Vigilante was a 1988 Irem coin-op, a kind of spiritual successor to 1984ās Kung Fu Master/Spartan X. Like the 1984 title, Vigilante had a simple premise - you walk to the right and beat up fools in front of you and behind you. Thereās no pseudo-third-dimension, no in and out, itās just straight up single plane brawling, taking on ruffians before they get the jump on you. At the end of every stage, you fight a boss, then those self-same ruffians drive a van away containing your girlfriendā¦ Madonna.
Itās never made clear if itās the real Madonna youāre trying to rescue, or just a Madonna. But rescue her you must. And to help you do so, you can find a wide array of weaponry that can be used to dispatch fools faster. Weapons such as nunchuks andā¦ actually, just nunchuks.
Vigilante isnāt a terrible game, but itās not a great game either. It certainly has a distinctive look, with characteristic late-80s chunky sprites, this time with thick black borders that really make them pop. The main character is recognisable and distinct, sporting a fetching pair of dungarees, and the levels look suitably grungy. But itās just not that interesting. Literally all you do is move forward and hit people, the skill being in how you cover your front and back effectively.
So, from a pretty low baseline, can the home ports inject any kind of interest? Letās take the power into our own hands!
Top of the shitheap, as always, is the Amstrad version. Itās especially bad this one, with the usual trademark Amstrad chunky-colourful graphics and rage-inducing jerky scrolling. In itās defence, it doesnāt look too bad in still form, itās only when you see it moving that you experience the true horror of it. Itās main problem though is not its looks - itās how it plays. Thereās no sense of actually fighting, hits arenāt clear, the sound effects give no clue. You just kind of move forward and mindlessly mash.
At one point, some guy just started following me. He didnāt attack, he wouldnāt even face me. When I approached him, he moved away. It was one of the spookiest glitches Iād ever seen. Eventually, I had to let the time run out on the level, because he just couldnāt be killed. Another time, my guy āfellā down to a lower level where the goons couldnāt touch him and I was able to finish the level. So itās a bit buggyā¦
Oddly, when I got to the second level, I found myself warming to itā¦ which pretty much proves that Stockholm Syndrome is a thing!
Must try harder, Amstrad!
Nibbling at the shitty coattails of the Amstrad version, is the C64 port. The C64 normally does well in these comparisons, excelling at music, sound effects and graphics. Not this time. Vigilante on the C64 is as drab and unappealing as a wallpaper paste cocktail!
It just looks so bleak and recreates nothing of the arcade. It is jerky in motion and slow as hell, with the main character sauntering along with all the urgency of a tranquillised sloth. But its most egregious sin is not in the looks department - itās the music. Itās atrocious, jarring, repetitive, gratingā¦ exactly the opposite of how C64 sound should be.
Foreshame, C64, foreshame!
Having just lambasted its 8-bit cousins for their shoddy visual recreations of Vigilante, you might expect that Iād whip the Spectrum with the same stick? ā¦ Are you new?
Listen, the Spectrum version of Vigilante is no looker. Itās a headache waiting to happen in places, with gaudy blocks of colour and a flippant, devil-may-care approach to colour clash that is almost commendable in its audacity (though, it does offer to let you play in monochrome, something Iāve never seen any other Spectrum game offer!)
But we expect that from the Spectrum, and itās not the worst looking Spectrum game out thereā¦ So we can be a little bit more forgiving of its visual failings (of which it has many) and look beyond them to the game itself. Andā¦ as is so often the caseā¦ the Spectrum manages to turn in a B+ recreation of the Vigilante arcade experience!
Itās smooth enough, it controls well, it hits you with enough enemies to make it feel like the coin-op. All the levels are intact, as are most of the bosses. The enemies are recognisable. Itāsā¦ not bad to play.
It just looks like sick.
On to the Amiga, and Iām forced to pick up my lambasting stick again.
There is no reason why the Amiga version should be this average. Granted, itās not quite the appalling war crime that the Amstrad and C64 versions are, it is at least playable. Itās just soā¦ meh. The graphics are meh. The sound is meh. It has juddery scrolling, somehow. Itās one of those mid-generation Amiga ports that feels like the devs didnāt quite know what the Amiga was capable of, a veritable Atari ST port if ever I saw one.
Sigh.
Okay, letās leave the home computers behind and finish up on a few high notes.
First up is the Sega Master System, punching above its weight as is so often the case. This port makes a few changes - Madonna becomes Maria, and the gang youāre fighting change from āThe Skinheadsā to āThe Roguesā. No idea why.
Visually, it does a good job of recreating the arcade, albeit with a lick of SMS paint. The sprites are small, but have character and the whole thing controls well. Sound is good, in both vanilla SMS audio and fancy FM sound. And it generally plays quite well.
Thereās an interesting quirk in this version where you can basically jump over a significant portion of the enemies. They run at you, you jump, and they carry right on by, never troubling you again. Not sure if this is intentional or notā¦
If I had to offer one criticism, itās that, unlike the other ports, this one sends you back to the start of the level when you lose a life, even if youād made it to the boss.
Still, a good effort generally.
Saving the best till lastā¦
When it set its mind to it, the humble PC Engine was capable of doing some quite amazing things - see its port of R-Type for proof - and Vigilante is thankfully one of those amazing things.
Its resemblance to the arcade original is uncanny at times, with a similar colour palette, the same chunky sprites, the same black outlining. It sounds great, with beefy effects and some great tunes. Most importantly, it actually plays really well. Iād almost say I prefer it to the arcade, it feels more forgiving. Unlike all of the other ports, it reproduces the bosses in their entirety, including the twins on level 2.
That said, it doesnāt really add anything, and the gameplay experience is ultimately haunted by the same ghosts of mediocrity that the arcade original has. But if Vigilante is your cup of tea, then you could do a lot worse than picking up a copy of the PC Engine version!
I kinda miss when games had wacky version differences. While there was usually one definitive version compared to the rest, having a brand new experience to play by simply buying the same game elsewhere was actually nice to have in some cases.
Nowadays itās just āoh, you bought Skyrim on Switch? Hereās some Legend of Zelda armorā and āDepending on which platform youāre playing HITMAN 3 (a singleplayer game) on, you get a suit with a differently colored undershirt!ā
The differences in games were often due to the wider differences in the hardware platforms themselves. The dear old Spectrum is a perfect example of that. Plus there were handheld ports where things could get really wacky.
Games on different systems often had a distinctive āfeelā right up to the PS1/N64/Saturn era because of that. Now everything is essentially PC like hardware and ports all look and feel the same.
A lot of it was also down to the interpretation of the individual devsā¦ they often had limited access to original source code or assets, and ended up relying on simply playing the arcade game or even watching VHS footage of someone else playing the game.
This is why the early 8-bit ports often felt like they were inspired by, rather than ported from the original games. It sometimes amazes me they got as close as they did.