Back in 1990, a NES classic was born: River City Ransom. It was one of the seminal beat’em ups on the NES, featuring a leveling system never before seen in the genre. While the game has been ported and re-released a few times now, there has never been a true follow up to it. Conatus Creative intends to change that.

River City Ransom: Underground is attempting to be the NES sequel that never was, albeit without some of the limitations of the NES. If you look up the game on YouTube, you see a comparably slower paced game than other beat’em ups. Speculation says that this slow pace may simply be a by-product of the limitations of the NES. Whatever the reason, the gameplay footage shown in River City Ransom: Underground‘s Kickstarter video shows much faster, energetic gameplay, though the game is using sprites inspired by the NES original. As a fan of beat’em ups, that alone made me want to put down a pledge.

An example of the games’s visual style

As I read into it, I knew that I wanted the game to succeed even more. In one of their updates, Conatus Creative announced that the game’s code will be open-source, meaning anyone can take a look at the code base. Now, it should be mentioned that the music, sprites, etc. will NOT be open-source, just the code. But as a semi-frustrated programmer, getting to take a look at solid code is a godsend. The team will also produce videos to teach about the creative process that goes into their game, so I’ll certainly be watching out for that.

The only hitch (for me personally, anyway) is that the Kickstarter is based in Canada. No, I don’t hate Canadians. Actually, when I went to pledge, my card was rejected since my bank doesn’t want to do conversions apparently.

There’s about two weeks left on this Kickstarter, and it’s about half way to its goal (though a PS4 and Vita stretch goal rests at $280,000).  I’m optimistic about this game’s chances. Maybe they’ll get another payment system in place, so that I can support the game too.

You can check out Kickstarter campaign for River City Ransom: Underground by clicking here.