Urban Champion

About Urban Champion

Urban Champion (1984) is Nintendo's first 2D fighting game, a Famicom street brawl in which two men punch each other down the pavement into an open manhole, widely regarded as one of Nintendo's weakest NES releases.

Urban Champion in Depth

Two fighters try to push each other off the sidewalk and past the edge of the screen. They stand in a defensive stance when not attacking and raise or lower their arms to block and strike high or low, so damage comes only from hitting the area the opponent is not guarding. Holding away dodges or retreats. A weak punch is fast and hard to defend but does little damage and knockback, while a strong punch hits harder but is slow and easier to block, dodge or interrupt. Each fighter starts a round with 200 stamina points; every punch costs one, a weak punch does four points of damage and a strong one ten, and an exhausted fighter takes full knockback from every blow.

A man occasionally drops flower pots from the windows, dazing whoever they hit, and a passing police car sends the fighters back to their starting positions. A fighter knocked off the edge falls into the street and the fight moves to the next block. Each round has a 99-second limit, after which the police arrest whoever is closest to the edge. Bouts are best of five, and after two lost rounds an open manhole appears behind the losing fighter; knocking him in wins the bout, and a woman showers the victor with confetti. In single-player Game A, the goal is 45 straight wins to become Champion.

Making Urban Champion

Nintendo released Urban Champion for the Famicom in Japan on 14 November 1984 and on the NES in North America and Europe in 1986, with an arcade version, Vs. Urban Champion, in 1985. It was eventually followed as a Nintendo fighting game by Joy Mech Fight in 1993. Reception was largely negative, and it has been regarded as one of the weaker Nintendo-published NES games. Retrospective reviews of its many re-releases, on e-Reader cards in 2002, the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console and Nintendo Classics, were similarly harsh: GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann said it was "about as boring as it can possibly be", Bob Mackey called it the "Bad Street Brawler of its day", and IGN's Lucas M. Thomas said it did not deserve the distinction of being Nintendo's first head-to-head fighter. Developer Ron Alpert was kinder, calling it one of the simplest games of its day but easy to pick up and play.