Description of Violent Storm ROM - MAME

Aaand just what do we got here? Yes, you hear right, yet another brawler! Only this time it’s not from Capcom but from their long-time rival, Konami. To be frank, the inner critic in me is always somewhat louder and more proactive than the excited gamer part of me. And, well—yes I was kind of reluctant to like Violent Storm at first. But as I’ve kept going back to it, giving it ‘yet one more chance’, I’ve actually began to like it. You see, my—perhaps biggest—problem with the Violent storm is, that the graphics are overly bright for my taste. And yes, there is a difference between bright and vibrant. While the former means that the scene contains too much gamma, the latter means that the scene is (perhaps too much) saturated. Now, in the case of Violent storm, the colors are just too bright, and I can’t really tell whether it’s been done purposely, or whether it’s been given by the limitations of hardware for which the game was produced. Yet, aside from that, Violent Storm is actually a pretty good brawler. Perhaps not the best (well, as for Konami, it’s been their best brawler for a very long time to come) and—since it basically steals the plot of Capcom’s Final Fight—neither the most innovative one, but still a good game in its own sense. The plot, well, like I said—it is a variation on the Final Fight: you got three guys, whose female friend goes shopping and gets kidnapped by a gang called Geld, and so the three dudes set off on a mission to rescue her, by beating every gangster they encounter in the town. Each of the guys has a different fighting style and different moves (which are however triggered by the same key-combinations). Kyle is weak but agile, Boris is a slow tankers and Wade is the average of the former two. As to the controls, well, I don’t think there’s too much to be said about it, really. Since the Violent Storm is your prototypical browler, the controls itself are prototypical as well: an 8-way joystick and two buttons, button one for attack/picking-up weapons (pipes, knives, barrels) and button two for jump. Now, for above mentioned key-combinations—jumping and moving the joystick left or right at the same time triggers a high-attack; moving joystick down + left/right while pressing attack button triggers a low attack. Now, although I’ve bashed the Violent Storm’s graphics for being too bright, still the visuals stay on par with other games of the time, and the sprites as such are actually pretty big and detailed. Not to mention the small details around the scene, like hobos travelling on the train that can fall of the train-car if the actual fight gets too close to them, or destructible lightbulbs, details which make it even so much more interesting. What I personally find most attractive on the game, though, isn’t the visuals at all, but rather the soundtrack the game features. Weirdly relaxed (well, at least given the fact that the whole thing is set in a post-WWII future) mix of 60’s-70’s pop-rock and rap might quite well be the most clearly sounding soundtrack of the era I ever heard. All and all: 6/10 – a good and enjoyable, if not overly memorable experience worth of trying out.