YMMV / Kunio-kun

• Awesome Music: So, so much.
  • The "Running Around The Streets" theme of River City Ransom, a major ear worm and very long tune by NES standards.
  • Almost the whole soundtrack of Kunio Tachi No Banka.
  • "Lover to Friend" as heard in the CD that came with one of the games.
  • Despite not technically being part of the canon, Target Renegade, an American sequel made specifically to the American version of Nekketsu Kouha Kunio Kun, earns a mention just because it's so cool.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Polished Port of Renegade for the ZX Spectrum was a smash hit in the European home computer market, particularly in the United Kingdom. So much, that it spawned two sequels exclusively for that market, one of which is universally considered an Even Better Sequel!
• Good Bad Translation: The grammatically bizarre and typo-filled writing of River City Ransom became something of a landmark for the series. When River City Ransom: Underground recreated the final level in its opening, the script was kept as is.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Barf!"^Explanation In Kunio-kun, defeating enemies will cause them to yell out things like "Aaaaugh!" or something similar. It sounded like vomiting, so River City Ransom translated it to "Barf!", and it went memetic and linked to even the Japanese version.
  • Ditto, the scene of River City Ransom with the sauna.
• Sequelitis: It is said that Technos Japan's over-reliance on the Kunio-kun series, at the expense of their other franchises is what eventually drove the company out of business. That is to say, the games themselves play perfectly fine, and as the series went on, were just refinement upon refinement on both the Beat Em Up genre as well as fun as hell party games for the sports spin offs. But Technos could have used some variety under their belt.
• Spiritual Successor: Technos would later move on to produce another, more popular beat 'em up series, Double Dragon. Not to say that Billy and Jimmy even look like Riki and Kunio a bit, especially like the latter in his early appearances. In its early development, Double Dragon was even planned to be a sequel to the original Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-Kun.
• That One Boss:
  • Sabu, the Final Boss from Nekketsu Kouha Kunio Kun (known as Renegade in the west) is this for one reason; his gun is a One-Hit Kill.
  • Misuzu tends to be this, as well. She's a Lightning Bruiser that's difficult to approach without getting tackled or slapped repeatedly, especially in River City Girls Zero. She may not have a One Hit Kill attack like Sabu, but she hits so hard and fast that it doesn't even matter. Not so much in River City Girls^* In this game, Misuzu is the first boss and despite having more over-the-top attacks, they're easy to telegraph, not to mention she isn't nearly as fast as in previous games.

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