Bad Street Brawler
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"Bad Street Brawler was designed to be used with the Nintendo Power Glove, and they go well together since neither of them work." |
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Bad Street Brawler is a Beat'Em Up released in 1989. While it's been on other systems like Commodore 64 and DOS, the game is best known on the NES.
You play as Duke Davis, "A former punk rocker and the worlds coolest martial arts vigilante." In each level, you'll face off against circus midgets, gorrillas, skateboarders, and other odd foes to save the city with a variety of moves, ranging from basic punches and kicks to strange ones like a trip where he uses his bare hands or twisting someone's ear. Before each level, you can practice your moves on a punching bag, along with some odd quotes. The game itself flopped, it's frequently made various worst games of all time lists, and now exists mainly as Snark Bait.
This was one of two games to utilize the failed Power Glove accessory, the other being Super Glove Ball. The power glove had some special attacks that could only be used with its motion controls.
- Alliterative Name: Duke Davis.
- A Winner Is You: Duke relaxes in the backseat of the car as confetti falls. There's no credits montage either.
- Bottomless Magazines: All enemies that use guns. The final boss also has an unlimited supply of bazooka shells.
- Copy and Paste Environments: See Rule of Three below.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The now remembered quote from the first level:
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"Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you." |
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- Ascended Meme: The quote has recently been sighted on actual fortune cookie messages.
- Degraded Boss: The motorcycle boss of Stage 6 appears as a mini boss in a later level. Other "boss" characters like the skateboarder show up as regular enemies.
- Does Not Like Shoes: The circus midgets.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Duke's trip move uses both hands, and can pet dogs with it (He even says "Good boy!"). However, using it on other enemies may give you a different idea...
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"Damn it, Bad Street Brawler, stop molesting that dog!" |
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- Edible Ammunition: The bananas the gorrilas throw.
- Every Ten Thousand Points: You get an extra life.
- Everything's Better with Monkeys: Inverted with the gorillas, who are powerful enemies you encounter early on, often as a boss.
- Everything's Better with Spinning: Duke's Aeroplane Spin and Arm Spin moves. There's also the breakdancers who damage Duke by spinning on their backs.
- Hammerspace: The midgets, female thugs, and basketball players have an unlimited amount of ball and chains, knives and basketballs, not to mention gorillas always have more bananas to throw.
- Ice Cream Koan: Most of the pre-battle quotes are very strange, to say the least.
- Improbable Weapon User: The gorillas throw bananas at you as one of their attacks.
- The basketball players throw basketballs at you.
- Knife Nut: The female enemies with knives.
- Mooks: The circus midgets.
- Numerical Theme Naming: The streets are basically the level names. The 15th and final level is an exception, being called End of the Road instead.
- Rule of Three: Besides the three lives, the following apply to this trope:
- You use three moves per stage, and they're always different.
- You also face three bosses per level: Two mid bosses and a "boss" character.
- Every third level you face a unique boss at the end.
- A small cinema plays after each third level.
- There are a total of five backgrounds in the game, and they're all used three times total in the game.
- Sunglasses at Night: Duke.
- Timed Mission: This can be annoying because some of the more powerful will stick around and harass you until hit them at least once or twice before you face the boss.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Duke's crouch move appears to look like this.