Bad Dudes
Who's bad? They're bad!
There's actually a Bad Dudes for the Apple II? Radical!
Bad Dudes is an arcade game most legendary for its NES port, and the plot which was spelled out at the introductory screen:
This prose has been mocked and re-mocked about a thousand times by now, as one quick Google Image Search proves.
You had two muscular, scowling Bad Dudes to choose from: "Blade" or "Striker." After winning the game, the President appeared and said "Hey dudes, thanks for rescuing me. Let's go for a burger.... HA HA HA HA!" In the arcades, the President's image was undeniably Reagan, which made the phrase look even weirder.
Whoa, where'd all the new colors come from? The Apple II could display 16 colors in all, but only six in hi-res mode (and I'm counting black and white here). That changed with the 80-Column Card, a plug-in chip that doubled the horizontal resolution of the Apple and also allowed it to display more colors at once. Most of the Apple's late 80's releases put that card to good use.
Now it's time for....hey wait a minute....what gives?
They didn't say it! THEY DIDN'T SAY IT! "Evil Thugs"? They're NINJAS, you fool! "Seems time for a little Bad Dudes justice" is cheesy on its own, but not cheesy enough! Even though I paid nothing to play this, I feel robbed!
At least the battle screens make it clear these are ninjas. Well, sort of. My Bad Dude could be anyone from Sylvester Stallone to Mariah Carey. Bad Dudes, as an Apple II port, works about as well as Street Fighter II on the Commodore 64 (which did happen). The level scenery doesn't scroll, it just flips from area to area. There's no music or sound effects other than hitting and punching-sounding bleeps. And the only response I could coax out of the keyboard was getting the figure to run, which he did not stop doing until he was dead.
Within mere seconds you meet Karnov Himself, the first boss. I spent this time involuntarily running into the right side of the wall while he belched fire into my back until I collapsed into a pile of pixels.
Heavily disappointed with Bad Dudes, I tried to get one last ounce of enjoyment out of it by just mashing the keyboard as fast as possible. That's how I got this:
And then it told me to "Insert Disk 2." Now things were getting interesting. Had I stumbled upon some secret files?
I switched to Disk 2 and nothing happened; then it told me to insert Disk 1 again. I did this, and after two seconds of loading, got the Game Over screen. Even this game's secrets are lame.
I've played all the five minutes I ever will.
I'm gonna go grab a burger....HA! HA! HA! HA!
....Nah, I'm not really laughing.