Urban Champion is a 2-player fighting game produced by Nintendo in 1984. It was inspired by the 1984 Game & Watch title Boxing. It is also Nintendo's first 2D fighting game, eventually followed in 1993 by Joy Mech Fight, released exclusively in Japan for the same platform.
Gameplay
The purpose of the game is to knock the other player into a sewermanhole. There is a 99 second time limit, and the player has a set limit of stamina. The player has two types of attacks: a light punch and a heavy punch. The light punch is weaker but faster and harder to block, while the heavy punch is stronger, but takes longer to pull off, is more easily telegraphed, and is thus easier to block. Each punch costs the player 1 HP. Also, flower pots are occasionally dropped from windows, which will cost a fighter 5 HP and daze the fighter if they hit. When a player is knocked off the pavement, they advance to the next street. After every third fight, the opponent is knocked into a manhole, then the player has a brief celebration where a lady throws confetti from a window. The goal of the game is to reach the rank of Champion. Every three fights won, the player gets a specific symbol on the lower right corner; after five symbols are earned, they go to the next set of symbols. After 45 symbols, they get the rank of Champion. In addition, a police car may pass by the fighting at any point in the fight which causes the players to return to their starting positions. If the timer runs out, the police will arrest the player closest to being knocked off of the pavement, meaning it is a default win for the other player for that round. The two fighters are named Ron Imhoff and Alan Mussman respectively, according to an interview in 1989 by Shigeru Miyamoto where he explained the names were a running joke during production of the game amongst the designers. As was typical of video games at the time, they are just palette swaps of each other. The game does not contain any traditional scoring system.
Most reviews gave it negative ratings. In the special editionPak Source included on the January/February 1990 volume of Nintendo Power, which rated all the NES games released in North America from October 1985 to March 1990, Urban Champion received scores of 2.5, 2.5, 1.5 and 1.5 for the four categories evaluated. Along with Chubby Cherub, it was one of the only two games to obtain a score below 2 in a category. Contemporary reviews upon the game's arrival on the Virtual Console were not better. Levi Buchanan noted it as one of the weakest NES games for the Virtual Console. GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann called it tedious when it was originally released, and now it's "about as boring as it can possibly be." GamePro described it as a second tier Virtual Console game. 1UP.com's Jeremy Parish commented that he would rather have nothing at all on the Virtual Console in its debut week than Urban Champion. He also cited it as an example of a poor game that gamers would still buy for the e-Reader. He listed it as one of the worst Virtual Console games. 1UP.com's Patrick Klepek criticized Nintendo for releasing only this and Baseball in one week, calling both poor games. Writer Bob Mackey called it questionable, calling it the "Bad Street Brawler of its day". GameSpy's Phil Theobald called it awful, criticizing its cameo in Tetris DS. IGN's Lucas M. Thomas called it too shallow for an NES game, adding that there was no reason to purchase it. He also commented that it didn't deserve the distinction of being Nintendo's first head-to-head fighting game. IGN AU's Cam Shea called it "god awful", and "worse than actually falling down a manhole." Screw Attack advised that Wii owners not waste their money on it, calling it simple and slow. On the positive side, video game developer Ron Alpert, however, found it to be an acceptable game, calling it one of the simplest of its day, but also an easy game to pick up and play. Since its release, most consumers gave five stars to the 3D Classics version of Urban Champion for the Nintendo 3DS.
