The Warriors (video game)



The Warriors is a video game based on the Cult Classic movie of the same title, developed by Rockstar Games and released in 2005. The game is quite different in many respects from the film that inspired it.

This video game features examples of:

 * Adaptation Expansion: The video game includes the entire plot of the film, but the game also adds a backstory to the foundation of the gang and the time leading up to the fateful night.
 * Adaptation-Induced Plothole: In the movie, when Masai demands to know who The Warriors are no one can answer him. This is kept in the game, but it seems very unlikely given how many gangs the Warriors have beaten and the dangerous reputation they develop because of it.
 * Amusement Park of Doom: The Hi-Hats confront the Warriors in the eighth level, chasing them into an abandoned (but still operational) fun house on the Coney grounds. The Warriors beat up some Hi-Hats in an "African village" exhibit before fleeing from a runaway "mine-cart" ride and finally facing off against Chatterbox at the center of the fun house.
 * Bad Guy Bar: Several:
 * The Red Devil, which is "neutral ground" despite being in the Gun Hill district of the Bronx (the Turnbull A.C.'s' territory). A band in the corner plays punk rock.
 * The Stripes and Solids. Located in East (Spanish) Harlem, it has a definite Latin American look to it.
 * The Black Cat (actually a strip joint) in Harlem. In the bonus level "Sharp Dressed Man," you have to repeatedly tip a stripper so that she will tell you where to find the leader of the Boppers. (We also visit a pool hall and a discotheque during the Harlem sequence.)
 * Bilingual Bonus: Several characters in East Harlem speak Puerto Rican Spanish, while several in Chinatown speak Cantonese; neither tongue is translated, making for some pretty sneaky profanities. (In East Harlem, for example, one Hurricane threatens to "shit on your mothers.")
 * Character Exaggeration: Snow, although particularly stoic in the original film, is noticeably boisterous in the video game adaptation.
 * Chickification: Mercy joins the fray during the subway restroom brawl toward the end of the 1979 film, leaping atop one of the overalled thugs. In the game, she's been reduced to a Damsel in Distress whom, as Swan, you must rescue from those same thugs. If you fail, Mercy dies and the game is over.
 * Dirty Coward: Luther of course, but also Sanchez, a thug in East Harlem who owes the Warriors some money. When you confront him, he repeatedly runs away while his homies try to make short work of you. Ajax finally manages to corner him on top of a tenement, presses him toward the edge - and then shouts "BOO!", causing Sanchez to scream and fall backward onto a car in the street below. Also Sully (the leader of the Orphan's and Mercy's former boyfriend) whose boast about taking on the Warriors rings hollow once the Warriors themselves confront him and his goons in Tremont. Sully panics, retreats behind a locked gate....and then continues to taunt the Warriors.
 * Genius Bruiser / Mad Artist: Chatterbox is a short-tempered, potty-mouthed Fat Bastard who also happens to be a patron of the fine arts. He is an amateur artist himself, and his "masterpieces" are clearly inspired by the classic works of such artists as Botticelli and Van Gogh.
 * Have a Nice Death: Die in the game and the DJ mocks you.
 * How We Got Here: The video game begins with the movie's opening, then jumps back in time; the gameplay starts ninety days before the movie's story, with Rembrandt joining the Warriors, and follows the chain of events leading up to the meeting. The movie itself is covered in the final missions. Bonus levels extend the backstory even further, going back one year prior to the events of the movie, when Cleon and Vermin quit the Destroyers, recruited Swan and Cowboy (who had actually left the Destroyers earlier), and initiated Ajax, Snow, Fox, and Cochise.
 * Jive Turkey: The terms introduced in the films are kept and used in the same contexts, and others are added: a gang's spray-painted logo is called a "burner", the word "toy" is used in the same way as one would use "wimp", etc. It's almost enough to warrant its own glossary.
 * Large Ham: The voice cast embraces the setting's cheesiness with gusto. The bosses in particular don't chew the scenery so much as demolish it.
 * Laughing Mad: Virgil (Cleon's old mentor whose double-crossing of him sets the events of the game in motion) has clearly lost every shred of his sanity by the time Cleon finally confronts him. ("Ain't none of your boys gonna protect you against MEE-EEE!")
 * Man On Fire: Molotov cocktails are relatively common in the game, since you can always raid a liquor store and make one yourself. The Destroyers wield these as their signature weapon - and Virgil, their leader,.
 * Pay Evil Unto Evil: A particularly rewarding example, considering who Chatterbox is. After he ruins a gang spray-art contest the Warriors participate in (even throwing the organizer off a balcony for good measure), the Warriors have to leg it while the Hi-Hats pursue them. At one point, the Warriors end up falling into Chatterbox's own Shrine to Self. After thinking about what he had done to the organizer (whom they respected as an artist), they decide there's really only one way to pay their respects to Chatterbox...
 * Pummeling the Corpse" Your teammates actually have unique dialog if you continue to attack an opponent after knocking them out.
 * Rhymes On a Dime: An occasional quirk of some of the black characters. The bouncer at the Red Devil takes it Up to Eleven.
 * Scary Black Man: Big Moe, the hulking boss of Harlem's Boppers. Except for Luther himself, he's the hardest opponent in the game to beat.
 * Shout-Out: One of the Moon Runners in the Pelham train yard is overheard talking about "that space movie." Given the game's time frame, he is probably referring to Star Wars. Humorously, he says "Nothing they do could ever ruin that movie for me!"
 * Shrine to Self: Chatterbox's art gallery is crammed with paintings and sculptures that all depict himself in vulgar tributes to classic works of art - including a naked Chatterbox posed like the Roman love-goddess Venus.
 * Shout-Out: In the video game, there's a bonus game you can play called Armies of the Night, which is a nod to the old days of beat-'em-up games. The game is based on Double Dragon and it mimics the opening scene of a gang punching a girl (Mercy) in the stomach and kidnapping her while you (Swan) have to fight through the whole city and every gang to get her back. If you happen to reach the end in 2 player mode, the players will be forced to fight each other to the death to see who takes the girl home, just like in Double Dragon. This feature might count as Present Day Past, since side-scrolling beat-'em-ups wouldn't appear in video arcades until several years after the events depicted in The Warriors.
 * Tattooed Crook: Diego, The Brute for the Hurricanes.
 * This Is Reality: At certain points in the game, you can hear your enemies taunting you in the background by shouting: "This ain't no movie, Warriors!" Which is technically true: it's a video game.
 * Those Two Guys: Officers Harrison and Garrison.
 * Vomit Indiscretion Shot: "Man, I drank, like, twice as much as you! You don't see me spraying lasagna all over the street!"
 * What Could Have Been: Possibly. In the arena mode, two of the stages are at the graveyard the Warriors regroup at after Cyrus is shot. They are the only stages not present in the actual levels. In one mission you can overhear a conversation between a group of Jones Street Boys, and sometimes they'll talk about a time The Warriors screwed them over in the graveyard, which is mentioned no where else in the game. It seems that at least one additional level was planned, but scrapped for whatever reason.
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy: Ghost, the spooky leader of the Savage Huns.