Target: Renegade (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Taito’s 1990 beat ’em up for the NES, Target: Renegade. Target: Renegade is *an* official sequel to Renegade (), a Technos game that served as the first game in both the Double Dragon and Kunio-kun series of games. It is not, however, *the* official sequel. When they bagged the rights to produce versions of Renegade for the 8-bit microcomputers, Ocean also snagged the rights to produce its own original follow-ups for PC platforms. The NES version, created by Software Creations, was an adaptation of the game that was originally released on the C64, the Amstrad CPC, and the ZX Spectrum. You play as “Renegade,“ a guy who’s clearly meant to resemble Billy from Double Dragon, brawling his way through the city on a quest to save his brother from the crime lord Mr. Big. The game certainly makes a strong first impression. You’re greeted by a fancy Taito logo and a musical sting that bears the unmistakable sound signature of Tim Follin, a wunderkind of 8-bit chiptune audio. “PRESS FIRE TO RUMBLE!!“ That first impression quickly fades once the game begins, however. An amazing soundtrack alone does not a good game make, and Target: Renegade is one of several NES carts bearing Follin’s work that makes that fact glaringly obvious. The move set is standard 80s beat ’em up fare. You can punch and kick, and by holding the d-pad in various directions while attacking, you can do jump kicks and leg sweeps. It’s simple stuff, but everything has been awkwardly adapted from the single-button joystick setup of the computer versions, and the controls feel laggy and unresponsive. The enemies are relentless damage sponges from the outset. They’ll constantly back away from you as you attempt to chase them around the screen, and it’s virtually impossible to hit them without taking damage in return. They seem to attack faster than the animation can keep up with, so you’ll have to listen for the audio cues: it’ll often seem like you have an enemy stun locked by a flurry of hits, but they can still hit you in this state. Despite the lack of any visible enemy movement, you’ll hear hit sounds and see your life gauge drain as you’re attempting to beat them down. The jump kick and the leg sweep are the only moves that do decent damage, and spamming them seems to be the only viable way to get through the game. It feels impossible to play until you figure this out, but once you have, the difficulty swings in the total opposite direction. It becomes a cakewalk. It’s not much fun beyond the first five minutes, and the plain graphics and the army of generic Double Dragon knockoff enemies and Bret Hart clones don’t do much to maintain your interest, either. The game was a huge success on computers, but the guys behind Target: Renegade didn’t seem to grasp how much expectations differed between platforms. I’m sure it was impressive to have a playable arcade-style beat ’em up loading from a cassette tape on a machine as limited as a 48K Speccy, but on the NES it feels like a poor man’s mockery of a genre classic. Target: Renegade is best thought of as a novelty, like one of those chiptune music albums that you can buy on a real NES cart. It’s not something you’d want to play, but the music alone makes the cart worth owning. _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete () punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!