Killer Feature
66 / wfmag.ccRenegadeA kick, a knee to the groin, a throw off a ledge:
Renegade’s combos were its killer featuretrategy wasn’t a term often applied to the
brawler genre, at least not in the years before
Street Fighter II mixed things up with its special
moves and combos. Still, Renegade at least
required a bit of tactical thought amid all the
frenzied punches and kicks.
In its localisation for the West, Renegade switched the
Japanese version’s warring high school kids to street gangs- all leather jackets and grimy subway
platforms. Following its arcade debut,
Renegade changed again in its adaptation
to home systems, particularly the ZX
Spectrum, where restrictive hardware
meant that some of the original game’s
features had to be sanded off to fit. Unusually, though, the
Spectrum edition of Renegade – programmed by Mike Lamb - succeeded in distilling the spirit of the arcade game rather
than watering it down. Unlike later brawlers, such as Technos’
own Double Dragon, Renegade’s battles took place in confined
locations rather than long, belt-scrolling stages, with the
player’s lone martial arts expert set on by a gang of roughly
six members. Once enough gang members were despatched,
their bigger, tougher leader would enter the fray.
What set Renegade apart was the relative intelligence of its
enemies. Rather than queue up to take a beating, they’d back
off if the player approached, and lunge with a punch or swing
of a club if the player turned their back. Meanwhile, other
villains would attempt to flank the player and grab them so
an ally could close in for a jab to the guts. This made picking
fights with the right enemy, at just the right time, a key part of
surviving each round.
Renegade’s action was altogether uglier than the brawlers
that came before it; to borrow a line from comedian Eddie
Izzard, it was all martial and no art. The player could, in
response, punch or kick an enemy to the ground, and then
kneel down over their unconscious body and finish them off
with a few blows to the face. It was also
possible to lure an enemy to the edge
of a train platform and, with a flying kick,
knock them into oblivion. Which finally
brings us to Renegade’s killer feature- one that wasn’t exactly advertised
in Renegade’s instruction manual on the Spectrum. With
practice, it was possible to back-kick an enemy in the crotch,
turn around, grab them by the shoulders, knee them in the
groin, and then throw them over your shoulder – possibly
onto a train track or into a river if you got your positioning
right. Was this video gaming’s first combo? It certainly
predated Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat by several
years. At the very least, it was a down-and-dirty highlight
in a cartoonishly violent game. It was even possible to use
the sequence of moves against early bosses, turning once
imposing punch-sponges into lead-footed dinosaurs. Bigger,
better things would soon come from the brawler genre,
of course – but in its day, Renegade’s early combo was a
crunchy, gleefully nasty delight.
S
“To borrow a line from
comedian Eddie Izzard, it was
all martial and no art”TECHNOS/IMAGINE / 1987 / ZX SPECTRUMRenegade