It doesn't help that Renegade III's enemies are absolutely relentless. There are some types that like to sneak in potshots and then zip off, yeah, but the majority of them prefer to remain present and endlessly hound you--ceaselessly charge toward you with unstoppable forward momentum. And when enemies come at you in packs and attack from all sides, at both high and low angles, forget it; you'll have neither the means nor the opportunity to fight them all off; you'll be sandwiched and subsequently overwhelmed. If this happens to you when you're on the more-restrictive 2D plane, you won't even be able to put up a struggle; no--the surrounding enemies' attacks will lock you in and place and keep you in that state until you're dead.

All you can do is hope that enemies don't pile up.

 And that, my friends, is what you do when you play Renegade III: hope to survive. You rush forward as quickly as you can while attempting to repel obnoxiously aggressive enemies that are going to beat the piss out of you regardless. And you have to rush through stages because they're considerably long and you have to clear them within five minutes, which works out to be barely enough time. Though, you're not able to make a b-line for the stage's endpoint because each stage contains a segment in which the screen locks in place and doesn't unlock until you've beaten a certain number of enemies (nine or ten of them). This is annoying because combat is the worst aspect of this, well, combat-based game; engaging in it is never fun.

Yet, still, you can't completely refrain from engaging in combat because doing so will cause you to suffer serious consequences. The reason: Renegade III also has an inexplicably dumb health system that ties your energy maintenance to your fighting performance. Here's how it works: Your health drains naturally over time, and the only way to sustain it and build it back up is to kill enemies, doing which replenishes bars of health. So, you see, you have to find time to engage with enemies; otherwise you'll never hold out. Though, you can't spend too much time fighting them because, also, the clock is ticking; if the time-limit expires, it's an instant Game Over.

Believe me: This game wants to kill you as quickly as it can, and it has many ways of doing so. It doesn't matter that (a) you pick up the action right from where you die or (b) have infinite continues. That's just the game trying to create the illusion of fairness. The truth is that it hates you. It doesn't want you to succeed. It doesn't want you to have a fun experience. No--it wants you to suffer greatly and then painfully express said suffering by writing a 5,000-word blog post that details every distressing, torturous moment of your experience and how you might never recover from it. It revels in that.

When you reach a stage's endpoint, the screen once again locks in place to create a mandatory fighting sequence in which you tangle with those from the stage's standard enemy set. And once you beat them all, that's it; the stage just abruptly ends. There's no boss battle. In fact, there are no boss characters to be found anywhere in the game--not even at the end. Rather, stage-completion remains a simple matter of taking out a horde of familiar-looking goons. That's all there is to it. The moment you finish them off, you get a congratulations message before being quickly ushered to the next stage.

And if by some miracle you're able to endure four stages of this madness, you'll be "rewarded" with one of the most insanely asinine endings you'll ever see. You'll just stare at it, completely stunned by its stupidity. It's too dumb to even talk about here.

The point is that Renegade III is a ridiculously difficult video game. I admit that I had to use an infinite-lives hack to get through it. I don't know how I would have done so otherwise. I don't know how anyone would (or why anyone would want to).

 I have to note that Renegade III is a multiplatform game. It was also released for the ZX Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC and the MSX. Though, this one is by far the best version of the game (for whatever that statement is worth). Each of the others has a detrimental technological constraint, be it the absence of color, a slow frame-rate, or a complete lack of music.

So if you decide, for some reason, that you desperately need Renegade III in your life, you'd be wise to seek out the Commodore 64 version of it. Because, really, it's the one that will cause you the least amount of suffering.

Closing Thoughts

 All I can say is that I remain bewildered by Renegade III. Even after analyzing it deeply, I'm still unable to comprehend its meaning. I'm still unable to get a sense of what it's trying to be. So all I'm left to do is struggle with the same questions: "What the hell is this game?" "Why does it exist?" "Why is it so tonally dissimilar to its predecessors?" "And what, exactly, does any of what's going on in this game have to do with Renegade, a series that was created as an homage to Bruce Lee films and one whose localization took heavy inspiration from The Warriors, a 1970s gang movie?"

I have no answers, dear reader.

Now, I don't have to wonder about who or what is responsible for this game, no. That information is readily available. Though, even if such information weren't available, it still would have become obvious to me that Renegade III was made not by Technos but instead an outside company.

That's what happened here: Renegade III was outsourced to Ocean Software, which was ubiquitous in the computer scene in the 80s and early 90s, having developed and published hundreds of games--mostly licensed fare, in which it specialized--for platforms such as the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC and the Atari ST. The company produced a number of critically acclaimed original works during that period, yeah, but it also flooded the market with shoddily developed licensed games and conversions.

And maybe that's the answer. Maybe it's that Renegade III was produced by an overstretched company that had neither the time nor the energy to learn about what Renegade actually was, and so it settled on taking the cheap and easy path--on busting out a premade game, altering its hero sprite to where he looked like a "tough guy" (because, of course, that's really all there is to a Renegade character), and slapping a Renegade III logo on it. It wasn't that the vision was bad, no; it's that there was no vision--that Renegade III was designed to be nothing more than assembly-line fodder. And maybe I'm giving it too much credit when I treat it as anything else.

I don't know, man.

 The only thing that's for sure is that Renegade III's values are irreconcilably at odds with the Renegade series' values--with its subject-matter, tone and spirit. I mean, I'm fine with a developer trying new things or attempting to take a series in a new direction, yeah, but what Ocean Software has done here isn't anything of the sort. Whatever you call it, it's simply a bridge too far. It's one that leads us directly to Crazy Town, which, it turns out, isn't a good setting for a Renegade game.

It leads to the creation of Renegade III, which is a Renegade game in name only.

Seriously--what was Technos thinking when it gave this product the OK? Did anyone at the company actually play it? Did any of Technos' executives give a damn that their most prominent legacy series was being treated this way?

Apparently not.

So what we're left with is an uncelebrated, largely forgotten Renegade game that one would be forgiven for thinking is an unofficial sequel. "This is just a weird hack that was probably thrown together in an day by some random Newgrounds user," its discoverers will surely think. And maybe that's exactly how Technos would like it to be.

I don't even have to wonder why it never came to the NES. I mean, sure--Nintendo allowed for its third-party partners to release a lot of junk on the platform, but would it have given its stamp to this one? Not a chance. No--Miyamoto and pals would have concluded, as I have, that Renegade III is a whole new level of bad.

 The only silver lining is that Renegade III: The Final Chapter is a short game. You can complete it in less than fifteen minutes. Though, in reality, you'll probably give up on it after about three. And if you decide, for some reason, to stick with it for even that long, you'll probably find yourself right about where I am now: staring defeatedly at a computer monitor, trying to figure out how it all went wrong--for both the Renegade series and your life in general.

Yeah, sure.