Vigilante

~ VIGILANTE ~

Irem / NEC

HuCard

1989

I acquired Vigilante back when it was first released, and it has sucked ass since the very beginning. A number of its tunes have stuck with me, and sometimes I'm silly enough to think it would be cool to revisit them, but the sad reality is that most of 'em sound terrible; and once the potential for a pleasant aural reunion goes down the tube, it's a given that the experience on the whole will suck. The enemies look like crap, and the backdrops are mostly dull. Gameplay is Kung Fu with turbo-switch treatment, but even Kung Fu offers more variety than this.

At least it's one of the shortest and easiest games ever, so one endures minimal pain before reaching the amazing WAY TO GO DUDE ending screen. But when a game I've owned since '89 can barely make me wax nostalgic at all, well, the game really can't be worth a damn.

Little time is wasted before Vigilante lets you know just how dopey it really is.

It's turbo-switch Kung Fu: clobber the mindless enemies until you reach the boss.

The third level actually looks pretty nice, and its Hell's Angels sequence is the one stretch where the game deviates from its vanilla walk-halt-hit routine.

I get a kick out of how goofy these twin oafs look as they go about their various attack motions.

There are references to other Irem games in the background for the final stage--nice touches in what's generally a lousy and uninteresting game.