Riot Zone for Wii Virtual Console

If you're familiar with the old Turbo Duo console, then chances are you may have heard of Riot Zone. If not, then let me fill you in. Back in the late 80s, and early 90s the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre was all the rage. The gameplay of this genre basically consisted of the player (or players) scrolling from left to right while fighting various badies on there way to the end of the level. Unlike some action games, player movement was not limited to left, and right, but you could move up, down, and diagonal as well. In many games of the genre, weapons, and other powerups like life, and extra points could be picked up as we. Double Dragon was perhaps the game most responsible for getting the genre kicked off, but with its popularity came imitators. Some were really good like Final Fight, and Streets of Rage, but others were bad like Riot Zone.

So, why did Riot Zone suck while others like Streets of Rage were so good? Well first and foremost it is very boring. You get your choice of 2 different characters, with one being the fast, but weak guy and the other being the strong and slow one. The fast one who is called Hawk is your typical cookie cutter hero with the blond hair, white t-shirt, and jeans, and the strong one it a generic punk rocker type with a mohawk. This could be forgiven if they had some interesting moves to play with, but they don't. Both have a very small amount of moves to use against the bad guys, and to add insult to injury you can't even pick up weapons. Things don't get much better with the enemies either and you'll quickly find yourself getting bored fighting the same few enemies over and over again through the entire game.

The graphics are just as bland as the gameplay. Not only does it have some very bland animation, but everything just looks so flat. This game could use some major parallax in the backgrounds to give it a little more depth. It seems the developers at Westone just didn't care though. And yes I said Westone, and yes this is the same people responsible for the great Wonderboy series. Sad eh?

If you think things are gonna get better for the sound since its on CD, then your sadly mistaken there as well since the generic rock tunes are just as boring as the rest of the game. The sad part is, the music is probably the highest point of the game.



If you're looking for a good side-scrolling beat-em-up then look elsewhere because you wont find one here. Im not sure how much the going rate is for an original copy of the game, but I can tell you now that its not worth it unless you're a serious collector. Other then that save your $8 on something better and skip the Wii download. Better yet, google "Beats of Rage" and download that or any of its mods for the PC, or Dreamcast. Not only is it free and legal, but its far better then the crap that is Riot Zone.