The Gamer's Quarter

[Lin Swimmer]

My review of this well known NES game that I wrote last night, and also my, "Hi, I like your magazine," post.

River City Ransom begins in frenzy. You're standing outside of what is presumably your own school, Cross Town High. Before you even take a moment to look around and get your bearings you can't help but notice two thuggish looking kids running straight at you. Immediately you're being punched in the face, knocked onto the ground. Your punches and kicks -the only actions available- are shockingly ineffective as your opponents block and lash back at you.

At some point one of two things will probably occur; the first is that you'll get your ass handed to you, have half your money rifled, and end up in the mall, too poor to buy any one of the seemingly endless supply of western and Japanese snacks and meals available. The second is that you manage to get a weapon in your hand, put weapon to head, and scrap your way forward inch by inch. To eventually be confronted with said overload of snacks.

Seriously. The game is comprised of kicking spectacular amounts of ass and eating like you're Kobayashi in Coney Island.

On the surface River City Ransom is a fairly simple game. The story is as stripped down as possible. Essentially it says, "Here is a silly premise for how two kids can be constantly attacked, and eventually assault a building."

You have attributes, which grow depending on the variety of food you choose, and can afford, to devour.

It's interesting. The food and eating are a major, essentially unavoidable aspect of the game. They provide a welcome break from the ceaseless, unrelenting attack, and a tangible way to sense your character grow slowly and subtly in a variety of ways. But the way you, the player, choose to go about dealing with the issue of food determines to a certain extent the kind of game you'll play.

If you want to be a hardcore nerd, and earn your, ahem, "retro-gamer credibility" you'll limit your choice of supplementary material to the easily found instruction manual. Here is the wisdom it has to offer.

"Try anything - you can make your own exciting game. Anything may be possible, but don't forget, you'll have to be strong."

Not much help with the task of feeding yourself, turning the game's malls into either complete randomness, which I believe could become frustrating, or you decide to inventory everything, which also sounds frustrating.

The manual is a good read, however. Maybe when I was nine years old keeping a handwritten inventory, by town and store, of every item in the game would have been a good way to spend a chunk of time.

Check online and read the lists and you'll be more inclined to strategize. You'll learn to get the most out of the money you manage to build up, not a task I found to be easy, and help yourself survive for longer stretches of time. If this sounds familiar, it should. It's a fairly common and well known design trait in Japanese role playing games like Final Fantasy. River City Ransom is pretty far from that. Money replaces experience points and levels in River City Ransom. Money is the only tangible way to progress in the game, aside from actually beating it. Money is also the game's only method of punishing you. Being defeated utterly in a fight results in your money being cut in half and depositing you in a mall. No lives, no continues, no game over screens. Yet having your only resource capable of strengthening yourself stripped away results in a different approach to the strategy of the game, and ultimately what I came to love about it.

Outside of your stats and your money and your numbers is one thing, and one thing only. Your skills.

You have to learn to excel to proceed. Perhaps River City Ransom's difficulty level is naturally in my particular sweet spot. Keep in mind, though. This is an 8-bit Nintendo game. Despite its understanding sympathy in regard to not needlessly punting you back to the beginning, it is still a very difficult game.

After suffering a string of hasty defeats and losing my entire nest egg, I deciding that I'd had enough. I went back to the first screen, and said, "I won't pick up a weapon. From this point on, I'm in training."

This was probably the only moment in playing that I craved the modern gamer's ability to physically alter some small, cosmetic aspect of my avatar on screen. The ability to do this traces back through the overwhelming popularity of the PC game The Sims, designed by Will Wright, and has gained further popularity in the Grand Theft Auto series.

I wanted to shave his head, like a monk.

All my fights after this were magical. I learned to watch my opponents, to mimic them, to do some of their moves better than they could while surrendering others as being less effective. I became a tank. Eventually I did pick up a weapon, but by then it was a philosophical choice. It was a banner of my character's, and of course my own, school of fighting. A stone.

I would carry this stone, and greet all incoming opponents by beaning them in the head with it. Then I'd pick it up and do it again. Thousands of times. It was never not fun.

Sometimes I'd miss, but this never made me sad. That was simply when I'd get more training.

The inevitable happened. I got good, and beat it.

When I beat it the second time with the other character, little changed. I went through enlightened the whole way. The stone was discipline. I intentionally kept myself from buying certain techniques because they didn't fit into the fighting style I'd designed. Incidentally, at this point my avatar should have been wearing cowboy boots. I bought those. You will too.

The fact that I could even do that would seem to signify that beneath River City Ransom's supposed simplicity there is surprising depth.

For me, though, when I think of it, I picture myself, carrying a small stone. I remember.

[Cycle]

Well since apparently no one else is going to do it, welcome to the forums!
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[helicopterp]

It was your turn, anyway, Cycle.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Harveyjames]

Welcome to the forums!

[bleak]

Welcome welcome.
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[Lin Swimmer]

Sorry to be so inept at basic web etiquette, if such a thing could be said to exist.

Thanks for the welcome.

My name's Ryan. I've been reading TGQ since about November. At that point I was pretty much fed up with video games in general. What I read in the magazine inspired me to download some emulators and a handful of ROMS, and Bob's your uncle, you know? So though my post probably comes off as borderline spam, it's actually my paying homage at TGQ's altar, you know? I wrote this for you guys specifically. I would have submitted it as a potential article, but I wasn't really sure if another issue is pending or not. Regardless, the version I posted to my blog has images embedded, so I guess that's the final format, if you want to check it out. (The link is in my profile below.)

I mailed Raina Lee inquiring about buying an issue of 1-Up Zine, which looks awesome, but she hasn't written back. Anyone know if that's kaput, or if there's a place in NYC to pick it up?

Also, I apologize if it takes me a while to respond to someone's post. I'm in finals hell until the 19th.

Thanks again, everybody.

[Shapermc]