Cover art by Teal Sather.
We’re back again with our monthly feature for @PIZZAPRANKS‘ Indiepocalypse, with a walk down Bad Street Brawler on NES! It’s a game which we’ve covered before here on the Bad Game Hall of Fame, but certainly still a title that I personally find fascinating and worthy of further examination. In our piece for Indiepocalypse, we cover a couple of the game’s unique mechanics and design decisions, which are perhaps worthy of consideration / copycatting by modern day beat ’em up developers? Perhaps not, but that still won’t stop me from considering the contemporary possibilities!
I guess what I find most compelling about Bad Street Brawler is… how unapologetically Bad Street Brawler it all is? Beam were given the unenviable task of cleaning up their act after an edgelordy Speccy take on the game, and decided to sugarcoat it all to the point of tooth decay. If nothing else, there’s a lesson to be learned in being willing to pivot your design to something completely antithetical to what you once envisioned for it; in the event that a publisher might demand it, or if you should determine late into a game’s development that your original tone isn’t connecting as intended. One should never be afraid to play things on the sillier side, or to realize that going the route of “total farce” with your design can potentially serve as therapeutic. At the very least, Bad Street Brawler has managed to remain memorable for all these years on the back of its indulgence in goofiness — where a similar game with underwhelming mechanics and a lack of amusing aesthetic would likely wallow in obscurity. To that point: None of the previous iterations of Bad Street Brawler made much impact on the industry, or see mention too often in the history books. It’s the NES version that has stood the proverbial test of time, even if recollections of it seem to typically involve the words “bad” or “garbage.”
My personal highlight from this month’s games bundled in with the issue is Jeremy Couillard’s Fuzz Dungeon: A surreal bit of multi-genre mashup, with a striking aesthetic that immediately reminded me of Dario Alva’s work for 100 gecs. It also features a plot centered around a “sasquatch sex amulet,” which serves as a funny bit of coincidence with the sasquatch simulation game we just recently covered here on the site. In any case, this game definitely has me curious to check out more of Couillard’s works, and gets a strong recommend from me to those of you who don’t mind games on the wilder side. As always though, I’d generally recommend checking the entire lot of games included in the bundle, for a range of diverse games from the itch.io indie scene.
