There’s a knack to romanticize the city as the urban sprawl it’s often portrayed as in movies, its rain-soaked streets illuminated by neon signs, young punks and businessmen alike rolling between towering buildings in their overtuned and highly polished vehicles, femme fatales with switchblades in their garter belts looking for their next mark. It’s dangerous yet alluring.
This is the sort of aesthetic that City Hunter captured in its manga and anime forms, focusing on Ryo Saeba, a sweeper known for cleaning up the streets of Tokyo and his penchant for beautiful women. It’s humorous, a little cheeky, action-packed, and always fun. The game from 1990 for the PC Engine (or TurboGrafx-16 over here in the US) however? Not so much.
Spoilers: I won
Thanks to Sunsoft and Red Art Games, City Hunter is seeing the light of day again with a fresh port and some extras for hardcore fans of the property. On the surface, this is great! Bringing older, more obscure games that aren’t tied to big Western properties like Marvel is something that needs to happen more often. While I won’t ever knock or fault a company for putting in the hard work to accomplish these feats that usually involve licensing and legal hells I wouldn’t wish on anyone, we’re here to be critical of the game itself, and wow. Do I have a lot of critiques!
City Hunter is unassuming enough. It’s a 16-bit side scroller action game with an anime aesthetic that beckons comparisons to classics like Rolling Thunder or even something like Kung Fu. Some enemies rush you from the sides, some shoot some sort of harmful projectile at you, and others get up close in an attempt to turn you into a kebab. Throughout four marginally distinct missions, you’re tasked with doing a number of convoluted objectives in service to a greater goal story-wise, but it’s really just about reaching the end and defeating a boss. Simple enough, right?
This is the paradox of City Hunter. While the premise and general gameplay is simple, the way it flows is a little player unfriendly. You traverse samey halls, go up and down staircases, and enter unmarked doors in a somewhat non-linear fashion, expected to find where to go next at every turn, and not in the whimsical explorative way. Many doors are dead ends, but respites from the purple-suited goons and paramilitary mercs trying to bruise the Stallion of Shinjuku’s handsome face. It quite literally is a guessing game.
There’s stage hazards that would make Japan’s version of OSHA throw a fit.
It comes just short of being frustrating. It’s not like you’re dropped into a hall of mirrors and asked to navigate around, this game is pretty funneled and focused all things considered, but the execution still makes it not feel as fun as it could have been. Additional, even vague identifiers or maybe an archaic map system would have been helpful here, but nope! Just your brain fried like Spam from years of social media expected to remember what door goes where and when to go to it once you meet certain requirements like obtaining a key or other MacGuffin. Most will either love or hate this aspect – I was in the middle leaning just slightly negatively on it.
What’s more is when you go into a room, you usually have to leave at some point. Well, in many areas, you’re bound to step out the door and get jumped by enemies, sometimes unavoidably taking damage. Your health bar is generous on Normal difficulty, but think about it: entering several doors on your first playthrough and not knowing exactly what to do only to leave and get shanked by some mafia prick? I’d rather not, I do not consent! Luckily, this re-release has a rewind feature so you can unpuncture your lung and try to get the jump on your foes by firing your service weapon wildly as soon as you leave a room (that law enforcement training really pays off).
Speaking of consent, due to the nature of this game, a lot of the charm and comedy from City Hunter‘s other media is lost with dialogue being very flat and no real cutscenes to speak of. One thing that isn’t lost though is the perverted nature of it. Ryo’s a naughty boy or sex criminal depending on how you look at it and that translates into the game with four findable women in various states of undress. Don’t worry, it’s more ecchi than hentai, but still a rare thing to see in an old video game like this. Find the door in each mission with them behind it and you’ll get a health refill for your trouble as Ryo wordlessly reacts bashfully. You even get a trophy for finding all of them. Yay?
There’s flashes of sarcasm and personality in the dialogue, but not much more.
Technically speaking, this re-release is barebones, but it even falls short in some unexpected areas. There’s a CRT filter if you’re feeling nostalgic, ways to stretch (or not stretch) the game screen on your display (Pixel Perfect gang over here), but what’s bafflingly missing is a way to change or remap your controls. I was astonished when I went to the controls menu, saw the button to shoot your weapon was circle and you change your weapon with the touch pad on the PS5 DualSense controller with no way to remap them. No presets, no customs, no nothing. L1 and R1 aren’t even used for anything, neither are square or triangle. Wild. At least double map an action like shoot to square!
As far as bonuses, big-time fans might be elated with what little is on offer. You can play the game in three modes, including a Hard difficulty that looks ridiculous. There’s a 3D interactable original game box and card in the bonus menu to spin around and zoom in on, along with the original Japanese game manual you can flip through. Another tab has several stills from the City Hunter anime, and the final tab houses a music player that has all of the songs from the game with a special added treat of the anime’s outro song “Get Wild” by the band TM Network. It ain’t much, but it’s serviceable. I was hoping for clips or maybe even a free episode or two of the anime, but that’s probably a whole new layer of bureaucratic trouble Red Art Games didn’t want to delve into; fair enough.
I’m going to put my Morpheus shades on for this next part so I can ask: what if I told you that this entire cult classic package with a mid game and boilerplate features and extras costs 25 United States dollars? To me, it doesn’t add up. City Hunter as a game didn’t age well, it’s completed in an hour or two, and one thorough (or even meandering in my case) playthrough yields almost all trophies. There’s a clear gap between raw entertainment potential and monetary value expected for the experience, and it’s disappointing when stacked against other similar ports from recent years.
This shot is so cool, I wish City Hunter was real.
I love when more obscure games like this get a second shot at life. I support game preservation even when the products are lacking or aren’t well loved. With City Hunter, the fact of the matter is this package is for diehards only at the price point it’s set at. We at SmashPad have covered three other retro game re-releases and collections this month alone, each with more games per purchase that hold up better and are priced lower than this one. That alone ensures this release pales in comparison.
With all this in mind, I can’t generally recommend City Hunter, but if you do want to see what TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine gaming had to offer by means of a cult product and you have a surplus of disposable income, have at it. Being an anime fan interested in the history of the medium will certainly help justify it as well. Other than that, caution is advised.
Editor’s Note: A block of text was repeated during the copywriting phase and wasn’t caught until after the review was published. We’ve since corrected the error.
With all this in mind, I can’t generally recommend City Hunter, but if you do want to see what TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine gaming had to offer by means of a cult product and you have a surplus of disposable income, have at it.
There’s a knack to romanticize the city as the urban sprawl it’s often portrayed as in movies, its rain-soaked streets illuminated by neon signs, young punks and businessmen alike rolling between towering buildings in their overtuned and highly polished vehicles, femme fatales with switchblades in their garter belts looking for their next mark. It’s dangerous yet alluring.
This is the sort of aesthetic that City Hunter captured in its manga and anime forms, focusing on Ryo Saeba, a sweeper known for cleaning up the streets of Tokyo and his penchant for beautiful women. It’s humorous, a little cheeky, action-packed, and always fun. The game from 1990 for the PC Engine (or TurboGrafx-16 over here in the US) however? Not so much.
Spoilers: I won
Thanks to Sunsoft and Red Art Games, City Hunter is seeing the light of day again with a fresh port and some extras for hardcore fans of the property. On the surface, this is great! Bringing older, more obscure games that aren’t tied to big Western properties like Marvel is something that needs to happen more often. While I won’t ever knock or fault a company for putting in the hard work to accomplish these feats that usually involve licensing and legal hells I wouldn’t wish on anyone, we’re here to be critical of the game itself, and wow. Do I have a lot of critiques!
City Hunter is unassuming enough. It’s a 16-bit side scroller action game with an anime aesthetic that beckons comparisons to classics like Rolling Thunder or even something like Kung Fu. Some enemies rush you from the sides, some shoot some sort of harmful projectile at you, and others get up close in an attempt to turn you into a kebab. Throughout four marginally distinct missions, you’re tasked with doing a number of convoluted objectives in service to a greater goal story-wise, but it’s really just about reaching the end and defeating a boss. Simple enough, right?
This is the paradox of City Hunter. While the premise and general gameplay is simple, the way it flows is a little player unfriendly. You traverse samey halls, go up and down staircases, and enter unmarked doors in a somewhat non-linear fashion, expected to find where to go next at every turn, and not in the whimsical explorative way. Many doors are dead ends, but respites from the purple-suited goons and paramilitary mercs trying to bruise the Stallion of Shinjuku’s handsome face. It quite literally is a guessing game.
There’s stage hazards that would make Japan’s version of OSHA throw a fit.
It comes just short of being frustrating. It’s not like you’re dropped into a hall of mirrors and asked to navigate around, this game is pretty funneled and focused all things considered, but the execution still makes it not feel as fun as it could have been. Additional, even vague identifiers or maybe an archaic map system would have been helpful here, but nope! Just your brain fried like Spam from years of social media expected to remember what door goes where and when to go to it once you meet certain requirements like obtaining a key or other MacGuffin. Most will either love or hate this aspect – I was in the middle leaning just slightly negatively on it.
What’s more is when you go into a room, you usually have to leave at some point. Well, in many areas, you’re bound to step out the door and get jumped by enemies, sometimes unavoidably taking damage. Your health bar is generous on Normal difficulty, but think about it: entering several doors on your first playthrough and not knowing exactly what to do only to leave and get shanked by some mafia prick? I’d rather not, I do not consent! Luckily, this re-release has a rewind feature so you can unpuncture your lung and try to get the jump on your foes by firing your service weapon wildly as soon as you leave a room (that law enforcement training really pays off).
Speaking of consent, due to the nature of this game, a lot of the charm and comedy from City Hunter‘s other media is lost with dialogue being very flat and no real cutscenes to speak of. One thing that isn’t lost though is the perverted nature of it. Ryo’s a naughty boy or sex criminal depending on how you look at it and that translates into the game with four findable women in various states of undress. Don’t worry, it’s more ecchi than hentai, but still a rare thing to see in an old video game like this. Find the door in each mission with them behind it and you’ll get a health refill for your trouble as Ryo wordlessly reacts bashfully. You even get a trophy for finding all of them. Yay?
There’s flashes of sarcasm and personality in the dialogue, but not much more.
Technically speaking, this re-release is barebones, but it even falls short in some unexpected areas. There’s a CRT filter if you’re feeling nostalgic, ways to stretch (or not stretch) the game screen on your display (Pixel Perfect gang over here), but what’s bafflingly missing is a way to change or remap your controls. I was astonished when I went to the controls menu, saw the button to shoot your weapon was circle and you change your weapon with the touch pad on the PS5 DualSense controller with no way to remap them. No presets, no customs, no nothing. L1 and R1 aren’t even used for anything, neither are square or triangle. Wild. At least double map an action like shoot to square!
As far as bonuses, big-time fans might be elated with what little is on offer. You can play the game in three modes, including a Hard difficulty that looks ridiculous. There’s a 3D interactable original game box and card in the bonus menu to spin around and zoom in on, along with the original Japanese game manual you can flip through. Another tab has several stills from the City Hunter anime, and the final tab houses a music player that has all of the songs from the game with a special added treat of the anime’s outro song “Get Wild” by the band TM Network. It ain’t much, but it’s serviceable. I was hoping for clips or maybe even a free episode or two of the anime, but that’s probably a whole new layer of bureaucratic trouble Red Art Games didn’t want to delve into; fair enough.
I’m going to put my Morpheus shades on for this next part so I can ask: what if I told you that this entire cult classic package with a mid game and boilerplate features and extras costs 25 United States dollars? To me, it doesn’t add up. City Hunter as a game didn’t age well, it’s completed in an hour or two, and one thorough (or even meandering in my case) playthrough yields almost all trophies. There’s a clear gap between raw entertainment potential and monetary value expected for the experience, and it’s disappointing when stacked against other similar ports from recent years.
This shot is so cool, I wish City Hunter was real.
I love when more obscure games like this get a second shot at life. I support game preservation even when the products are lacking or aren’t well loved. With City Hunter, the fact of the matter is this package is for diehards only at the price point it’s set at. We at SmashPad have covered three other retro game re-releases and collections this month alone, each with more games per purchase that hold up better and are priced lower than this one. That alone ensures this release pales in comparison.
With all this in mind, I can’t generally recommend City Hunter, but if you do want to see what TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine gaming had to offer by means of a cult product and you have a surplus of disposable income, have at it. Being an anime fan interested in the history of the medium will certainly help justify it as well. Other than that, caution is advised.
Editor’s Note: A block of text was repeated during the copywriting phase and wasn’t caught until after the review was published. We’ve since corrected the error.
by David Rodriguez
