Riot Zone attempted to be what Final Fight was to the Super Nintendo and Streets of Rage was for the Sega Genesis. Instead of being released for either of those consoles however it was stuck on the Turbografx. Not just that, but the super expensive CD hardware. Even if it was a great game there’s little chance anyone would have played it because of this. Thing is, it’s not. Riot Zone is a mediocre beat em up game that’s virtually unknown by even retro enthusiasts. Today we’re going to take a look at this release, but be warned that it isn’t going to be pretty. Here we go.
The introductory sequence is the highlight of the entire package. I only wish that it was fully voiced for more entertainment. The main character is a police officer named Hawk who has chased a villain named Bossman into a dangerous part of New York City overrun by criminals called the DragonZone. The police chief denies his request for the police to give chase, and so he turns in his badge and gun and sets out by himself with only his friend Tony to help. The dialogue is laughably bad and rife with spelling errors. I enjoyed it a great deal.
Riot Zone is a typical beat em up of its era. You view the action from the side and can move both up/down, and right/left as you fight off incoming enemies. You can punch, jump, kick and perform a special attack with both buttons pressed at the same time. There’s a certain amount of re-tread material in every beat ’em up game but Riot Zone is on a whole other level in this regard. Nothing here is original; everything was borrowed from other games There’s nothing here the developers came up with to make Riot Zone their own. You would think that a title borrowing heavily from the likes of Final Fight and Streets of Rage would be good but somehow they messed it up.
The first indication that the developers were lazy comes from the fact that the main character here is basically a copy in design (and gameplay) of Axel from Streets of Rage. As far as gameplay goes it’s your basic brawler. You get in range of an enemy you drain their life bar with punches and kicks. Your character can also jump (and attack mid-air) and even perform a super attack which hits all nearby foes (but it drains a portion of your life bar). You move forward in the stage until more enemies approach, and you can only continue once they’re defeated. Rinse, lather, and repeat until you reach the boss character at which point you move on to the next level.
Unfortunately there just isn’t much here in the way of enemy patterns and environmental hazards. The level designs are incredibly bland. You have hallways, streets, and rooftops. There isn’t much else to be honest. You’ll quickly grow tired of how boring everything here is. The enemies don’t offer up much in terms of diversity either. They too have basic punches and kicks, and feature very generic designs as well. You have your basic shirtless strong man’s, basic thugs, etc. One nice touch is that there aren’t just men here as the crime syndicates in Riot Zone are apparently equal opportunity organizations. It matters little because the women opponents aren’t unique in any way from the others except in terms of graphics.
Perhaps the biggest insult in Riot Zone is the fact that it’s single player only. The fastest way to ruin a beat ’em up title is by eliminating multiplayer. That’s just adding insult to injury at this point. Not that it would be easy finding a friend to slog through this joyless affair. The option would still be nice, and would be the only compelling reason to take Riot Zone for a spin. Even with just one person there are very few enemies on-screen at once. It’s rare that you get overwhelmed in Riot Zone because DragonZone apparently is not very densely populated by thugs. There’s an unusual amount of time where it’s just your character on-screen while you wait for someone to approach. It really slows down the pacing.
Another insult is just how easy this game is. My first playthrough I had few to no problems clearing every single screen of foes. I assumed because of how mindless it was that the default setting must have been easy. It was surprising to find out that I had cleared the game on normal, and without any trouble whatsoever. I figured that maybe hard mode would be more entertaining but this too was a cakewalk. On the plus side I can see how this game would be mind numbingly easy with a friend along for the ride so maybe the lack of multiplayer isn’t that bad.
Riot Zone looks really good for a Turbografx game. In screenshots, that is. Some of the backgrounds are pretty decent, and the character sprites are pretty large for the hardware. The engine however struggles. Nothing is particularly smooth here. There are very few frames of animation and it looks almost as bad as something you’d see on 8-bit hardware. The character designs are also extremely forgettable and generic. These look like bargain versions of thugs you would encounter in better titles. The soundtrack fares quite a bit better thanks to the CD hardware. The music sounds great, but none of the tracks are particularly memorable. At least the developers managed to take advantage of the hardware in this way.
Beat em ups are one of my favorite genres. I’m more than willing to look past obvious flaws in most of them but Riot Zone is just so uninspired. It feels like the developers had no interest in making a video game and instead just stole everything from the best ones. There’s no mechanics here that Riot Zone makes its own, and the graphics are just plain boring. Also, releasing a beat ’em up without multiplayer? That should be a crime. Riot Zone is pretty bad and you’re best off skipping it.
