Vigilante (arcade)
200x100 GFX Company: IREM
Genre: Beat 'em up
Released: USA: 1988
From the game's intro
The police cannot stop the street gangs. . .
as a vigilante you must defend your people's turf!!!
The skinheads have taken Madonna hostage!
Take the law into your own hands!
This Beat-em-up is a spiritual successor to IREM's Kung-Fu Master, a game that had the Jackie Chan "Spartan-X" license, but had little to do with that movie (a.k.a. Meals on Wheels) other than having Thomas (Jackie Chan) and Sylvia (Lorna Forner) characters in it. Vigilante has many of KFM's engine mechanics, including the single plane game area, pressing up to jump and down squat, lower points for long-range kicks than the shorter range punches (an incentive for better players) and even the ability for swift gamers to turn as an attack is being thrown to clobber enemies on both sides. Vigilante adds the forward jump attacks that Double Dragon popularized in the Beat-em-up genre and adds a nunchaku weapon that is forever lost once the player is hit with a powerful attack. There are even street gang versions KFM's low-grade drones recreate those roles, though there is a wider variety of enemies here. Players will be swarmed by the grabby drones with no sense of personal space who must be shaken off with the same left-right-left-right control shimmy Thomas had to use to break from from the Grippers. The drones also back off when you face the end bosses of the stage, though you might face multiple oppoents in a few cases. Vigilante also has five stages, just like... well, you know.

Vigilante is NOT an official sequel to Kung-Fu Master and doesn't have any of KFM's additional legal notices. While he moves and fights like Keiji Thomas, the Vigilante seems to go unnamed. Oddly enough, the Vigilante's girlfriend, Madonna, looks a lot like the blonde, perm-haired version of Sylvia seen in the U.S. artwork for Kung-Fu Master

It'd be interesting to know if Madonna was influenced by the overseas art in the same way that Double Dragon was reportedly inspired by Renegade, the U.S. localization of Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun.

According to the EU flyer, the gang is referred to as the Rogue Gang.

Stages (names in parentheses are from Turbografx-16 manual)
Stage 1: Unnamed (Main Street in New York City)
Stage 2: Junkyard (Junkyard)
Stage 3: The Bridge (The Brooklyn Bridge)
Stage 4: Downtown (Downtown)
Stage 5: Your turf (Big Boss hideout)

Sources
Kung-Fu Master art souce: Arcade Flyers Archive. Enemy names from the EU flyer on the Arcade Flyer Archive and Vigilante Turbografx-16 manual.
Player Characters:
Vigilante
Enemy Characters:
Giant Devil Hammer Throw Gool the Mad Brothers Raging Bison Skinhead the Terrible
Other Characters:
Madonna
Screenshots (click to see full-sized):
ScrollBoss Section Links:
Sprites - Sprites from Vigilante
Custom Sprites - IREM Sprite Edits
Logos - Logo
Mini Logos - IREM mini-logo section

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