Target: Renegade – “The skin-heads, the Beastie Boys, the bouncers”

Yoshihisa Kishimoto and Technos set some key standards in early beat-’em-ups with 熱血硬派くにおくん, Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun or, as it was known in the West, Renegade. Having launched Kunio-kun as the main character for a game about brawling gangs of school kids, they did the obvious thing next and… put him in a game about playing dodgeball against rival schools. Renegade having done its best to remove the school and kids elements from the first game entirely, this made the follow-up a tricky thing to position. It did make it to arcades and the NES as Super Dodge Ball, but Ocean, who published home computer versions of Renegade, didn’t bite on that one.

Kishimoto instead initially built on his beat-’em-up ideas in an entirely separate new game, Double Dragon. Among the changes were the addition of a second player, and of being able to pick up and use enemy weapons, both of which went down very well. Double Dragon became a much bigger and more iconic hit in arcades in the West than Renegade. Good news for Ocean, except that they didn’t have the kind of multi-game deal with Technos they’d previously had with Konami, and they lost out on the rights to Double Dragon. They were won by Mastertronic, and I’ll be telling that unfortunate story later in 1988.

So, Ocean didn’t have a beat-’em-up sequel to Renegade to convert, and they didn’t have the rights to Double Dragon. What they did have, in a combination of luck and contractual forethought, was the rights to make their own sequels to Renegade, with nothing to do with Technos. And as Ocean had demonstrated many times, they knew what to do if they had a popular phenomenon to take after and a relevant licence, regardless of whether the two were the same. They’d added Daley Thompson’s name to a Hyper Olympic rip-off, made Rambo a Commando clone, adapted alien invasion TV series V into a poor man’s Impossible Mission, turned Batman into The Dark Knight Lore, stuck a Full Metal Jacket theme on Combat School, and now they could do Double Dragon as a Renegade sequel.

Speaking to Retro Gamer in 2006, Ocean software manager Gary Bracey explained that said sequel, Target: Renegade, was a pleasing project to work on. “Ocean was known predominantly for conversions and movie licences. It was rare to create a totally original game in-house, and that was very satisfying to everyone involved.” And for all that you could dispute the accuracy of “totally original”, that does make sense. Compared to trying to match up to every detail of the original Renegade, or making a hypothetical official conversion of Double Dragon, they had a lot of free rein.

That included individually thanks to Bracey’s confidence in the team: “These were not people you had to stand watch over every hour. They were pretty much given the freedom to invent the game from the ground up”. On the Spectrum and Amstrad, the main developer was once again Mike Lamb. Between his Ocean games and Blue Ribbon’s hit budget revival of his old Steve Davis Snooker, he was having quite the run of success. On Commodore 64, where Renegade had been less well-received, in came Dave Collier, who had recently finished Combat School.

As Mike Lamb told it in the same Retro Gamer piece, “we had a couple of preliminary meetings to work out what the levels were going to be and what characters would be in them […] There wasn’t a whole a lot of back story – it was basically going through various landscapes beating the crap out of everybody”. They also came up with the flourish of the main character taking a telephone call at the end of each level, an idea which Lamb attributed to Ocean head Jon Woods, inspired by Dirty Harry.

With Renegade artist Ron Fowles leaving early on in development to join the military, his place was taken by recent Ocean hire Dawn Drake. “I think everyone had a soft spot for Dawn” said Paul Hughes in an interview with C64.com, while also referring to her as “one of the lads”. Drake stepped in, remembering that “I was eager to learn and fortunate to have Simon [Butler] as my exceptionally patient and equally talented mentor”, having worked with him previously at sometime Ocean contractor Canvas Software. She also learned from Mike Lamb — “Mike was quiet and passionate about his work and this rubbed off on me as I really valued his opinion.”

Dawn Drake’s counterpart as the main artist on Commodore 64 was Martin McDonald. He was supported by John Palmer, who later told Time Extension that he had been moved to sit between McDonald and Dave Collier, who both smoked. “Being a non-smoker, it kind of sucked”. Mike Lamb remembered McDonald and Drake collaborating well and that “most of the gameplay that I didn’t come up with came from Dawn and Martin”, as well as McDonald coming up with an idea of making one of the bosses look like Jon Woods (“he was cool about it”). Drake particularly enjoyed making the loading screen art, “a bit of Bruce Lee type action!”, which bears a rather close resemblance to a specific photo of martial artist Joe Lewis and his signature move.

Mike Lamb talked about the pride he took in squeezing as much as they could from the hardware and it’s not hard to see how Target: Renegade offered the happy chance to refine some elements of the original game. He had been forced to give every character sprite the same legs in Renegade for memory reasons, and Target: Renegade’s women in skirts and heels are surely there in part to best demonstrate that the compromise was no longer necessary.

Movement still works on a flip-screen basis rather than scrolling horizontally (“it would have slowed the game down a lot to scroll instead of flipping. It didn’t make much difference to the gameplay” said Lamb). There is, though, a wonderful touch in the first level where each time you take a lift down a floor it’s shown by the entire screen scrolling up and reappearing at the bottom, a visual technique I also loved in Final Fantasy VII.

The wider adoption by this point of 128K Spectrums also meant all the main formats got some more developed music, with Gari Biasillo taking on the task across all three. Interviewed for Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean’s history of Ocean, Biasillo explained that “it was an original soundtrack and I didn’t want to go down the boring route of creating an action set of cues, so instead I opted for a melancholic and majestic set of sounds.” This was made more challenging because he couldn’t program in Z80 assembly code and had to use an in-house music player; “saying that the player was poor would be an understatement, but thankfully James Higgins helped out and fixed a few bugs”. Melancholic is right as a description, and the music works very well to give an impression of doing something a little deeper than going through various landscapes beating the crap out of everybody.

Britain’s games magazines got excited early about Target: Renegade. “There’ll be outraged vicars and concerned parents writing in over Target Renegade. Anyone who remembers Ocean’s first game will start to palpitate at the thought of another, even more violent sequel” wrote Sinclair User in its preview. The Games Machine put it that “Renegade is back, meaner, tougher and generally a whole lot more unpleasant than before”. They were also among the first to describe one level’s enemies as “a Beastie Boy with his ‘pet’”. The game’s instructions refer to Beastie Boys, but various magazines went with ‘Beasty Boys’ (capitalised or otherwise) or ‘Beastie Boys fans’.

On the game’s release, Crash’s review called it “slickly presented” and complimented its “sinister atmosphere” and smooth movement. Jim Douglas in Sinclair User complained about the single player being a bit too difficult, but was impressed by the similarities to Double Dragon and found it “the most addictive game of its type I’ve played”. David McCandless in Your Sinclair similarly called it “the greatest beat-‘em-up to date” and praised Dawn Drake’s “brilliant” enemy designs as full of character.

In Amstrad Action, writer PbM wrote that “Target Renegade is simply a spiced up punch-’n’-kick game” but that “it’s strange to see just how compelling the two player option can be. Working as a team is so much more rewarding than solo play”. “The ability to pick up the weapons and use them against the gangs gives the game a little more excitement”, noted appropriately-initialed colleague GBH.

Over on the Commodore 64, the game was missing the two-player option. Mike Lamb’s later verdict was also that “the C64 hardware didn’t really suit a game like Target: Renegade. The limitation on how many sprites you could fit on a scan line restricted what could be done in terms of gameplay a lot”. Still, despite those shortcomings, the greater contrast from the first game worked in its favour when it came to reviews. Mike Pattenden in Commodore User recapped that “last year’s Renegade wasn’t all it might have been, which is why Ocean put Dave Collier on the job”, before calling the result “striking” and describing “large, well-animated characters”.

Tony Dillon in Computer & Video Games wrote that “the great thing about this game is the animation. [Your character] BOWLS, and in the most I’m-a-hard-man-and-I-know-it way possible.” Both reviewers wrote approvingly of the change from the joystick and keyboard combination of Renegade, with Pattenden adding “it’s nice to know companies do listen to us occasionally”. Dillon concluded his review by writing that “Renegade was pretty gross on the 64, and a lot of criticism was given. Imagine has obviously listened to those complaints very closely and come up with a sure fire number one.”

Tony Dillon was right about Ocean taking on feedback, and he was right about Target: Renegade getting to #1. It topped Commodore 64 and Spectrum charts, and the Spectrum version reached the top of Gallup’s overall individual formats chart for sure. It’s very possible Target: Renegade also made it to the top of the combined formats chart in one of the weeks where records are missing.

With the changes for Target: Renegade having worked, Ocean decided to freshen things up a bit more significantly for Renegade III: The Final Chapter, which they released around a year later. With a new team not including Mike Lamb, they gave it some more platforming action, and a time travel story. No one would own up to having come up with that idea when Retro Gamer asked around in 2018. 

“We sacrificed the variety of actions for the variety of characters” explained its Spectrum programmer Ivan Horn for that same piece. They also made it monochrome, which was perhaps a bit too easily seen as a regression from the previous games. “It’s not one of my favourite games that I worked on, put it that way”. It got some good reviews but only made it to #8 in Gallup’s combined full price chart, before going slightly higher as a budget title in 1991. Renegade III provided an odd note for the series to end on, but for two games at least it had been a triumph of smart adaptation combined with just enough invention.

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Sources:

• The Making of… Target: Renegade, Retro Gamer No. 25, May 2006
• Ocean: The History, Chris Wilkins & Roger M. Kean, Retro Fusion Books, 2013
• Target: Renegade, The Third Harmoniser
• Background Noise: Renegade, Mike Lamb, Sinclair User No. 68, November 1987, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Kunio-kun, Kurt Kalata & Saikak, Hardcore Gaming 101, 2008, accessed via the Wayback Machine
• The man who created Double Dragon, Matt Leone, Polygon, 2012
• Mike Lamb/Dawn Hollywood, Neil Reive, Arnold 2: Amstrad CPC – The Developers Q&As Uncut, 2021
• Sinclair ZX Spectrum: a Visual Compendium, Bitmap Books, 2015
• Ocean Software’s Central Street HQ, Jack Yarwood, Time Extension, 2023
• Paul Hughes, C64.com, 2009
• The Making of Renegade III: The Final Chapter, Martyn Carroll, Retro Gamer No. 180, April 2018
• Gari Biasillo, Retro GamesMaster, 2017
• Preview – Target Renegade, Sinclair User No. 73, April 1988, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Previews – Renegade II, The Games Machine No. 5, April 1988, access via Spectrum Computing
• C+VG Reviews – Target Renegade, Tony Dillon, Computer & Video Games No. 80, June 1988, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Target Renegade, Crash No. 52, May 1988, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Arcade review – Target Renegade, Jim Douglas, Sinclair User No. 75, June 1988, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Reviews – Target Renegade, David McCandless, Your Sinclair No. 31, July 1988, accessed via Spectrum Computing
• Action Test – Target Renegade, Amstrad Action No. 35, August 1988, accessed via the Internet Archive
• Target Renegade, Mike Pattenden, Commodore User No. 55, April 1988, accessed via Amiga Magazine Rack
• Target: Renegade, Renegade III: The Final Chapter, chart histories at Computer Hits

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