River City Girls Zero, known in Japan as Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka -with River City Girls Extra- (新・熱血硬派 くにおたちの挽歌 -with River City Girls Extra-), is a localized port of Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka that was developed by WayForward and Limited Run Games with publishing being done by WayForward in North America and Europe and Arc System Works in Asia. The port was announced for late 2021 on June 14, 2021[1] and would be released for the Nintendo Switch on February 14, 2022. Versions for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and the Xbox Series X were released on September 13, 2022 with the Steam version being released on September 21, 2022.
Presenting the game in its original "16-bit glory", it adds new features such as a new anime opening, manga cutscenes, and additional songs from Megan McDuffee. The game includes two translations in English: Literal (Original in the new update) and New (RCG). The first translates the original game's dialogue, while the second option adapts the dialogue to match the personalities that the characters have in River City Girls. Translations to French, German, Italian, Spanish, and the original Japanese script are also available.
Besides serving as a way to officially play Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka, the port also served as a tie-in to the River City Girls continuity as an origin story of Misako and Kyōko's first adventure together and to foreshadow events that would later happen in River City Girls 2.
Development[]
Following the release of River City Girls, WayForward had realized that most people who were playing the game have never experienced Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka due to the fact that it only released in Japan. Since Arc System Works owns the rights to the game, they originally thought of porting it to modern systems in North America and Europe, though the idea of sprinkling in some extra River City Girls features came to mind sometime after. Adam Tierney, director and writer of River City Girls planned to have the original game's script directly translated to English and later adjusted to sound more in-line with how the characters speak in River City Girls. Wanting to still be faithful to the original game and not change around any meaning or plot in the dialogue, WayForward would decide to split the English script into two with one being the original script unchanged and the other being the River City Girls flavored interpretation of the original script.[2]
With no source code being available for the project, Limited Run Games' Carbon Team was brought in to put Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka onto the Carbon Engine. Having previously developed the Nintendo Switch port of Shantae, the team would update the Carbon Engine to support Super Famicom games. The team decided early on that they wanted to bump up the presentation to help make it feel like an actual port rather than an emulated version of the game as in retrospect they felt that the Shantae re-release was lacking in this aspect.[3]
WayForward would mostly be responsible for the presentation and translations of the game. The game's new artwork was done by David Liu with the opening animation being done by him and his team at Emptycell Studio. Priscilla Hamby would return to illustrate the two new manga cutscenes with Kayli Mills and Kira Buckland also returning to voice Misako and Kyōko respectively. Arc System Works would cast Honoka Kuroki and Sumire Morohoshi to voice the girls in the newly added Japanese dub. Megan McDuffee would return to compose songs for the intro, manga cutscenes, and the credits.
While the port was initially slated for late 2021, the game would be pushed back to early 2022 instead.[4] The final release date for the Nintendo Switch version was announced on February 7, 2022 with the other versions being pushed back to the spring.[5] WayForward would announce a third delay for later in the summer on June 14[6] and would announce the final dates on August 30.[7]
Plot[]
Kyōko buys an old videogame from Skullmageddon's pawn shop that supposedly depicts her and Misako's first adventure together. Misako spots Kunio on the cartridge's label and is immediately interested in finding out how to play the game. Kyōko mentions that she was also given a videogame console for free, in which Misako plugs it into Kyōko's CRT TV and proceeds to play through Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka with her. The two find the game to be fun with Misako wanting to tell people about it's existence, though Kyōko questions if anyone is going to care about such an old game. They both agree that dressing up the game to feel a bit more modern with a new intro, title song, cutscenes, and translations would probably be a good idea.
Gameplay[]
- Main article: Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka#Gameplay
Characters[]
- Main article: Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka#Characters
Gallery[]
External links[]
References[]
- ↑ River City Girls Zero announcement from WayForward.
- ↑ Siliconera's interview with WayForward's Adam Tierney and Bannon Rudis on River City Girls Zero and 2.
- ↑ Modern Vintage Gamer on developing River City Girls Zero.
- ↑ WayForward announces the first delay for River City Girls Zero.
- ↑ WayForward announces the second delay into the spring for the other versions of River City Girls Zero.
- ↑ WayForward announces the third delay into the summer for the other versions of River City Girls Zero.
- ↑ WayForward announces the final release dates for the other versions of River City Girls Zero.