River City Super Sports Challenge: All Stars Special (PC) Review

River City Super Sports Challenge: All Stars Special is part of a long running series, which non-Japan gamers only saw a small portion of, such as on the original NES River City Ransom, and Super Dodge Ball, both of which were amazing games at the time. This one, to put it in easy contrast, feels like it belongs in the same time period.

It's obvious right away that the overall design was intentional, and while the background looks modern, the characters look highly pixelated as if they came out of a NES. In a way, that's emphasised when a new character is introduced, and the camera zooms in on their face - showing all indistinguishable pixels it was constructed out of. It might be forgivable and perhaps a fun poke at the past if the game was good, but it belongs on the 8-bit era in terms of quality; right up to the Nintendo controls of up/down/left/right, and jump/attack as buttons.

Here is how everything works: there are four "events" that have to be won. First is Cross Country, where players run through city screens trying to be the first through each one, and they can fight along the way, like in every other event. The CPU-controlled characters are often much faster, so the best thing to do is to trap them in a corner, and beat them to death until you are the only runner left - kind of funny in a weird way given this is high school. The second event is an obstacle course, but it is essentially the same thing. Third is a "Climb this Pole or Beat Everyone Down Instead" event, and last is just a straight fight. The major problem is that everything offered here is seen right up front, and gets repetitive very fast.

There are some RPG elements, such as being able to gradually make a character stronger. This idea is very cool, yet also random, and, ultimately, plays such a little role as the team comes stacked with good players, and there's no reason not to use them, adding to the problem of having nothing new to do. It doesn't take too long for the fun to wear out when "Obstacle Course" is literally the same mode with a different map; a rope climb, and a battle royal were the raw basic-ness of this title's fights comes out. There is only so much fun to be had with two buttons and four repetitive modes.