Random Reviews – Urban Champion is fucked up.
Urban Champion (NES, 1986, Nintendo)
Ever heard of Urban Champion?
Probably not.
Well, Urban Champion was one of Nintendo’s early NES games (you know, the ones that had little categories that indicated the genre). While Nintendo is now known for the awe-inspiring whimsy of games like Zelda and Mario, when the NES first came out, they emphasized creating straightforward simulations of sports just as much, and Urban Champion falls into this category. What sport is it simulating?
Street fighting. And I’m not talking hadokens and flash kicks. I’m talking about hardcore, American-style, brutal, “you just stole my last crack rock, I’m gonna smear your face in broken glass and leave your bleeding, mutilated corpse under the overpass” street fighting.
Well.. I mean, it’s not that gory in-game. But I’m sure it would have been if they had the capability to do so.
There’s really not much to Urban Champion. The objective of the game is to facefuck your opponent with your fist until he ends up falling into a sewer. That sounds like a pretty bad fate, and punching someone into a sewer is a pretty good way to win a moral victory. But this isn’t Revenge of the Nerds. Your guy doesn’t give a shit about humiliating a jock. He cares about beating his green haired twin to death as brutally as possible. Trust me, he’s better off in the sewer. If that sewer wasn’t there, you would simply beat him until he ends up a twitching, bloody mass with severe brain damage.
Or, you would, if the goddamn 5-0 wasn’t always on your ass. If you stay in front of one store for too long, the owners will call the cops. When this happens, you drop your chunk of cinderblock and act like you just happen to be standing on the opposite end of the block from your exact double. Fortunately, you apparently live in Detroit, because the cops just drive on by, assuming that two conspicuous, brutally beaten guys who match the description phoned in by dispatch have just fallen down a flight of stairs, presumably into a pile of razor wire. They will, however, come back when your charge goes from “assault and battery” to “1st degree murder”; right before you can deliver the finishing blow, a police car pulls up and hauls your opponent away. This is a rough town, and it’s survival of the fittest out there. If you can’t survive a brutal, unprovoked beating, your ass is safer in jail.
Score: 5/10
Ehhhh.
Urban Champion is decently fun for a little while, but it winds up feeling more like a minigame than anything else. It’s probably the most shallow game available for the NES, and considering the competition for that title, that’s a pretty bold statement. In this age of free online games, Urban Champion could probably be fairly successful, especially if Nintendo applied a little more of its shine and wax service to it. But in the way it was presented, at the time it was presented, and most importantly at the price it was presented, there’s no way to call Urban Champion anything but a ripoff.
But, since I’m trying to review it in a current context, I can’t call it abysmal. When you aren’t paying for it, it’s pretty fun, albeit for just a little while. In particular, the 2-player mode can be pretty entertaining. Just don’t expect more than 5-10 minutes of fun out of it. And don’t be surprised if, upon losing, you end up murdering your best friend over a half-empty can of beer that’s been sitting in a trash can for 4 days. After all, life imitates art. Just ask Jack Thompson.
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