There are some terrible Street Fighter II clones out there. It was bound to happen; after all developers far and wide were trying to cash in on the phenomenon. There’s bound to be some stinkers here and there. I’m very open minded when it comes to these games because I’m a huge fan of the fighting genre. Critics are generally too hard on low budget fighters from this era. Nothing could have prepared me for Dangerous Streets on the Amiga CD32. Screenshots made it look cheesy but serviceable, but I dove in headfirst and spent an afternoon with this one. Dangerous Streets is awful, terrible, and no good.
I couldn’t for the life of me find any kind of story. You have eight different fighters participating in some kind of last man standing style of tournament. It’s very basic, but that’s all I’ve got. Either way let’s move on to the character roster because that’s what really counts with a game like this. Dangerous Streets immediately falls flat on its face here. It’s all trash. The character designs, concepts… all of it. It’s all bad. Just imagine the joke characters (the ones thrown in for just a laugh) in every cheap fighting game. That’s the entire roster here. You have a goblin looking guy, Hollywood based fellow, dominatrix, greaser, etc. Just imagine the worst tropes all coming together.
A bad roster is a kiss of death for a fighting game. Let’s pretend for a second that the game isn’t a complete dumpster fire in this regard and check out the gameplay. It’s even worse than the characters. Dangerous Streets is a typical looking 2D fighting game. Each character has light, medium, and heavy attacks which include punches and kicks. There’s also special moves unique to each of them. These include projectile attacks like fireballs, and flips which get you around the stage. That’s not so bad right? Well, on paper it’s not. In execution Dangerous Streets is absolutely painful.
The first major issue is that the hit detection is the worst I’ve ever experienced in a fighting game. You can punch and kick all you want but even when you’re right next to the foe you’ll miss. A lot. You’re clearly hitting the opponent but the game doesn’t register it half the time. Even when it does the character barely reacts. I’ve never played a fighting game where your foe isn’t knocked back when you strike them. The only way I was able to tell that my attacks were connecting was via the sound effects, and even then, it’s impossible to discern your strikes versus the foe. I’ve played no other fighter where I couldn’t tell who was being hit, but here you have it.
This brings me to the life-bar. This is a very basic concept; you watch it drain on you and your foe and can tell who is winning based upon the health of the two characters. Dangerous Streets decided to re-invent the wheel. Instead of a bar or meter your character’s life is determined by the number of stars remaining on the bottom of the screen. Each hit doesn’t destroy a star, and it instead takes a lot of damage before they go dark. When your opponent has no stars remaining you win. There’s also some weird point system I was never able to grasp. You seem to gain points, and lose them. I suppose this is based on how well you’re doing, but honestly, I can’t be sure. Why not a simple life bar? It would have made life so much easier.
With everything in place you’re only going to succeed by button mashing. I hate to say it, because I can usually find some means of strategy in a fighting game, but it’s true. Special moves are not dependable here. Furthermore, the directional pad determines what kind of attack you do based on what you’re holding while pressing an attack button. Maybe the system is just too complicated for me, but I was shocked to find that pressing up doesn’t make you jump. Instead it’s a kick button. Furthermore the controls are just generally sluggish. Dangerous Streets suffers some serious input lag. That, paired with the poor hit detection, makes this one almost unplayable. There’s not a lot of sense to be made from the controls, and I doubt I’m that it’s just my lack of skill.
The graphics are also bad. Scratch that, they’re absolutely terrible. The character designs, as I’ve already mentioned, are horrendous. There’s nothing appealing about any of the fighters visually. It honestly all looks like something from a trashy Atari Lynx game. To make matters worse they have very few frames of animation. In this regard it’s worse even than the original Street Fighter. You’d think with a 32-bit console the developers would be able to at least make the game run smoothly. That’s clearly not the case. The backgrounds are okay, but the trashy industrial look does Dangerous Streets no favors. The soundtrack is slightly better with somewhat catchy themes and CD quality audio. It’s all ruined by the absolutely worst voice acting I’ve ever heard. Prepare yourself because you’ll be shocked at just how bad it is.
