River City Ransom: How an NES Classic Returned 20 Years On

An anonymous reader writes "River City Ransom: Underground is the latest high profile game campaign on Kickstarter but as an interview with the title's creators this week highlights, it's not exactly a new game. Rather, it's an official sequel to a Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom classic, belt-scroller River City Ransom. Remarkably, getting the license and the help of original River City creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto proved easy for the team, indie developers who were submitting game designs to Atari in crayon, aged six. 'I asked for the license and I asked Kishimoto-san if he had an interest in helping us make a better Kunio-kun game,' producer Daniel Crenna says. 'It's not particularly dramatic to say that, but I asked.' As the author points out, it's interesting to imagine what other games could be resurrected with a little bit of polite curiosity.""

I remember this from Nintendo World Championships

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

When Nintendo did their world championships, I tried a bunch of the games set up for display. I actually dodged SMB3 because the line was so long. Some of the games were fun, but I was blown away with River City Ransom. Wow that game was really good.

I think there is something magical about games with good action mechanics with a little hackney RPG thrown on top. Another good example is Zelda. The reason these games are fun is that it typically rides you in a perfect difficulty. If the game is too easy, you push far without grinding your guy for levels until it is tough. If the game is too hard, you keep trying over and over, and your guy levels up in the process. Eventually you get strong enough to beat the levels and bosses even if you don't have a great deal of skill.

I shudder to think what a MMORPG would be like if it was quality action oriented combat first and RPG stats second. Instead of coming into fights and pressing 1,2,3,4,5 over and over again, you'd be actually engaging your brain.