WILD STREETS
Original Release: Titus, 1989, Atari ST/Amstrad
Other Releases: DOS/Amiga/C64/ZX (1990)
Johnny Fists and his pet panther take on some gang that's gangin' around in this crappy brawler from the dark period for computer action games
Wild Streets (PC, Titus, 1990)
Where to Buy: No longer commercially available, download here
How to Emulate: MS-DOS Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Just an awful Bad Dudes knockoff that reduces the action to single-player, but gives you a gun and a panther (?!) to compensate. The panther could have been a cool gimmick, but aside from just knocking a guy down here and there it's a pretty lazy and useless cat as it turns out.
The tracksuited enemies (unclear if Italian or Slav) just keep spawning in forever all around you, you pick your way through them scrolling the screen from left to right until you get to a boss to take out (in the case of the first level, a random Andre the Giant clone). While I'm playing the DOS port, this was originally made more for the European suite of gaming computers and their convention of having a joystick action button you hold down to attack while freezing your movement and pushing the stick in various directions to do your attacks (AKA clunky as hell). In this case you can do a bunch of regular punches and kicks, a jump kick that would be very potent if you didn't constantly take chip damage while flying through enemies, and press down to belt off the gun when you have ammo (maybe, this is finicky, you might also go down for a nut punch or just do nothing).
With the DOS port you get neither music nor sound. The Amiga version has both, but it appears you aren't missing much (one looping annoying song through the entire game and one annoying enemy groan).
I couldn't survive the first level boss after a few attempts but a longplay on Youtube indicates the game is technically composed of nine levels, and takes about 30 minutes to clear. I say "technically" because midway through level 5 you fight some huge boss, rescue some random guy, then turn around and march BACK through the previous 4.5 levels while escorting him (the panther also gets sacrificed to facilitate this, he just kinda randomly disappears before the boss). I can't tell if the escort guy can get killed, he doesn't have a life bar but he does get knocked down by enemy blows ... if he can die that makes the game even worse. But it was certainly bad enough already to avoid.
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