This was originally an arcade game of the same name. The TurboGrafx-16 version certainly looks and sounds nice. I have never tried the arcade version, I don't think, but I can't imagine the looks being any better for the coin-op.
This is a very standard side scroller, notable only because of how early in the genre's development is. You play a guy named ... well... I don't know. You play a guy who is trying to rescue a woman named Madonna, who the skinheads threw into a jail. I get the sense that they picked that name because Madonna the singer was very famous at the time. I guess this is like if I were to make a similar game with the nations reversed, and the antagonist had to go free someone named Sadaharu Oh.
You get are able to find a pair of nunchucks on the side of the street early on. The game then becomes a matter of seeing how quickly you can press the attack button. With real TurboGrafx hardware, the answer is very quickly, because it has a turbo button. My controller for the Duo does not, but that is ok, I could still press attack quickly enough to destroy all the thugs and bosses.
I did not like this game, because towards the end (I think?) of the first level, I was just sitting there striking the attack button, making the life bar of the boss guy go down. It was going to be over a minute. Maybe two. Too long! Much too long for this! Then I paused for a very short amount of time, and the boss guy hit me. I lost the nunchucks. It became more like a real fight, but still. That's crappy gameplay. FIGURE IT OUT, IREM!
I think they figured it out with subsequent games.
The jail-broken Analogue Duo made this possible, all the .pce game images are out there, so the cost to me is zero. The hardware HuCards are PRICEY, secondhand. And I'd still support any homebrew scene if it exists. We'll see.
Sorry, Vigilante! You do look and sound very nice though.
