Two Crude Dudes (Genesis)

Two Crude Dudes (Crude Buster, in Japan) is a side-scrolling beat-em up video game developed by Data East and released for the Sega Genesis console in 1992. It was originally published for the arcades in March 1990 with the title Crude Buster in Japan and Two Crude in North America and Europe.

Plot
In 2010, an atomic explosion of unknown origin takes place in New York. Twenty years later, just as the rebuilding process is taking place, a criminal organization named "Big Valley" marches into the ruins and takes control. In response to this, the government tasks two men, known under the collective name of "Crude Buster", with secretly entering the ruins in order to regain control by defeating Big Valley, with the promise of a very big cash reward.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) In the process of being ported to the Genesis, the game received many necessary tweaks in order to make it playable on a system with mechanics different from the ones of a coin-operated arcade machine, i. e. better hit detection, different level design which you can use at your advantage and less enemies on screen.
 * 2) The game can be played both alone and by two players, each one playing as one of the two crude dudes.
 * 3) Sound effects are nice to listen to and the music is of good quality and catchy, especially the ending tune.
 * 4) While not on the same level of an arcade machine, graphics are still above average and give the feeling you are travelling in a city struck by a nuclear explosion quite well. The sprites are large and detailed and the animations are decent.
 * 5) Quite often, levels present two different layers of ground which give interesting possibilities of strategy. For example you can jump between them and (literally) catch enemies by surprise as they try to follow you.
 * 6) Controls are tight. You can easily do basic moves like attacking, jumping, jump-kicking, rolling and attacking while crouching but also grab enemies and objects (more on that in pointer 8) with relative ease. You can even punch and grab upwards, which is especially useful when there is an enemy on a layer above you.
 * 7) A great array of different well designed types of enemies, ranging from generic mooks to dogs, snake-whipping wrestlers and hideous mutants, each one with their strengths and weaknesses.
 * 8) A funny and exaggerated gimmick: the two protagonists are ridiculously strong, so much that they can rip pipes off walls and use them as clubs as well as lift every object they find on their path and toss them at enemies, including heavy barrels, car wrecks, flying carriers transporting mooks caught in mid-air, most of the bosses and even tanks!
 * 9) While in two-player mode, one player can lift and toss the other one just in the same way as with the objects, adding another layer of comicality.
 * 10) Between stages, you can replenish your health bar by drinking from Power Cola cans you make fall out of a vending machine by punching it, which is cool and quite original and was not even in the arcade version. It can also be done sometimes during levels.
 * 11) Even if you are carrying an object, you can still kick, jump and jump-kick without tossing it, which was unprecedented at the time and still uncommon now.
 * 12) Lots of humor, aside from the afore-mentioned over-the-top premise and mechanics, there is a mini-boss psycho Santa and when you beat a stage, the crude dudes flex their arms and knee-bend on one leg in a ridiculous semi-dancing way and then smile in an awkward comical way.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game allegedly suffers from slow-downs during cooperative play.
 * 2) While tossing the other player is fun, it comes at the cost of a small sliver of his health.
 * 3) The third boss is still as unfair as in the original version, since you have no easy ways to dodge its charges, there is just one layer of ground so you cannot exploit the environment to your advantage and both your and its temporary invulnerability somehow works only to its advantage. You can perform a free grab and toss on it as soon as it enters the screen, though.

Trivia
• In the sixth and last stage, while you are riding on an elevator, the Twin Towers can be seen outside despite the game is set in 2030. Needless to say, this is because it was developed many years before the terrorist attack of 2001.

Reception
Mega placed the game at #37 in their Top Mega Drive Games of All Time, stating that it could rival Streets of Rage. The Video Game Critic gave it a C+ mark, praising its humor, enemy assortment and graphics and calling it "a fair way to spend an afternoon".