Urban Champion



Reviewed by Deathamster

Of today's game reviews, I once said, "Something is wrong when a reviewer gives both Urban Champion and Castlevania the same score." My friends, truer words have not been spoken. Urban Champion is one of the worst games I've ever had the displeasure of playing (yes, even far worse than E.T. or Deadly Towers, in my not-so-humble opinion). Seeing as how it's one of the earliest NES games, the only purpose I can think that it would serve is to let you use the controller while simultaneously having the impression that something is happening on the screen.

Urban Champion is a one-on-one fighting game. I call it that very loosely, as this game is an insult even to games like Shaq Fu and Rise of Robots, where at least some effort was put into the graphics, as opposed to nothing, like Urban Champion. You can only play as one guy who beats up a constant line of identical guys. You can punch, punch, punch, and do something that kind of looks like dodging. The control is extremely slow and awkward, which means it's not even fun manipulating your character, but that miraculously doesn't keep the game from also being far too easy. I had to purposefully lose to see what happens when you get a "Game Over".

Once you beat a character, he rolls offscreen, then you have to fight him again. Keep pushing him back a few screens and he'll fall into a manhole, then you win. After that the game loops, and you're either fighting the same guy in a different shirt, or an identical twin. Occasionally, a police car drives by, but this serves no purpose other than to slow down an already too-slow game even more, as both characters will back off and "play innocent" until it's done slowly driving by. Also, a woman will sometimes drop flower pots on you from above. Since your control is so slow, it's nearly impossible to avoid it if she appears right above you. Nintendo skimped so badly on the background graphics, that the only change from screen-to-screen is the sign on the building. Apparently, the same building can function as a bank, a barber shop, and a 5 and Dime store.

Urban Champion is devoid of anything, anything at all, that's good that there is practically no excuse for it coming from the same company that gave us great arcade games like Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, and Popeye. Not even a good classic tune could arise from this travesty. Even the argument "it was good for it's time" holds no water here, as some rather decent and far superior one-on-one fighters existed before or around the same time (like Konami's Yie Ar Kung-Fu and World Karate Championship for the Commodore 64.)

Even if you totally disagree with my review, before you think of giving Urban Champion a perfect score, ask yourself, "Is this game really as good as Punch-Out!!"?

Overall Score: 1/5 Stars

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