-a rom hack of "Rikikunio" for the NES-
review by: Feral Mew

Released only in Japan, the elusive game known as RIKIKUNIO was once praised as the precursor to River City Ransom. Luckily a band of hax0rz saw fit to 'translate' it into 'English' for the benefit of the stupid Americans.

However...

It has been keenly established over the years that a rom cannot be hacked simply for useful purposes. It MUST contain some superfluous buggy useless crap in order to be respected by the ROM community. Thus, Skinhead Fighter was born.

The star of the show is Kunio, as he is in every other game Technos ever made. Of course here in America he has taken on several, more 'western' names, I assume because they figured no one over here would spend money on a game where you have to play as some "damn Jap". Oddly enough, this time you can't actually play as Kunio himself, you go through a short character creation process where the game hands out stats based on your birthdate and bloodtype. Occasionally you'll make a character who totally sucks and dies in one hit. This is the game's method of telling you that you're a nerd and obviously don't have what it takes to be the strongest high school student in all Japan.

Machkick is like dragon feet, I dunno what that other stuff means. I have to say I was pretty disappointed to get a character that still has his hair, it looks like the creator got bored with the whole skinhead thing about halfway through. As it is, hair seems to come and go as it pleases.

Actually the only two characters that were shaved semi-effectively are the dynamic duo of Riki and Kunio, so unfortunately the closest thing you'll see to an über-nazi death battle is watching those two beat on each other at the title screen. Why no swastikas or inverted pentagrams? Why no appearance of the words 'FUCK' or 'FAG'? This leads me to believe that our hacker was a bit substandard, the only other difference I noticed was the background on the menu screen now saying 'HEaDSKIN' instead of the usual 'RIKIKUNIO'. A poignant social commentary, to be sure.

All the super-tournament action is 2v2, so you get to choose a partner from a handy list.

I always pick Ben for some reason, even though Harry is clearly superior. I figure Ben must be special because he's the last one who's name isn't just random letters. Actually I'd like to forego the whole partner thing, they seem to hit you a lot more than your opponents do anyway.

To add some element of strategy, there are various hazards like spike pits and landmines and electrical grids strewn throughout the area, and beaten fighters transform into helpful power-ups like hamburgers and narcotics as they blink out of existence. Between fights you are given cryptic messages concerning your character's level gaining, and Ben always seems to get the better deal. Perhaps he is awarded for being useless? God I hate Ben.

Also you may notice your character's portrait at the bottom of the screen, who never fails to have hair, displaying your current 'mood' in the midst of your battle. It seems to change based on how many of those weird pills you eat and how dead you are.

After many fierce battles of trying to avoid Ben's attacks and using my acro-circus to beat everyone in the place, I finally tracked the RIKIKUNIO team to their secret ice.. factory. I let Ben distract them as I prepared to use my secret FATAL STEPS maneuver.

'That guy's a freak!'

'How bout this!'

'BARF!!!'.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Victoly! Congraturation Ben!

Our victory was short lived however. The mysterious team behind the tournament, DOUBLETIGER, emerged from the shadows to discuss amongst themselves the extent to which I couldn't possibly win.

Maybe they're right. I'm tired and there's no more skinheads. Screw this.