Miscellaneous game questions...

[R-Tape]

I feel I should know this, but do the Renegade bosses have names? In particular I want to know the level 3 boss - the burly madame. Is it Suzy?

(Long story. Erm...asking for a friend )

[Alessandro]

The bosses of the Americanized version appear not to have any names, but in the Japanese original, they are called respectively Riki, Shinji, Misuzu and Sabu.

[R-Tape]

The bosses of the Americanized version appear not to have any names, but in the Japanese original, they are called respectively Riki, Shinji, Misuzu and Sabu.

Cheers Ale,

It describes her as "A giant woman from a female university".

I thought she was running a brothel, and all the other women were in her employ. That can't be just my assumption can it? (prodge's joke interview in the first Woot suggests otherwise).

[Alessandro]

You have to understand that in the Americanization process, the original references to Japanese youth subcultures were put aside in favor of other pop culture references recognizable by the American public. In this specific case, Misuzu is a Sukeban, that is, the leader of an all-female teenage gang, recognizable from their seifuku, i.e. "sailor dress". Whereas for instance the first gang boss, Riki, is a benchou, i.e. the same but referred to an all-male gang wearing the traditional Japanese high school blue uniform with brass buttons. Also take into account that "university" might be a mis-translation from chuutookyouikugakkou, literally "secondary school" but meaning "university", not "high school".

Is it then possible that the Japanese boss and her minions were turned into a "madame" and her "girls", which are immediately recognizable by American players.

The Trivia section in the Renegade entry says in fact:

The original Japanese version of Renegade, entitled Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun, has many cultural differences with its American counterpart. The main character, instead of a street fighter, is a Japanese school student named Kunio and rather than rescuing a kipnapped girlfriend, Kunio must beat-up gangs from rival schools who are always picking on Kunio's brother. Most of the sprites in Kunio-kun have been changed in one way or another for Renegade: the train station of level 1 became a subway all of the students have been modified to look more like thugs and Kunio's brother has been entirely replace by a damsel in distress.

On a side note, I would really like to redesign the sprite graphics of Renegade and replace them in the game, to revert it back to its Japanese roots... if only I knew how to do it!

[Ralf]

I would swear the boss from level 3 name was Big Bertha. Heard it somewhere and was able to google it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha

Fictional characters:
Big Bertha (comics), a member of the Great Lakes Avengers in Marvel Comics
Big Bertha (Sanctuary), an "abnormal" in the Sanctuary television series
Big Bertha, an enemy character that appears in Super Mario Bros. 3
Big Bertha, a female boss character in the video game Renegade

Or is it unofficial nickname? Anybody able to confirm?

[Ast A. Moore]

The instructions only mention Big Bertha by name:

The third level takes place in the sleezy downtown streets, the headquarters of a gang of female marauders armed with both clubs and whips. When a number of these “ladies” have been defeated, their leader, Big Bad Bertha, is brought into the fray.

[Alessandro]

Most probably that was added by Imagine/Ocean, the original Taito arcade manual does not make any mention of it.

Edit: I am now sure that this Bertha name is an invention of Imagine/Ocean - I dug out both games from my MAME coin-op archive, and while the Japanese original version has names written in Hiragana characters alongside the energy bar of each boss, the Americanized version has simply "BOSS".

Edit 2: To make the game look like the original Japanese version, backdrops would have to be changed too, not only sprites. I could redraw them but do not know how to place them back into the game code without making a mess...

[Ralf]

Well, foolish me, I should start searching form the most obvious place - the instruction

So according to the instruction:

- level 3 boss is called Big Bertha or Big Bad Bertha
- girlfriend being rescued is called Lucy
- everyone else is nameless

[Alessandro]

Again, I am sure these are inventions of whoever wrote the instructions for the home computer versions. Boss names only appear in the original Japanese version. Not to mention the fact that there, the main character does not have to save his girlfriend (yawn...) but to teach the gangs that beat up his brother a lesson; the latter's name is also known from the arcade coin-op, i.e. Hiroshi.

[R-Tape]

Ah! I had Bertha in my head, and short of reading the instructions there was no way of finding out.

Cheers for the background Ale. I don't need to be faithful to the original for what I have in mind - "Big Bad Bertha" works perfectly.