Back in the day Street Fighting Man was awesome. I spent many hours playing this game along with Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Prince of Persia and Captain Comic. Your gal was kidnapped, and you had to make your way through the various gangs of Detroit to find her.
It wasn’t a scrolling screen game which made it quite annoying as some screens lead you to dead ends. You did seem to get lost around the place which was also frustrating. But you could pick up chains, bats, even a gun to fight the mean gangs, some of them included the fat boys but my favourite was the pimp boys, their main man was Tyrone and it was fun as when you hit someone it said they were angry, and then it continued on and said they were going to kill you, and then finally it said Tyrone is Down.
You also got to fight the hookers from the streets, dressed in their high heels, they actually put up a bit of a fight.
The fighting was simple, you could kick and punch, the moves were limited, and the guys you were fighting have predictable moves which made it easy enough to beat them. Every now and then the cops would come along and you could beat them up too and it said 'Nick is a Cop Killer'. (Your characters name was Nick). Going back to the screen movement, the guy walked in diagonals a lot which made it annoying too. Another annoying thing was that you often found your gal to be uncontrollably beaten and she was taken again which might you had to hunt,
back track and do whatever to find her. Sometimes never finding her.
Sound was average for today’s standards but back then it was pretty good, the punches made a specific sound and there was another sound when the guy you were fighting finally died. Special scenes allowed you to visit strip clubs but as you can imaging there was nothing too look at.
It has been many years since playing this game and as you can tell from my review it has stuck in my mind quite vividly which is a sign of a good if not great game. If you want to get back to old school dos games then this might be the one for you. Although I never finished this game as I could never find her enough times. It was too hard to search the same areas over and over again.
