3D Classics Urban Champion Review
When the 3D Classics range was announced, people’s minds immediately went to great titles like the Super Mario Bros. series, Yoshi’s Island, F-Zero, Donkey Kong and more. All these cool 8-bit and 16-bit games from Nintendo could potentially be turned 3D for the brand new Nintendo 3DS, and no matter what they pick they’ve got a winner. Nintendo first delivered Excitebike, a game much-loved by many, and it was even given away as a freebie and no-one complained. Hey it was free, right? We knew about Xevious as well which we’ve recently gotten, but then Nintendo went and did something unexpected. They announced Urban Champion for the 3D Classics range and you really have to ask yourself. What exactly constitutes a classic?
You see, Urban Champion is a bad game. It’s not that it’s fundamentally broken or anything and it doesn’t look any worse or better than most 8-bit games. It’s just bad in the sense that it’s boring and dull. The only depth that this game has is that you can punch someone in the face either above or below with two different types of punches. Wow, you can even block as well. Exciting. That’s about the gist of it though. You’ll lose stamina for each punch you pull off but I never ran out of that once.
The whole game is just two random guys fighting in front of a snack bar, book store and even a discount store. What’s the difference between these locations? Absolutely nothing, aside from the occasional person throwing pots out of a window, or an open manhole mixing up the rounds. There are only five locations and everything is just palette-swapped. You see more going down to the local shops than you do here.
How about some of that 3D goodness though? Surely that has added something to the game? It sure has – the 3D effect pretty much is the only “depth” in the game as the characters pop off the screen in front of the stores. There’s no side-on view or adjusting of the view like on the 3D Classics version of Excitebike. 3D here is just like the gameplay: boring. *
It’s not all terrible though, well all right it is, but there are a couple of nice things included. All of the HUD has been put on the bottom screen, and you don’t really ever need it during play except for quick glances. Sound effects are typical of the period and aren’t memorable at all.
Now you may say that I’m being overly harsh on this game, that in 1985 Urban Champion was a good game and that it’s just aged poorly. If that’s the case, why did Nintendo bother to get Arika to waste their time on it then? Surely if something hasn’t aged well it should be left in the past. The real problem with Urban Champion is that it was never really a good game, and a few tweaks here and there plus the addition of 3D aren’t enough to save it.
Urban Champion isn’t a 3D Classic, it’s a 3D WasteOfTimeAndMoney™. Save your money and buy a brawler like Double Dragon from the Virtual Console if you need your brawling fix.
*Correction: Since I’ve written the review I’ve since revisited the game and found the ’3D’ menu which can change the game to be played on an isometric view giving depth to the game. It’s just pure stupidity that I missed this one, despite the menu in being in Japanese the text 3D is clearly visible.
