The game takes place in downtown New York City. The game's plot involves a lone, professional martial artist who became a vigilante to fight an evil gang called the Skinheads ruled by a man known as the Giant Devil, in order to protect his "turf" and save a female hostage named Madonna, who was kidnapped by them.
Gameplay
Players control the titular character using punches and kicks to defeat the Skinheads in a 2D platform manner, while sometimes picking up and using nunchaku against them. If players get hurt while holding nunchuku, they become unarmed. There are five stages in order of appearance: a street, a junkyard, the Brooklyn Bridge, a back street scene and on top of a building that is under construction. Skinheads with Mohawk or spiked hairdo attack the vigilante with knives, chains, motorbikes, rifles and other kinds of weapons. They will also cling to him if he stands too close to them.
Ports and related releases
The arcade game was later ported to several different home computers and consoles. The Sega Master System version was ported by Arc System Works and published exclusively in North America and Europe by Sega, and is one of several games in the console to include an FM sound switch for enhanced music quality. In the Sega Master System version, Madonna was renamed "Maria" and the Skinheads were called the "Rogues". The ones for Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga and the Amstrad CPC were reprogrammed by Emerald Software and published by U.S. Gold mostly in Europe. The MSX version was ported and published by Korean company Clover. The TurboGrafx-16 version was ported and published in Japan on January 14, 1989 by Irem and published in North America by NEC the same year. This port matches the arcade more than other ports. The TurboGrafx-16 version was later re-released globally for Nintendo's Virtual Console for the Wii in North America on February 5, 2007, in Japan on February 6, 2007, in Europe on February 9, 2007, and in Australia on July 6, 2007, but was delisted on March 30, 2012 before it returned in September 2013. It was also released for the Wii U Virtual Console in Japan on February 10, 2015, in North America on September 14, 2017 and in Europe on October 5, 2017.
Reception
In Japan, Game Machine listed Vigilante on their April 15, 1988 issue as being the second most-successful table arcade unit of the year. Your Sinclair summarised the game as "Pretty standard beat 'em up. You've probably seen it all before, so only buy if you're addicted to the genre and you've already got the better ones.".
