River City Girls Zero, despite its title, is actually not an announcement of the final score at a particularly disappointing sporting event. Rather, it’s a side-scrolling beat-‘em-up that’s quite similar to those that were common in the heyday of arcades, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Sega Genesis.

That’s less surprising than I originally thought, considering River City Girls Zero is a fairly recent English localization of a Japan-exclusive Super Famicom game from 1994 titled Shin Nekketsu Kōha: Kunio-tachi no Banka. The fact that this title originally hails from the 1990s is readily apparent, for better and for worse.

River City Girls Zero follows the adventures of two teenagers named Kyoko and Misako, as well as their respective boyfriends, Riki and Kunio. The story begins when Kunio and Riki are convicted of a hit and run they didn’t actually commit and are sentenced to imprisonment in a juvenile correction facility. Kunio and Riki are the only two playable characters at first until you’ve helped them brawl their way out of prison. Kyoko and Misako additionally become playable after the lads rescue them from some shady characters who are behind a series of strange events involving two local high schools.

The four teenagers set off to find whoever framed Kunio and Riki, clear their names, and maybe exact some revenge along the way. At its core, River City Girls Zero is a bog-standard, no-nonsense, side-scrolling beat-‘em-up. There’s nothing wrong with that on its own, though I do have some issues with it. River City Girls Zero features several screen resolution options you can choose from, though none of them are ideal in my experience. I’m not criticizing River City Girls Zero for this, though, because doing so would be unfair. I’m only mentioning it in case it might be a deal breaker for you.

I won’t criticize River City Girls Zero for its screen resolution options because it’s a localized Super Famicom game from 1994 that I’m running on an ultrawide monitor. Modern technology can only do so much with that kind of source material. The team of WayForward and Arc System Works did the best they could with what they had, and River City Girls Zero is still entirely playable on my ultrawide monitor. What I will criticize, though, is the fact that River City Girls Zero can be as difficult as other notable games from the 1980s and ‘90s.

Many games back then were designed to be particularly difficult, so they would either take players quite a while to beat or (more commonly) keep draining quarters from players’ pockets in the case of arcade titles. I dislike these levels of difficulty in any games I play. I’m not exactly an aficionado of the beat-‘em-up genre, though, so I can let this slide somewhat. What concerns me more is the possibility that River City Girls Zero’s difficulty could present accessibility concerns for potential players. I’ve encountered such an issue, although that’s for a different reason than difficult gameplay.

River City Girls Zero, and most of its fellow side-scrolling beat-‘em-ups, are difficult for me because my lack of depth perception often means I can’t tell where my characters are onscreen in relation to nearby enemies. I’ve had to use a fair few continues during my time with River City Girls Zero because I unknowingly spent large portions of fights attacking nothing but air and having to reposition my characters because of this. For me, whether or not enemies are within range of my attacks despite looking like they are is often a matter left up to the whims of fate.

Since so much of River City Girls Zero’s core gameplay loop revolves around engaging in combat, I particularly dislike the fact that your enemies don’t have health bars even though your characters do. This makes it so that the only way you know enemies you knocked down are going to stay down is when you hear them make a grunting noise. I also don’t like the fact that, even though you can freely switch between the four characters in single-player, you lose the mission if any of them are knocked out. That’s annoying when I had three other characters who could have continued fighting.

River City Girls Zero appears to have some technical issues as well. The game seemingly froze right after I had won a boss fight. This led to me having to Alt+F4 out of the game and restart it from Steam. When I returned to the main menu, I entered the passcode that the pause screen showed right before I relaunched the game, which brought me back to a point where I would have to redo said boss fight. Combined with all the other aspects of River City Girls Zero I dislike, this was enough to make me stop playing.

Overall, I don’t feel comfortable either categorically recommending River City Girls Zero or outright condemning it. Outside of the technical issues I mentioned, basically everything about River City Girls Zero makes me feel like I’m not part of its target audience. If you’re a fan of side-scrolling beat-‘em-ups, especially if you have nostalgia for their heyday back in the 1980s and ‘90s, you might well get your money’s worth from River City Girls Zero. I wish I could give a more definitive recommendation or condemnation, but I’ve done just about the best I can to inform your potential purchase decision.

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River City Girls Zero

$14.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Well-implemented beat-‘em-up gameplay mechanics.

Cons

• Difficulty may present accessibility concerns.
• Technical issues can strike unexpectedly.
• Side-scrolling gameplay might present accessibility issues.