Game Review: Knuckle Busters (Commodore 64, Ricochet)

Knuckle Busters does appear to have some form of identity crisis.  The title screen says Knuckle Busters, the introductory screen before the game says Knuckle Buster, and the original game’s instructions say Knucklebusters.   More interestingly, an early preview of the game, uncovered by Games That Weren’t, seems to indicate that this game may have started as a conversion of the Taito arcade game Knuckle Joe, but was then changed.   In any case, the plot sets the scene for you.  You are Deke, a wanted man, and for good reason.  Deke has managed to completely wreck the central computer and causing it to self-destruct.  That means that Deke has around seventeen minutes to get through to the outer city wall and to make his escape.

So how does Deke do that?  Well, effectively, this is by manging to battle past the androids, who were former criminals who were rehabilitated by being chemically altered.  There are five types in all with some more formidable than others.  Deke can choose to fight or avoid them, and fighting them can either reveal some useful objects and increase the score at the same time. By going through doors Deke can head through to the different zones, from the prison cells, guard area, prison walls, the city and downtown precinct and head to the exit to the last zone, the city wall.

Wall to Wall Combat

The game loads and displays a large scrolling message in both directions, with the middle part of the screen giving you most of the controls.  It does forget to mention (which the instructions do at least note) that you will need to use the space bar to go through the doors, so it is handy to have a second joystick on the floor so you can press the button with your foot if needed.  Once you press fire, a computer terminal appears with a message to set the scene for the game, with some background music playing.  Once you have read that, you can press fire and commence play, with the timer starting at seventeen minutes and counting down.  If that timer reaches zero, it is game over.

Deke can make his way along the screens with left and right, and pressing up and down will jump up and drop down between three distinct floors, and there are gaps in those which Deke will fall down.  You can also use the fire button to punch, fire and right and fire and left does the kicks.  The kicks and punches are the two moves that you must defeat the androids, and the status at the bottom shows the number of lives left, an energy bar, the score, the item currently collected and when you hit an android, the box to the right will exclaim HIT to indicate a valid blow.  Land enough, and that android is defeated.

Paranoid Android

And this is where the playability problems start, sadly.  The moment you destroy an android, another one appears almost straight away in the same spot, and does not give you time to always move to where you need to go.  Eventually it becomes more a case of dodging the androids rather than engaging into combat with them, jumping up and dropping down to change floors.  There are barrels and mystery boxes, marked with a question mark, that you can kick open.  Revealed inside can be points, a key, a skull or extra energy or lives.  The key here, literally, is to make sure when you have a key that you do not pick up anything else in the meantime, but instead find a locked door (this will not have a black background to indicate it is open) and use space to open the door.  Once you have used that object, all is well.

Unfortunately, this does also mean that if you collect another object before you use the key, or you find that the key opens a door that you did not need to open, that can become a little frustrating, as there is only one definite route out.  A little trial and error and you can learn which doors to open and when, as well as which of the boxes and barrels to kick open to reveal the objects needed, but the difficulty is that a lot of the backgrounds are very samey, with colour differences between some parts of the zone, but because the graphics can be similar, you are not always sure what progress is made.  At least when Deke makes the prison walls you can see the darkness outside and that gives you some idea of how you are doing.

Fast and Furious

The action in Knuckle Busters is fast, and perhaps too fast for its own good.  You can certainly see very fast kicking from both Deke and the enemy androids, but that combat often means that you feel trapped, cannot escape combat easily once engaged, and end up constantly pressing the fire button to punch rapidly to defeat the android.  That gets repetitive quite quickly also a tad frustrating that you cannot get that much further if engaging in those fights.  Because the jump is also so quick, that can mean a rapid ascent but also a rapid descent off the edges of a platform, and often when pressing space to go through a door, you end up going through twice, returning to the door you selected.  All of this could and should have been ironed out, but alas, it just detracts from the playability which is a shame.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Knuckle Busters are very good.  There are some well-drawn backdrops and although they can look a little samey in between sections, they are clear and do not interfere too much yourself or the enemy characters.  The scrolling is smooth and the animation is reasonably good, although with the fighting moves being performed very fast, it seems to be smooth in between.  There is a good use of colour to differentiate the different sections as well.

Of course, the big draw here is the Rob Hubbard soundtrack.  The title theme is suitably gritty sounding and gets you in the mood for the game itself, but the in-game theme is an absolute epic that deserves to be heard in full.  Its close on seventeen minutes (which matches the countdown of the clock in the game incidentally, so written with that in mind) has a number of sections clearly inspired by Industrial sounding music, from the opening slow scene setting drama with pounding drums, into a middle section that has a melody and a calmer feel, before this gives way into a darker feel as the tune grows and builds, with a final section as it gets quicker and quicker, elevating that sense of panic as that hits more drama and a final crescendo before the slowing down to an almost stop of the final minute or so.  It must be heard to believe how brilliant it is, and that really does stand out amongst the many excellent Rob Hubbard soundtracks as one of his best.  The sound effects in comparison are quite weedy and does not really add to the action, which is a shame as having something in-game to inform you of a pick up may have been useful.

Final Thoughts

Knuckle Busters would have the potential to be a good platform-based beat-me-up with some arcade adventure elements such as collecting and using the keys to unlock some of the doors and make your final escape.  The graphics and the superlative music do attempt to set the scene well, but unfortunately the playability is lacking.  You either choose to get embroiled in fights where repeated use of the punch to defeat the enemy results in some loss of energy no matter what, or you choose to jump constantly between the platforms, avoiding the enemies that way and then just concentrating on the collecting to make your escape.  Certainly, this seems to ultimately be the better tactic as this does allow you to complete the game, but the difficulty sometimes of escaping those fights means that it becomes a frustrating game experience to say the least. It could have been a very entertaining game had more thought gone into that playability, but as it stands it is a let down that you would only buy for the music, and now you do not even have to do that.

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