Bad Street Brawler

Developer: Beam Software
Year: 1987

I knew nothing about BSB going into this, and I was expecting a sort of corny side-scrolling beat-em-up. What I got was a side-scrolling beat-em-up with a lot of personality that had Laura and I hitting the reset button well past the time that we'd committed to play the game. We brawled on Bad Street till the breakadawn, or 10:20, which was still way past my bedtime.

On its face, BSB is a pretty straightforward puncher on rails -- not even any vertical movement, so really, you're moving and punching and kicking. There are about a half-dozen enemies in the first 2 levels, but one of them is a monkey who whips bananas at you, so there's that.

What keeps BSB fresh as you move from level to level is the fact that the A and B buttons that you're mashing actually do new things on every level. There's a sweep kick in one level, and a stooge smash in another. At one point, A grabs someone and trips them, and then later, it's a flying kick. At the beginning of each level, it tells you what your moves are, and lets you practice them against a punching bag. It's a really cool feature, and figuring the new moves out, along with the desire to see what you get next, is a real motivator.

So in the end, it's a puncher. And I like the fact that in videogames, 'beat-em-up' is the accepted name for an entire genre of play. Bad Street Brawler doesn't have a story, and you can't jump, but it's a fun side-scroller with the twist of a variety of available moves, and you could do worse.

Rating: 7/10 Pretty good, with some originality and a sense of humor.
Advice: Stooge smash sounds fun, but the windup takes so long that the midget's just going to hit you with a bomb if you try it.
Best Moment: Holy Crap!! TWO gorillas!