Video Game of the Year - THE WARRIORS

"CAN YOU DIG IT SUCKAAAASSSS!!!" Take the Walter Hill classic, 1979's The Warriors and give it to ROCKSTAR GAMES and what you get is a revamp of the fighter genre, and quite possibly one of the greatest games ever made. From the opening of the WONDER WHEEL at Coney Island with the Barry DeVorzon electronic score to the meeting of the Baseball Furies to climax of the game - the showdown with the Rogues at the shore you live the movie.

As the game starts out 3 months before the meeting with Cyrus in the Bronx, you learn how some of The Warriors joined the gang in various back stories that pad the gameplay. These missions vary from taggin' rival turf to stealing and bopping your way through a blacked out city in pandemonium.

It also incorporates the film actor's actual voices from Ajax (JAMES REMAR), to Cleon the fallen leader (Dorsey Wright) to Swan (a pre Xanadu Michael Beck) this is the authenticity, that adds to greater detail while bustin' skulls.



As always, Rockstar got the music rights to just about every track on the movie from Joe Walsh's "In the City" to the cover of "Nowhere to Run" by Arnold McCuller, it's a badass potpourri of late seventies tracks that starts to bleed into the post apocalyptic electric themes of the upcoming Reagan era 1980's.

Most importantly Boppin' your way back to Coney obviously is the allure of this game. You play out each character of the Warriors, my 2 personal favorites: Warlord CLEON, as he was killed off way too early in the movie, and of course AJAX, as James Remar's intense voice track get's you pumped to kick some ass. Also, it's raw- most of George Carlin's seven deadly words are all used here; after all, these are street hoods.



No way of wasting an opponent is off limits: take opponents head and smash them into walls, cars, windows, light them on fire, kick them in the nads, and in one part of the game I got to live out my pool hall brawl fantasies of smashing skulls with a pool stick. But there's no greater pleasure than throwing someone through a plate glass window or wooden walls. You can even stick it to "the man", if you wish and try your luck beating up city cops- but they're pretty damn tough and will Rodney King your ass as they show up in numbers.

Futhermore in the game you can control up to 9 of The Warriors simultaneously, which adds to the excitement of various scenes from the film; the fight with The Baseball Furies in Central Park at 2am, and most notably the bathroom brawl at Union Station against the "Punks" (the gang of Ted McGinley Happy Days looking rejects in overalls) which like the movie is brilliantly chaotic. If you like that, there's a game mode where two gangs face off on a roof top and the object is to throw all your opponents off the roof to their deaths (with cut scenes of each of them flying off screaming HA!). If you want race wars it's all there face off Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Asians,Cops and even chicks to gang fights in various backgrounds. You can even create your own gang from 465 "Soldiers"

My only critique is that the voice of The Rogues, David Patrick Kelly isn't used, I don't know why - but nonetheless the replacement voice sounds eerily similar.

Other than that the game's perfect. Having grown up in NYC during this time they got the urban look down. I can travel to any part of the city and I can smell the sour urine eminating from the sidewalks. This time from the safety of my own home.

Later Boppers...



Photo Credits: Rockstar Games