Vigilante was a 1988 Irem coin-op, a kind of spiritual successor to 1984’s 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. There’s no pseudo-third-dimension, no in and out, it’s 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 girlfriend… Madonna.
It’s never made clear if it’s the real Madonna you’re 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 and… actually, just nunchuks.
Vigilante isn’t a terrible game, but it’s 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 it’s 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? Let’s take the power into our own hands!
Top of the shitheap, as always, is the Amstrad version. It’s especially bad this one, with the usual trademark Amstrad chunky-colourful graphics and rage-inducing jerky scrolling. In it’s defence, it doesn’t look too bad in still form, it’s only when you see it moving that you experience the true horror of it. It’s main problem though is not its looks - it’s how it plays. There’s no sense of actually fighting, hits aren’t 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 didn’t attack, he wouldn’t even face me. When I approached him, he moved away. It was one of the spookiest glitches I’d ever seen. Eventually, I had to let the time run out on the level, because he just couldn’t be killed. Another time, my guy “fell” down to a lower level where the goons couldn’t touch him and I was able to finish the level. So it’s a bit buggy…
Oddly, when I got to the second level, I found myself warming to it… 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 - it’s the music. It’s atrocious, jarring, repetitive, grating… 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 I’d whip the Spectrum with the same stick? … Are you new?
Listen, the Spectrum version of Vigilante is no looker. It’s 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 I’ve never seen any other Spectrum game offer!)
But we expect that from the Spectrum, and it’s not the worst looking Spectrum game out there… 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. And… as is so often the case… the Spectrum manages to turn in a B+ recreation of the Vigilante arcade experience!
It’s 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. It’s… not bad to play.
It just looks like sick.
On to the Amiga, and I’m forced to pick up my lambasting stick again.
There is no reason why the Amiga version should be this average. Granted, it’s not quite the appalling war crime that the Amstrad and C64 versions are, it is at least playable. It’s just so… meh. The graphics are meh. The sound is meh. It has juddery scrolling, somehow. It’s one of those mid-generation Amiga ports that feels like the devs didn’t quite know what the Amiga was capable of, a veritable Atari ST port if ever I saw one.
Sigh.
Okay, let’s 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 you’re fighting change from “The Skinheads” to “The Rogues”. 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.
There’s 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 not…
If I had to offer one criticism, it’s that, unlike the other ports, this one sends you back to the start of the level when you lose a life, even if you’d made it to the boss.
Still, a good effort generally.
Saving the best till last…
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. I’d 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 doesn’t 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!
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 “feel” 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 devs… 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.