Scott Pilgrim EX Is Less Streets Of Rage, More River City Ransom

Welcome back to Remastered, my weekly newsletter on the ever-evolving nature of retro gaming. This week, I have a review of Scott Pilgrim EX for you all! If you enjoy what you read, consider subscribing for free or supporting me on Ko-fi.

Scott Pilgrim EX Isn't The Kind Of Beat 'Em Up You'd Expect

The Scott Pilgrim franchise is deeply intertwined with nerd culture, so it only makes sense that its video game adaptations would find inspiration from retro video games. 2010's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game stood out at a time when the retro beat 'em up had faded out of style, and it became a cult classic before and following its delisting because of that. 

Since its release, developer Tribute Games has become one of the industry’s premier developers of retro-inspired indie games, particularly thriving with their recent beat 'em ups Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge and Marvel Cosmic Invasion. While those are some great games, they haven't really shaken up the classic formula established by franchises like Double Dragon, Final Fight, and Streets of Rage. Scott Pilgrim EX does shake it up by looking to an iconic but less influential game: River City Ransom.

That's not to say Scott Pilgrim EX isn't a beat 'em up; it is! But instead of kicking and punching through linear levels with a boss at the end, the game features an open world that players weave through multiple times throughout the adventure. While the beat 'em up genre may look very simple on the surface, Scott Pilgrim EX serves as a reminder that there's a lot more depth and legacy to every kind of game genre than you may expect.

River City Ransom was released for the NES by Technos Japan in 1989. Its moment-to-moment gameplay bore similarity to its beat 'em up predecessors (the series is called Kunio-kun in Japan), but its structure was quite revolutionary for the time. Whereas most beat 'em ups then, and for years afterward, were linear affairs where players fought waves of enemies stage by stage, River City Ransom carried a more open-ended structure.

Players explored the titular River City without the guardrails typical of the genre, and there were RPG stats and new abilities to be found to reward exploration. It's one of the earlier examples of an open-world game and feels quite ahead of its time. While the Kunio-kun series was quite popular in Japan, it never really took off in the West. Players in the United States were more drawn to the simpler, flashy allure of Final Fight and Streets of Rage.

2010's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game more closely follows that beat 'em up style popular in the West. You're fighting through linear levels as you take down Ramona's exes, with the only slight River City Ransom influence coming from the art direction and very light RPG elements. 

When Tribute Games decided to make a spiritual successor to Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, they also decided to make a spiritual successor to River City Ransom. Even the name Scott Pilgrim EX appears to serve as a reference to the Game Boy Advance remake of River City Ransom.

This isn't speculation either, as Narrative Director Yannick Belzil laid out the inspiration in an interview with MobileSyrup: 

The idea of giving it that sort of playground aspect comes from the fact that we’re huge fans of River City Ransom, especially the original game. And if you look, especially in the early books of Scott Pilgrim — even the art style has that familiarity with Kunio-Kun [River City] and how it looks and the way the universe is constructed. So these just went hand in hand. And one of our co-founders and the game designer, Jonathan, he had an itch to make a River City Ransom-type of game. So when the opportunity came up for us to do Scott Pilgrim again, we were like, “Oh, well, let’s do that. They handshake really well.”

Belzil is right; the formula pairs up with Scott Pilgrim as an IP surprisingly well. Just like River City had more of a sense of place than its contemporary beat ‘em ups, Scott Pilgrim's Toronto also feels very lived in. That structure means the game lacks true setpieces like the Rainbow Bridge in Marvel Cosmic Invasion, but does allow Tribute Games to lean into the narrative more and give the game a quest-based setup that complements its multiplayer features. The core brawling mechanics also feel fantastic, as Tribute Games is truly a master of game feel in beat 'em ups at this point.

The River City Ransom formula does have some flaws that Scott Pilgrim EX doesn't outright fix, though. Even though the game can be beaten in less than six hours, you'll be doing a whole lot of backtracking. I lost count of the number of times I ran through the same city street with a line of shops. Most modern open-world games have found ways to make the basic act of traversal through their worlds really fun, but Scott Pilgrim EX didn't quite crack that. Having to backtrack to one specific location on the map to swap characters is also annoying.

Despite those issues, I'm glad Tribute Games took a bigger swing by making Scott Pilgrim EX a River City Ransom-like beat 'em up. In the retro-inspired indie scene, the beat 'em up genre is quite prevalent, but a lot of those games blend together because they aren't doing much to iterate on a simple formula that is nearly forty years old. The use of IP and tightly-designed gameplay has helped Tribute Games' previous beat 'em ups stand out, but even it ran the risk of playing it too safe had they made Scott Pilgrim EX just like its predecessor and their other recent games.

While it wasn't perfect, Scott Pilgrim EX excels because Tribute Games chose to embrace a beat 'em up formula that didn't take hold in the West as it did in Japan. This, and the roguelike beat 'em up Absolum, give me hope that there's still a lot of fertile ground left for the genre to cover. I heartily recommend  

What's Old Is News

Nintendo Indie World, Pokémon Day, and more

Scott Pilgrim EX took up most of my play time last week, so I have no new games to discuss with you all today. Still, here are some news stories that I think are worth shouting out:

• The latest Nintendo Indie World showcase was light on games with retro aesthetics, outside of the eerie Grave Seasons, but Rotwood is a new brawler that may also be of interest to you if you like Scott Pilgrim EX.
• A fan translation of the cult-classic SEGAGAGA came under fire for using AI tools in its translation process, Time Extension reports.
• Backyard Baseball is making a comeback with a new game this summer.
• Paramount was able to usurp Netflix in its attempt to acquire Warner Bros. If that deal goes through, it'll have huge ramifications in several industries, including gaming. 
• On Pokémon Day, Pokémon Winds and Waves were revealed, FireRed and LeafGreen were released on Nintendo Switch, and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness was confirmed to be coming to Nintendo Switch Online sometime this month.
• American McGee is making a spiritual successor to his cult classic Alice games, GamesRadar+ reports. 
• A copyright troll had been trying to impede preservation efforts for a PC point-and-click adventure game called Cookie’s Bustle for years, but the Video Game History Foundation finally got its DMCA takedowns invalidated. 
• Mario Clash and Mario Tennis for Virtual Boy and Mario vs. Donkey Kong for Game Boy Advance are coming to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack on March 10 to celebrate Mar10 Day. 
• Some of the most played games from February's Steam Next Fest were retro-inspired in either gameplay or visuals, including:
  • Vampire Crawlers
  • Everything is Crab
  • Romestead
  • Replaced
  • Tap Tap Loot
  • Lootbound

The Games We Played

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Playing through Scott Pilgrim EX got me thinking about how licensed games played a huge role in creating my foundation as a gamer. I've already discussed Star Wars: Battlefront II and Batman: Arkham City in this part of the newsletter, if you need any further proof of that. Regardless, when thinking about that subject once more, another important licensed game comes to mind for me: Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

Three different versions of this Diablo-inspired superhero action-RPG sit on my game shelf today (Xbox, Xbox 360, and Wii). While it may lack the depth of the Blizzard games it's inspired by, this game left me in awe as a superhero fan in an age before the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It features heroes and villains from all corners of the universe, and mashes them together like the developers were playing with action figures.

It's yet another game I put a lot of time into with my brother as well, and one I can quote many iconic lines from to this day. While licensed games from the early 2000s tend to have a bad reputation, I think it's worth it to not completely discount them. Licensed games serve as a gateway for young and casual gamers to gain a deeper appreciation for gaming, even when the IP is what’s immediately getting you in the door. My love towardthis type of game in this newsletter is proof of that. Now, if only Microsoft would sort out the licensing issues with Disney and re-release both Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends games.

That's all for this week! Please consider support through a free subscription or Ko-fi donation, and stay tuned for more Remastered next Thursday.