That's why they call the game Bad Dudes


August of '89. A tremendous month. A lot of great things happened, believe me. And one of the greatest? The release of Bad Dudes for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES! Fantastic system. Really terrific.

Now, some people, the fake news probably, will try to tell you about other things that happened that month. Maybe some boring news story, maybe some Hollywood flop. Sad! But the real story, the big story, was Bad Dudes. When I heard about Bad Dudes hitting the NES in August 1989, I said, "This is huge, absolutely huge!"

Let’s talk about Bad Dudes – great name, by the way, very strong. Data East, a terrific company, they developed this game, and let me tell you, they did a fantastic job. It’s got this incredible cover art by Marc Ericksen – a real patriot, that guy. 

The game was already a hit in the arcades in 1988, making tons of money, one of the top five earners in America that year. Tremendous success! And then they brought it to the NES, which was the best console, nobody even comes close to the NES in 1989, very special.

This wasn't some low-energy game. No, no, no. This was high energy. You had these bad dudes, and they were bad! You play as Blade or Striker, two tough guys, real American heroes, and you’re beating up ninjas left and right to save the President. Very important work. Very heroic.    

In the arcade, they called the Commander-in-Chief "President Ronnie" – great guy, Ronald Reagan, one of the best presidents. But Nintendo, they got a little nervous, so in the NES version, they just call him "the President," and he looks a bit like George H.W. Bush. Very smart move, very classy. People loved it. 

You had ninjas! The best ninjas. Very powerful. You had to fight them through all these incredible levels. City streets, sewers, even a moving truck! Can you believe it? A moving truck! Very innovative. Nobody was doing that.  

The gameplay? It’s fantastic, absolutely fantastic. You’re punching, kicking, throwing ninja stars – I mean, these ninjas don’t stand a chance. You’ve got moves like the flame punch, the hurricane kick – really high energy, nobody does it better. You fight through cities, sewers, trains, forests, all the way to the ninja base. 

And the bosses? Tough. Really tough. But you know what? You were tougher. You had to be, or you wouldn't have a country anymore. The fate of the President was at stake! That's right, they kidnapped the President! Can you imagine? But you, as Blade or Striker, you went in there, you fought hard, and you saved the day. Just tremendous.

The graphics? For the time? Amazing! Really sharp. 

The sound? The best sounds. The game even talks. It says, "I'm bad!" And people said, "Wow, this game talks." The best words. No other game had better words.  

"I'm bad!" Believe me, that's one of the greatest lines ever in a video game. Maybe the greatest. You're playing Bad Dudes, a tremendous game, a fantastic game, and you've just done a very heroic thing. You've beaten the enemies, the toughest enemies, and your guy, he looks right at you, and he says, with tremendous confidence, "I'm bad!"

And he's not wrong. He's not. He's very, very bad. And that's a good thing. That's a great thing. The fake news, they'll tell you "bad" is bad. But it's not. Not in this case. "Bad" means you're strong. It means you're tough. It means you're a winner! It's a statement. A very powerful statement. He's not low energy. He's not weak. He's a bad dude, and he knows it. You're saving the President, by the way! He's kidnapped! And you go in there, you punch, you kick, and you say, "I'm bad!" Can you believe it? Nobody else would do that. It's fantastic.

That's the kind of attitude we need. You work hard, you do a great job, you win, and you declare it. Loud and clear. "I'm bad!" Tremendous. A tremendous line from a tremendous game.

The music? Iconic! People still hum those tunes. Believe me.    

Now, some people – the fake news, the haters – they say Bad Dudes isn’t as good as Double Dragon or River City Ransom. Wrong! They don’t get it. Bad Dudes has heart, it’s got style, it’s got that 80s vibe – pure American grit.   

This game, folks, it’s not just a game – it’s a cultural phenomenon. It’s in movies like Parenthood – Steve Martin, great guy, he’s talking about Bad Dudes in 1989. Really great movie, and it was one of the great lines, really, that many people still remember from 80s films: "Well, they're bad dudes. That's why they call the game Bad Dudes." Nobody could deliver a line like that the way Steve did. Nobody.

And the ending? Spoiler alert: You save the President, and he says, “Hey dudes, thanks for rescuing me. Let’s go for a burger!” Burgers! I love burgers, nobody loves burgers more than me. In the Japanese version, you get a statue, which is nice, but I’d take the burger, much better.

Bad Dudes. August '89. A big, big win for gamers. A big, big win for Nintendo. A big, big win for America. It was a fantastic time, and Bad Dudes was a big part of it. Don't let anyone tell you different. It was a tremendous game, and everybody knew it. Still do. Sad! They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Location: Manhattan, New York, NY, USA

Popular posts from this blog

Apple Hypercard links to the future on August 11, 1987

Image
Boston, Massachusetts - August 11, 1987   ZAP! POW! WHAMMO! On a muggy August day in 1987, in the heart of Boston’s MacWorld Expo, Apple Computer, those slick Silicon Valley shamans, unleashed a digital thunderbolt that’d make even the most jaded tech heads twitch like a hopped-up Kerouac on a Benzedrine bender. HyperCard ! The name alone was a neon sign flashing in the binary night, a promise of something wild, something free, something so gloriously unhinged it could turn every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a Macintosh into a programmer, a poet, a digital Prospero conjuring worlds from a 9-inch monochrome screen. Picture it: the convention floor, a buzzing bazaar of beige boxes and bespectacled geeks, the air thick with the hum of cooling fans and the fevered dreams of a thousand would-be Zuckerbergs. Apple’s booth is a temple, a shrine to the bitten fruit, and there, amid the faithful, Bill Atkinson—wild-haired, wild-eyed, the high priest of pixel and code—steps up to the altar. Thi...
Read more

Members Only jackets give entrée to the 80s' most-exclusive club

Image
ZOW! POW! WHAMMO! Here comes the 1980s, that electric decade, that glitter-burst epoch, strutting down the boulevard of history with a boombox on its shoulder, blasting synth-pop anthems into the ozone, the air thick with Aqua Net and ambition. And what’s that glinting in the strobe-lit haze? What’s that sleek silhouette slicing through the crowd like a shark fin through the waters of Port Harbor? It’s the Members Only jacket . Ah, the Members Only. A name that crackles with a delicious, almost illicit, exclusivity. Members of what , exactly? That remained wonderfully vague, a shimmering ambiguity that only enhanced its allure. Perhaps it was a club of the effortlessly cool, the possessors of some ineffable sprezzatura that allowed them to navigate the treacherous terrain of high school hallways and mall food courts with an air of insouciant command.  Perhaps it was a more metaphorical membership, a silent pact among those who understood the unspoken language of status, a visual ha...
Read more

Street Fighter establishes a new pugilistic order on August 30, 1987

Image
It was an unassuming Sunday in August. Yes, August 30, 1987. A date that, to the uninitiated, might seem as bland as white bread, but for those with their fingers on the pulsing joystick of popular culture, it marked the dawn of a new pugilistic order! Before this day, the arcade scene, a kaleidoscope of flashing lights and cacophonous bleeps, was already a vibrant, electric beast. You had your Pac-Man gobbling pellets, your Donkey Kong hurling barrels, your Gyruss spinning through the cosmos like a drunken astronaut. But these were games of reflexes, of pattern recognition, of the lone wolf versus the digital horde. Then came Street Fighter . Ka-POW! Wham! Thwack! Street Fighter came out of the shadows like a stranger stepping off a midnight bus, carrying a promise of violence and something deeper—something that hummed in the blood. Capcom, those game design wizards from Osaka, Japan, birthed it. A coin-op machine with a cabinet painted in bold reds and blues, it stood there in the ar...
Read more