Bad To The Bone! - Playing Vigilante for the First Time on TurboGrafx-16

Vigilante is the next game I played on my TurboGrafx journey. 

Released in November 1989, Vigilante was one of the games available during the TurboGrafx's first Christmas holiday, delighting dozens of children as they pummeled rival gang members and sought to rescue Madonna from the clutches of the evil Guy Ritchie (or something like that.)

More than just a way to live out your childhood fantasy of rescuing Madonna, Vigilante was a port of the arcade game developed by Irem. Think of Vigilante as the bastard child of Double Dragon and Kung Fu Master.

The game is built in stages, each with a stage boss. After defeating the stage boss, the bad guys somehow always manage to escape with your girlfriend (kind of like a beat 'em up version of "Your Princess is in Another Castle".)

Graphically, Vigilante on TurboGrafx looks really good, and VERY close to the arcade version. There are slight differences to be sure, but if you compare the version of Vigilante on the TurboGrafx to the Sega Master System version, it's a night and day difference.

You can see video of my gameplay from the Sega Master System below:

 

   

The music and sound fx are also very close to the arcade, however the TurboGrafx version is just missing the satisfying punch and kick sounds, that honestly sound like they were directly ripped from Double Dragon.

The enemies feel a lot closer to Kung Fun Master than Double Dragon, however, with the most basic enemies simply walking at you and then holding you tightly if you don't kill them first (which also drains your health very quickly) and other enemy types taking more hits and carrying weapons.

In the arcade and TurboGrafx versions, you move left and right on a pure 2D plane, and you jump by pressing up, much like fighting in Street Fighter. 

In the Sega Master System version you have to press both the 1 and 2 buttons in order to jump, then you have to mash a bunch of buttons in order to do a jump kick (honestly have no idea what the button combination is), and if you think that sounds awful, I guarantee you it's much worse than it sounds.

Each stage has an end stage boss, and typically they aren't too difficult, so long as you make gratuitous use of the jump kick (although some require you to duck and miss their jump kicks). 

Then there is one stage where it starts out overlooking NYC (seen in the screenshots below and above) and motorcycles drive at you. The only solution is to jump kick them (or simply jump over them until you move far enough they stop coming).

There are also enemies with guns who fire bullets at you, however you can generally just duck and let the bullets fly harmlessly over your head. Honestly, there isn't any one enemy type who is particularly hard to defeat, but its more the combination of the regular "huggy" enemies that constantly come at you AND the other enemy types that become challenging.

While the arcade version seems a bit harder, and was certainly a quarter muncher back in the day, at least you could keep continuing until you reached the end of the game.

In the TurboGrafx version of the game, the enemies are not quite as aggressive, but you only get three continues, and this can make finishing the game be quite challenging, especially since those "huggy" enemies can really mess you up at the wrong times.

You can check out some of my gameplay from the TurboGrafx version of Vigilante in the YouTube video below:

Overall I really enjoyed my time playing Vigilante, and I think this is one of the most fun "launch window" titles for the TurboGrafx that I've played so far. I could certainly see myself playing a lot of this game if I had gotten it for Christmas back in the day.

If you want to see some of the arcade version's gameplay to compare it to what you've seen from the TurboGrafx version, you can check out my playthrough on YouTube below:

Now, with the next game on my TurboGrafx journey, I'll continue to explore the world of pixel-powered street fighting, with...

Fighting Street is a port of Capcom's original Street Fighter, and was one of two games launched alongside the TurboGrafx-CD. It's also the first TurboGrafx-CD game that I'll be playing.

Until next time...