Last Bronx

About Last Bronx

Last Bronx (1996) is Sega AM3's Model 2 weapons fighter about rival Tokyo street gangs, a hit in Japan that spawned a film, manga and radio drama but flopped in American arcades.

Last Bronx in Depth

Matches are best of two rounds, won by knockout or by having more health when the 30-second timer ends. The stages are enclosed real Tokyo locations with no ring-outs, though fighters can jump onto the barriers and even backflip off them for a disqualifying ring-out. AM3 used the three-button punch, kick and guard layout of Virtua Fighter, with "punch" meaning the weapon; joystick and button combinations produce special and combination attacks, guard performs a feint called an Attack Cancel, and taunts are used even by the computer.

In an alternate post-bubble Tokyo, youth disillusionment has led to the All Tokyo Street Wars. The gang Soul Crew united the city's youth until its leader was murdered, and a mysterious group, Redrum, demands a tournament among the strongest gang bosses to decide who rules the streets, backing the threat with gang members found dead in Tokyo Bay. The fighters include Yusaku Kudo of Neo-Soul with a three-section staff, the nunchaku-wielding Joe Inagaki, the construction boss Saburo Zaimoku with a hammer, the skateboarder Tommy with a bō and Yoko Kono of the G-Troops, searching for her missing brother. Each has a joke alternative weapon, such as Zaimoku's frozen tuna.

Making Last Bronx

The team behind Virtual On developed Last Bronx on Sega's Model 2 board, using programming tricks to give metallic characters environmental mapping the hardware did not support. Released in 1996, it became a big hit and franchise in Japan, with a novel, manga and radio drama, but appeared in only a handful of American arcades. Next Generation called it "a grittier, and in some ways more inventive product than the sometimes overly smooth efforts of AM2".

The same team began the Saturn version on 8 November 1996, none of them having worked on the Saturn, prioritising the full animation and 60 frames per second; Abe found accurate weapon collision the hardest part. Released in Japan in August 1997 with a new story mode, it was praised for its smooth visuals, Sega Saturn Magazine calling them "virtually indistinguishable from the coin-op original", though critics found the cast small, combos cheap and the game weaker than Fighters Megamix. A Windows version followed in 1998 and a PlayStation 2 release in 2006.