''Riot Zone'', known in Japan as , is a

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment building in Amsterdam after two of its engines ...

beat 'em up The beat 'em up (also known as brawler and, in some markets, beat 'em all) is a video game genre featuring hand-to-hand combat against a large number of opponents. Traditional beat 'em ups take place in scrolling, two-dimensional (2D) levels ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

Hudson Soft was a Japanese video game company that released numerous games for video game consoles, home computers and mobile phones, mainly from the 1980s to the 2000s. It was headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo Midtown, Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo ...

for the

TurboGrafx-CD The TurboGrafx-16, known as the outside North America, is a home video game console designed by Hudson Soft and sold by NEC Home Electronics. It was the first console marketed in the fourth generation, commonly known as the 16-bit era, thoug ...

console. It was re-released on the

Virtual Console A virtual console (VC) – also known as a virtual terminal (VT) – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD, illumos, Un ...

for North America on January 14, 2008,Nintendo press release
/ref> in the

PAL region The PAL region is a television publication territory that covers most of Europe and Africa, alongside parts of Asia, South America and Oceania. It is named PAL because of the PAL (Phase Alternating Line) television standard traditionally used i ...

s on January 18, 2008, and in Japan on April 1, 2008.

Plot

In the beginning, the setting takes place in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

where two men known as Hawk Takezaki and Tony Aldus met up with their chief Jim Hyde, and told him that they finally forced a villain known as Bossman to stay in a place called the DragonZone. The chief advised Hawk not to enter the DragonZone and head back home, but Hawk refused to do so. Before he immediately began traveling toward DragonZone and try to demolish it, in order to save a girl named Candy, Tony told Hawk that he will join him.

Gameplay

Like ''Riot City'', ''Riot Zone'' resembles

Capcom is a Japanese video game developer and publisher. It has created a number of multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being '' Resident Evil'', '' Monster Hunter'', '' Street Fighter'', '' Mega Man'', '' ...

's 1989 arcade hit, ''

Final Fight ''Final Fight'' is a series of beat 'em up video games by Capcom, which began with the arcade release of '' Final Fight'' in 1989. Set in the fictional Metro City, the games focus on a group of heroic vigilantes who fights against the control ...

'', which is an archetypal side scrolling beat-em-up game. Players choose between two characters: Hawk, the blond-haired vigilante who has average statistics, and Tony, who is strong, but slow and has a

break-dancing Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance originating from the African American and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. While diverse in the amount of variation available in t ...

move. Player controls the chosen character from left to right through each level (most of which are split into three or more scenes), fighting with the enemy characters who appear, until they reach a confrontation with a stronger boss character at the end of the level. Once that boss is beaten, the player automatically moves on to the next stage. Enemies appear from both sides of the screen, and the player must defeat all of them to progress. If the player tries to simply travel through the levels without fighting, the screen will stop scrolling until all current enemies have been defeated, before allowing the player to continue progress. Enemies may move outside the confines of the screen, but players may not. Unlike ''Final Fight'', there are no weapons to pick up along the way, but the player will only pick up items for points and health. Unlike ''Riot City'', ''Riot Zone'' lacks multiplayer and instead of chiptune music, the TurboGrafx-CD allows it to play high-quality

CD-DA Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the ''Red Book'', one of a series of Rainbow Books (named ...

music.

Development

''Riot Zone'' is a port of the

1991 File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the ...

arcade game ''Riot City'' developed by

Westone Bit Entertainment was a video game developer founded in May 1986, based in Mukoujima, Sumida-ku, Tokyo. They were most famous for the '' Wonder Boy/Monster World'' series. Originally called , the company was renamed to Westone as the word Escape made them sound u ...

and distributed by Sega. When

picked up the rights to the game for a home conversion to the TurboGrafx-16, they changed the title and character designs in a matter similar to what they done with various ports of the

Wonder Boy The series, also known as the series, is a franchise of video games published by Sega and developed by Westone Bit Entertainment (formerly Escape). Beginning with the original '' Wonder Boy'' arcade game released in April 21, 1986, the game ha ...

series to non-Sega consoles (such as the original '' Adventure Island'' on the NES or '' Dragon's Curse'' on the TurboGrafx-16). The development of the game was handled by Agenda Co. Ltd.

References

External links

* {{Mobygames, /riot-zone 1992 video games Hudson Soft games Beat 'em ups TurboGrafx-CD games Video games set in New York City Video games developed in Japan Virtual Console games Single-player video games