Just a little heads up. Two weeks ago, River City Ransom Underground was released. Although I haven’t played the game, it’s obvious it’s a labor of love made by gamer fans, unlike Double Dragon IV. On a side note, it’s funny to think both series originate from Technos (and both games share a character: Abobo).
Anyway, Zabuyaki counts Kunio Kun games as one of its inspiration sources, and few beat ’em ups get released nowadays, so I’ve been keeping watch on River City Ransom Underground. It looks amazing. I love the retro look, and the character animations are really smooth. However, the characters look tiny, due to the fact the sprites have the same size as back in the days, while the game resolution is much higher than on the NES.
Back when Don and I first thought of making Zabuyaki, in the early 2000s, we wanted to make a beat ’em up with RPG elements, like River City Ransom. Although we still like this idea a lot, we gave up on it when we resurrected the project last year. The reason is that making a good beat ’em up is a lot of work for just two persons, and so we thought we’d better focus on making a good arcade game instead. It seemed less ambitious and more realistic, since arcade games tend to be short and simple. Also, once we’ve reached that goal, nothing prevents us from working on an adventure mode. Step by step, first building a solid game engine, then building more on top of it (extra modes, options, etc).
Anyway, I’m a bit torn on River City Ransom Underground. On the one hand, I want to play it. On the other hand, if I did, I feel like I’d spend days on it, and this would definitely slow down my progress on Zabuyaki. I just can’t afford to play games much if I want to get anything done. Oh well! Maybe (much?) later.
