Did you enjoy River City Ransom? Ever play Renegade? How about the relatively underrated Crash 'n The Boys: Street Challenge? All of these games have one thing in common. In Japan, they are all part of the same series of games, starring the universal binder, their main character Kunio-kun. Yes, Kunio-kun got his start all the way back in 1986 with an arcade game called Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun (Hot-Blooded Tough Guy, Kunio), which would be converted to the NES game we know in English as the aforementioned Renegade, albeit with some heavy localization changes and graphic hacks. After a string of successful Kunio games, Technos put its Super Famicom Kunio game out in Japan in 1992. That game is called Shodai Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-Kun, and I decided to play it for myself!
You may have heard about this game at one point or another because of some gimp referring to it as River City Ransom 2, which it totally is not. What we know as River City Ransom is actually a spin-off of the original Kunio series, translatable to something like Downtown Hot-Blooded Story, which has no sequels. The game this article deals with is more or less Renegade 1.5. The next game in the series, Shin Nekketsu Kouha: Kunio-tachi no Banka, is the final beat-'em-up game in the Kunio series (I will deal with this game in a later installment!).
N-Sider.com: How exotic! Shodai Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun (Super Famicom)
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