You'll riot!

DUD OF THE MONTH COLLECTION!
RIOT ZONE
(Hudson Soft/Westone, 1992)

Introduction and Story:

Holy crap, I love my Duo collection but you turbo fans better look away because this is going to get real nasty. Riot Zone may sound like a cool name but this is nothing more a really sad Final Fight clone (funny, because that was a really sad Double Dragon clone) where you control one of two losers named Tony or Hawk (kind of reminds me of a much better skateboarding game, eh?) on a mission to save one of the guy's kidnapped girlfriend from the Dragon Zone street gang. The character here named Hawk looks exactly like Cody from Final Fight and that's only one of several similarities between the two games. It is so bad Capcom should have sued their asses and save the world from this crappy rip off!

The game is real simple and real boring: you beat up wave after wave of the same generic bad guys ranging from the standard underdressed (yet not sexy) girls to the ugly fat dudes over and over again until you make it to one of six goofy bosses. Sadly, even though there are times when you have to fight up to three gang members at once and this is a story about two friends trying to save a girl, this is NOT a two player game for what ever reason. I know it would have been hard to support two players on the screen at the same time since the characters are so big but it still sucks especially when older games like Double Dragon would let you play together no problem. Wait it gets worse. If that wasn't pathetic enough here are no weapons to pick up here either (even though a lot of enemies can attack you with them) so you have to deal with very basic hand to hand action and it gets very dull and very repetitive.

The game play and bottomline:

Riot Zone not only loses a lot of points for not only ripping off Final Fight's visuals but it loses even more for not doing a very job at it either. Although you're traveling to several different locations like back alleys and Japanese temples, at the Casino stage for example: there are players at the blackjack table that don't seem to care at all that I'm beating up a half naked girl here and it just does to show you the game is just as bored as you are. The other environments are not that impressive and the game gets off to a bad start with some awful rain effects in the first scene. Another problem with the game is the cheap animation. I wanted to like the Tony character in the game since he's Native American but his walk just looks so stupid.

Hudson Soft also half assed on the sound as well even though this is on a CD system. The background music isn't too bad but there is one bad sound effect where once you strike an enemy with a good hit it sounds like loud shot gun going off. Talk about unrealistic and you'll be hearing it in most of the game! Sure, this title has a few badly animated cinemas that look like they could have been done on a Turbo Grafx card but there isn't even any actors doing the voices for the boring text here. This is a CD-ROM game, right?

OK, the controls are easy enough master and beating up bad guys is actually fun at first but the massive amount of problems are too numerous to avoid. The backgrounds are not interactive, there is no voice acting, the two heroes don't feel that different, and worse of all the game is way just too easy so you can beat it in one afternoon if you have the patience. There is no replay value at all. If you are that desperate to play a Final Fight type game on your Turbo Duo you better get some help because you are pretty screwed up in the head.

Here is my 15 minute video review of Riot Zone too!
Warning: there is some swearing in it:

Conclusion:
Uncommon Duo game RIOT ZONE overall rating: 25/100 Find Riot Zone on eBay here! For 1 player only* graphics: 2/10 sound: 2/10 gameplay: 1/10 replay: 0/10 -StarSoldier1 (Ryan Genno) 2007 other Duds of the Month