Yes; Kunio Kun's MMORPG Lives Again...As a Pathetic Zombie.

Back in January, I reported on the revival of an MMORPG based on the Kunio Kun series, which I had previously tested back during its 2010 beta.  As a person who was saddened by that game's apparent discontinuation, I was delighted to stumble upon news that it was back in China, and the wide array of screenshots I saw seemed to promise a robust game.  Not having an iPhone with enough room to install the game, I've just had to rely on searching around the Internet for footage.  Then last night, I found extended footage--and unfortunately, the game seems pretty bad.

Sure; it's pretty, colorful, the animation is nice, and the female protagonist is rather sexy for a chibi, but that's where my praise ends.  Beyond looking immensely button-mashy and prone to a lot of the standard flaws of MMORPGs, as someone who played a past incarnation of this game, I can say that this one has been stripped down from where it was. 

For example, the 2010 incarnation of this game. had a fully explorable world from which you entered dungeons; a genre standard, while this new version has a mission select, and that's about it.  The 2010 incarnation gave you a wider degree of character designs options, while this new version gives you only three choices at the start, a male character who looks exactly like Kunio, a male character who looks exactly like Riki, and a female character whom I earlier said was Hasebe, but might not be, as there's another girl who looks more like her in the game. (A digital translation rendered her name as "Penetration Spray"; I could make a joke there, but you've probably already made it to yourself.)  While I previously pegged that for some sort of deemphasis on MMORPG aspects in favor of telling a story following canon characters in the Nekketsu series, the reality is this still a MMORPG; just one where legions of players that all look like one of three people show up. As you do missions, you get money, and then you can buy things that chance your character's appearance.  A lot of them probably depend on Microtransactions, too.  This game nickel-and-dimes you for things that used to be available at the start.

As to the weapons and vehicles I reported on you being able to buy, they're indeed in the game, but when it looks like battles are winnable just by button-mashing, why bother?

The worst part is that this is, by all evidence, a finished, fully available app, meaning it's essentially the sad ending for a project that's had Kunio fans intrigued since 2008.  It's free to download if you're curious, but I say it's better to keep waiting for River City Ransom Underground.


S

Kunio Kun's MMORPG Lives Again!

I share your enthusiasm.

If ever there was a video game protagonist who embodied the now well-tread cliche, "Fall down ten times, get up eleven", it has to be Kunio Kun.  It has now been three decades since Yoshihisa Kishimoto's scrappy Japanese highschooler first took to the streets in order to rescue his buddy Hiroshi from gangs, and from the original Nekketsu Kouha Kunio Kun sprung not only all-time classics in its canon, like River City Ransom, but the entire beat-em-up genre. 

For a series with that kind of importance, it's certainly taken its share of spills, with long hiatuses of no active-ownership sustained only by fan-made remakes, and more recently, an acquisition by ARC System Works that consistently produced games, but many of those games being just rehashes of older ones, and almost none being released outside of Japan.  Back in 2008, a Korean developer attempted to make an MMORPG based on the property, which fell off the map until 2010, when it had another demo, only to be apparently discontinued again the next year.

As of late, though, the stars seem to have aligned in this series' favor again.  It began with a Canadian indie developer, Conatus Creative, successfully getting permission to make a crowdfunded River City Ransom sequel, continued in the form of the PS3 successor to Crash N' the Boys: Street Challenge getting an American release, plus a port to PC via Steam, also under the River City brand (which is bound to cause some issues with different games in the series using the Japanese or English character names), and now, beginning late last year, the MMORPG is back, too--though only available in Chinese, so far.

Based on the media released, there are a number of changes since its last iteration in 2010.  Graphics have been revamped into less-chibified forms; perhaps to distinguish this further from ARC and Conatus-developed Kunio games, and in addition to the earlier version's focus on user-created characters, there seems to be a story focusing on three playable protagonists from the existing canon, Kunio Kun himself, his friend/ally/rival Riki Sameda, and Kunio's maybe-girlfriend Hasebe Kazumi.  At some points, there is obviously some degree of character customization involved, since you can buy clothes, including a rainbow Afro wig and a Mario cap. (If Nintendo is supporting this game, that's a good sign!)  The new story mode is narrated in-part by 3-D cut-scenes!

The game also has added a number of drivable vehicles, including a motorcycle, a mech suit, and--for that hipster in all of us--an excavator.  You can even obtain guns!  Combos look to be quite wild, which is a good thing, considering it has to compete with Conatus's impressive efforts!  There is no word yet on whether the game includes a high-definition iteration of the infamous bare-butt sauna, but perhaps we will find out!

The game can be downloaded for Android, iPhone, and PC, so go try it out if you're up for it!  I will post more if I can get it to work!  In the meantime, salivate over the colorful, well-drawn screenshots--including Hasebe's fine behind:

You've come a long way, baby.