River City Ransom SP: second trailer, gameplay details (special moves, counters, more)

11 March 201611 March 2016 Lite_Agent Arc System Works, River City: Rival Showdown

River City Ransom SP is a “remake” of River City Ransom (known as Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari in Japan), which will be released as a celebration for the 30th Anniversary of the Kunio-kun series. Today, Arc System Works shared a trailer for the game, which is significantly meatier than the first one. It shows plenty of gameplay footage, introduces the various characters, gameplay systems, and more.

Here’s plenty of details for the game, as translated by Gematsu.

One of the new elements of River City Ransom SP are the Special and Super Special Moves. As you can imagine, those are pretty powerful, but they require SP. Getting SP back is pretty easy: the SP gauge fills up when you’re attacked (even if you don’t manage to block, and take damage). If you keep using a Special Move, it will become a Super Special Move, which is (naturally) even more powerful. One of them is called Accel Mach Punch.

There’s also combos, mentioned in previous reports about River City Ransom SP. They allow you to land several hits in a row, and without using any SP at all. Naturally, as Kunio levels up, so does the number of consecutive hits he can land. If you ever find yourself in a pinch, surrounded by enemies, you can use the Nekketsu Counter: it brings down enemies nearby, but will use some of your SP (so use it wisely!).

As mentioned just above, Kunio can level up (once you’ve accumulated enough XP). When you do, you get some points to use on stats, such as HP, Punch, Luck, and more. It’s not the only RPG feature to be found in River City Ransom SP: Kunio can also use equipment. Depending on what you’re wearing, he will be able to enjoy various effects such as:

Backbone: prevents Kunio from fainting (by leaving just one, lone HP) when an attack is supposed to knock him out;
Goemon Technique: Kunio automatically recovers dropped items.

Each piece of equipment can have up to two skills. You can buy them in stores, or get them directly as drops from enemies.

Finally, Arc System Works gives some details about Fighting of Double Dragon 2016, a 2D fighting game included in River City Ransom SP. It features 14 playable characters, and are based on bosses from the main story mode (including their Special and Super Special Moves). It can only be played via local wireless, but it is compatible with Download Play.

Here’s the second trailer for River City Ransom SP:

https://youtu.be/tqX6nCTuA7g

Here’s some screenshots and artworks: