Mug Smashers
released on Dec 31, 1990
Mug Smashers is an early 90's western-developed two-player arcade brawler that's basically a combination of Combatribes and Final Fight. It has suspiciously similar sprites and music to the former but plays more like the latter with its scrolling stages and lack of ground attacks or tornado throws. It has an absurd visual style including a main character that's wearing red leopard pants and white sunglasses.
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A generic, clunky brawler.
MID Smashers haha gottem !!!
Feels like a bunch of hobbyists with no dedicated artist on the team played FINAL FIGHT and said, "Hey, we can make that!"
And they did, sort of! Mechanically, the game is quite solid and feels good to play. It's very forgiving, and the combat and movement are both fast and satisfying. Everything pretty much works like it should, which is honestly a lot more than you can say for lots of similar games from big developers around this time.
Unfortunately, a pronounced lack of imagination and the extremely ill-advised decision to make the game as long as possible make this an insanely boring play. There's lots of weapons and random stuff to pick up, as well as lots of different looking enemies, but everything and everyone acts the same. The bosses are named stuff like 'Hatman' (guy with a hat) and 'Redman' (guy wearing red), and there is exactly one interesting enemy type - all the rest are just normal dudes. Everything is as stock as you could possibly imagine.
If this game was half as long it might have been as much as a whole star higher. I was kind of pulling for it! The art is super amateur but it has a scrappy charm to it and it plays very smoothly. It helps that it's easy - you can go for about 10 minutes on a single quarter, lol.
Needed someone with some vision.
And they did, sort of! Mechanically, the game is quite solid and feels good to play. It's very forgiving, and the combat and movement are both fast and satisfying. Everything pretty much works like it should, which is honestly a lot more than you can say for lots of similar games from big developers around this time.
Unfortunately, a pronounced lack of imagination and the extremely ill-advised decision to make the game as long as possible make this an insanely boring play. There's lots of weapons and random stuff to pick up, as well as lots of different looking enemies, but everything and everyone acts the same. The bosses are named stuff like 'Hatman' (guy with a hat) and 'Redman' (guy wearing red), and there is exactly one interesting enemy type - all the rest are just normal dudes. Everything is as stock as you could possibly imagine.
If this game was half as long it might have been as much as a whole star higher. I was kind of pulling for it! The art is super amateur but it has a scrappy charm to it and it plays very smoothly. It helps that it's easy - you can go for about 10 minutes on a single quarter, lol.
Needed someone with some vision.