Bad Dudes vs. DragonNinja is a side-scrolling beat 'em up developed and published by Data East, first released in arcades in 1988 and known simply as DragonNinja outside North America. Players take the roles of Blade and Striker, two street-tough martial artists recruited to rescue the President of the United States after he is kidnapped by a ninja clan led by the villain Dragon Ninja. The single-plane brawling stretches across city streets, sewers, forests, freight trains, and a caverns finale, with the heroes punching, kicking, and using a jump-kick to clear waves of colour-coded ninja. Its enduring fame rests less on its mechanics than on its tone: the attract screen asks the player, Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President, and the game ends with the rescued commander in chief, nicknamed Ronnie, treating the heroes to a burger. That mix of earnest action-movie machismo and cheerful absurdity made it a lasting cult favourite. Data East ported the game to the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 and to numerous home computers of the era, and its catchphrase has long outlived the cabinet as an internet touchstone. It stands as a distinctly American power fantasy assembled by a Japanese studio, one of the clearest examples of the exported-and-reimported energy that defines the era.
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The Most American Games Ever Made
A Fourth of July Top Loader: the most gloriously, ridiculously American games ever made, ranked by the vibe, and a look at how many of them were dreamed up somewhere else entirely.