Thanks to Arc System Works for the review code
Title: Super Technos World: River City & Technos Arcade Classics
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $29.99
Release Date: 04/23/2025
Prelude
In this collection of 16-bit Technos obscurities, we continue the cool attention to detail seen in the Double Dragon/Kunio Brawler Bundle from over five years ago. Of course, the late-era Technos games were hardly as well known as their NES/Early Arcade titles, and not a single Double Dragon to be seen here. So, does adding Arcade games help mix things up enough to be worth the wait for more Technos goodies?
Presentation
Being developed by ITL, the same team as the Brawler Bundle, Super Technos World has a very similar UI to that collection, with very similar tweaks for the games themselves. You have different screen sizes, audio adjustments, various filters, along with a very NES-classic style game selection menu, except now the colors are different since these are no longer NES/Famicom titles. Instead, you have assorted Arcade and Super Famicom games, along with one Neo Geo AES game, so we actually have some system variety this time around.
The Arcade emulation is pretty solid, and even includes DIP switches that can be performed by holding a button combo. I didn’t notice any major issues playing any of those games, and playing the compilation as a whole on the Steam Deck made for a hassle-free experience. The SNES titles run flawlessly, as does the Neo Geo game, and the only big issue I encountered would be the one time loading a Shadow Force savestate made the game play at half speed for some weird reason. Upon starting the game from scratch and making a fresh save state, I did not encounter a repeat of this issue.
Interestingly enough, despite none of the games having the Quality Up mode that the NES collection had, (instead being replaced by a language toggle) these games do in fact appear to benefit from minor QOL improvements. For years I had known of River City Renegade as this weird, sluggish sequel to Renegade with a lot of slowdown, but here in Super Technos World, I barely noticed anything of the sort at all, so it appears general slowdown and other minor bugs in these games might have been fixed ala the QU versions in Brawler Bundle. Unfortunately, two of the games remain entirely in Japanese, but I’ll still cover them as much as I can. The rest of the games that lacked EN versions have gotten them.
Gameplay
You know the drill with these compilation reviews by now. Outside of being able to examine scans of the box art, arcade flyers and cartridge fronts before selecting the game, there isn’t much in terms of bonuses.
There’s also online multiplayer for every game, but well, I have no friends to try it with and the online isn’t exactly popping off. Still, if you and a buddy wish to do so, a few of these titles might be worth giving it a go. The Steam Achievements also unlock titles and icons for the Online mode, but you probably won’t be using them. (At least on Switch, you can still get Achievments this way) So let’s dive into a big batch of obscurities!
XAIN’D SLEENA– A very strange side scrolling shooter that looks like Section Z’s distant cousin at first glance. You play as the Soldier of Light, who runs around and shoots down enemies with her laser in a simplistic run and gun stage, before you encounter a boss at the end. Right away you’ll notice the game is really darn tough, and yet another of those classic memorization games, but at least one that’ll make for decent score chasing as you keep making progress.
Upon defeating a boss on the ground portion of the planet, surprise! You’re in space for a horizontal shooter, and this aspect feels a lot more fair. Still pretty tough mind you, but for these segments I managed to have an easier time dealing with the difficulty due to prior genre experience. Clear that part of the level, and you can move onto the next planet of your choosing. Rinse and repeat until all are clear or you game over.
Besides the interesting genre shift, Xain Sleena isn’t really that special. The game still manages to be decent fun for scorechasers, but unless you memorize a ton or make good use of those DIP switches, you’ll be struggling a ton in the ground segments. Decent fun and better than some of Technos’s other pre Double Dragon titles, but a rather forgettable game.
CHINA GATE– This Journey to the West inspired action game has you take control of one of three characters from the story, as they set out to get back some stolen artifacts from a group of evildoers. Pick a character, beat up enemies with your weapon, and try to survive to the next stage while taking out bosses every now and again.
I think this came out after Renegade, and compared to that one it does manage to be a slightly more involved brawler. Key word being slightly. The stages have some verticality to them, and the three different characters do have their own unique magic attack, but otherwise outside of the fun in playing in co-op, this one is just a quarter muncher with some incredibly strange music.
The game ramps up the difficulty to ludicrous amounts after a couple of stages, and will not stop until you are completely left for dead, pretty close to the point of being unfair. I’m sure some people will get more out of this one than I did, but compared to the other Technos Brawlers that would come later, this one is also rather forgettable, and while I’m glad it did get a reissue, I can see why other places for it to come back out again like the Evercade skipped out on this one.
THE COMBATRIBES (Arcade)- This is more like it! Ever felt that Double Dragon 3 Arcade was just too janky and weird, and you wanted something that felt more like an evolution of the first two titles? Well, Combatribes is that very game, and it rules. You and up to three players can team up and take on a gang that has taken over New York City, and you each have a pretty simple set of moves. Usually if you just go at the enemies for a while, you can pull off various techniques like throwing them by their legs, or smashing two heads together.
Combatribes also uses the same sort of numbered health system as DD3, but a lot more fairly. It isn’t until the second half of stages where I felt the opponents burning through my health to the point of having to constantly continue, with the timer running out being a bigger issue than the CPU for the first chunk of the game.
That being said, the final stage just goes bananas and forces a boss rush on you, so Combatribes does show quarter munching desires eventually, but it shouldn’t stop you and two other friends from just having a great time spamming credits for higher health bars, and you can totally play that way if you wish to do so. All in all, a really fun brawler.
River City Renegade- The Kunio series’ debut on the Super Famicom! Taking some influences from River City Ransom, with a visual style akin to the original Kunio-Kun’s Arcade poster, you take control of Kunio as he sets out in a new town to defeat some gangs causing trouble.
We already got the other Kunio brawler for SFC several years ago, so I was pretty thrilled to see the other one finally make it to the west. Unfortunately, it just isn’t as entertaining as River City Ransom or even River Girls City Zero. You still have a level up system, and you still gain new moves over the course of the game while being able to make use of items and equipment to help out during the random street fights you get into.
All in all, River City Renegade still plays decently enough to be kinda fun with two players, but compared to the faster pacing of River City Ransom, Renegade is just a lot more dull, and the english script has some seriously weird quirks going on with it. A good chunk of the dialogue appears fine and well-translated enough to understand the story, yet if you try certain things in combat or open up your equipment menu without any items, Kunio will describe it in what amounts to stilted, barely comprehensible gibberish. I do not know why the script has moments like this, but it really comes off as jarring considering there are parts during the story where the translation comes off fine.
THE COMBATRIBES (SNES)- The Arcade game, but worse, per the porting norms of the era. The three player support is now down to two, the blood is gone even in the Japanese version, and they added an incredibly pointless VS mode like the NES version of Double Dragon. Add in some very cheap hitboxes and you have yourselves a frustrating port of a great game, but one that I wouldn’t call a terrible conversion. I mean, you still get a full two player Co-Op experience, and despite the limited continues, Combatribes provided a lot more fun compared to the other co-op brawlers from the early SNES life.
They also added cutscenes to the in-game story, but outside of the oddity of the Ground Zero gang being renamed to Guilty Zero in the Wii VC reissue, and now back again to Ground Zero in this reissue, there really isn’t anything to write home about here. You beat bad guy, they tell you where next bad guy is, repeat until the game is over. They’re pretty forgettable cutscenes, but I suppose it was nice to see Technos trying to add something to make up for the cuts they had to make to bring the game home.
Kunio’s Dodgeball Time, C’mon Guys!- Enjoy Super Dodge Ball on NES? Well, this SFC sequel updates the game to 16 bit while also adding in a lot of RPG elements, and I mean a lot. The single player mode becomes tedious incredibly quickly once you realize the challenge comes less from skillful play against the CPUs, and more on hoping your team’s equipment is stronger than their own, since computer opponents have the potential to one shot your team and be nigh invincible to even your own super shots if you don’t focus on upgrading your team.
So yes, while you can choose the opponent teams in any order you wish, you won’t really get that far without a lot of grinding against the weaker teams for more money for upgrades. While it may seem like a cool twist on the NES game at first glance, I quickly grew to hate these RPG elements, and felt they added lame artificial padding to a game that really did not need such a thing. Thankfully, the local multiplayer modes are just as fun as ever and don’t deal with the RPG nonsense hardly at all. I just recommend you play that way instead, since compared to the NES game or even the other Dodgeball game in this set, this entry is pretty darn weak.
SHADOW FORCE– The final Arcade game in this set, and this was a pretty big rarity for Technos fans for the longest time, and I can see why this one had a lot of hype around it. In this brawler, you take control of one of several characters, each with their own moveset as they set out to defeat an evil organization. Yeah, another typical brawler plot with a bunch of different moves to pull off, so what?
Well the coolest feature of this game can be done right away, and that’s the ability to steal the soul of the opposing enemy and control them, Avenging Spirit style! No, you can’t control the bosses, but you can certainly experiment with a lot of different enemies this way, and each of them has their own special move that can be pulled off via a button combination, just like your main character.
These extra moves add in some nice variety to reduce the usual monotony of the genre, and being able to choose the order of the stages helps make Shadow Force a lot more engaging and fun even as a solo game! Bring in a friend for the ride, and this is by far the best co-op title on the entire collection, and one I’m finally glad has been brought home and given justice with a solid port. You can definitely tell how far Technos evolved from the basic brawlers like China Gate and Renegade to this gem, and it’s a darn shame it never got a home port until now. Still, no better time to give this Arcade gem a spin! It may be a game that still manages to be tough, but at least I didn’t pull my hair out nearly as much compared to the other Arcade games here.
Downtown River City Baseball Story- Kunio plays another sport, this time with Baseball! In the story mode, you guide the Nekketsu team to victory and try to make the comeback of the century, going from game to game as you try to defeat the other team in Baseball.
And well, this sure is a baseball game alright, with some very clunky mechanics. You have this weird camera view that tries to add a cinematic flair to the fielding, but it just makes the whole process of base switching or trying to catch the flyballs way tougher than it would be in a normal baseball game. You also have a list of various batting styles to choose from before you take a swing, which at least adds some variety, but none of them allow you to interrupt your action if you end up pressing the swing button early, so if you accidentally start to swing your bat, you gotta commit to that one swing!
Really there isn’t much else to say otherwise. A little more enjoyable than the other Kunio SFC spinoffs here, but not by much, and playing with a friend here is yet again recommended since I seriously doubt you want to deal with cinematic camera shenanigans for multiple baseball games. At least we saw Kunio finally do a new sport.
Kunio’s Oden- This is pretty strange. A Kunio style rendition on Puyo Puyo or Columns, depending on how you want to play the game, and they seriously did nothing special with those formulas to make it all that much different. Clear the food, rack up as long of a combo as you can, and take on the CPU in the VS CPU mode, or just try to survive as long as possible in the endless mode! Except for some reason, this endless mode doesn’t have a high score system at all.
You just play to survive and I guess try to relax in the usual puzzle game fashion? Honestly, besides being a clone of two games at once, and having a decently challenging CPU roster, there really isn’t much else to Kunio’s Oden, it seriously is that thin of an experience, and one you’ll probably forget after giving the CPU mode a few tries.
SugoroQuest++ -DICENICS- Oh god, where do I even begin with this one. For starters, this game is one of two fully untranslated, and only in Japanese. If you can’t read enough to fumble through, then you’ll have a nightmarish time even getting a game going here. If you can kinda understand, or use a guide to know what to do during your turns, or even if you’re familiar with the last game like I was… Dicenics still sucks. Like, really, really bad.
Remember how the original Sugoro Quest was a fun RPG styled game, split into scenarios with different classes and a quirky battle system that made for decent fun to be had? Well, take that and force it into a four player party game, and you have yourselves Dicenics, a truly miserable game.
The Sugoro Quest battles return, along with various things like towns and special spaces to deal with, but now you’re racing with four other players for first place, and if you aren’t playing with human players, this just becomes a luck based, obnoxious borefest I quickly grew tired of in the first dozen turns, especially since you can’t skip the CPU turns! Seriously, just let me play the darn game! Actually, maybe I shouldn’t, because this is miserable.
DunQuest– This is the second Japanese only title, and easily the one I was most intrigued by. From screenshots it could be easily assumed this was just Technos’s Copy of Mystery Dungeon, but in fact, it doesn’t really play like it much at all, and in fact tries to merge a typical action RPG with the top-down dungeon crawling of various roguelikes from the time.
The dungeons are hand-made for starters, so no random generation here. You defeat enemies and level up your experience taking out certain foes with the same equipment, while gathering gold from randomly placed treasure chests in order to afford keys to unlock the special treasure chests, where you’ll get the bulk of your important items. Rinse and repeat, slowly making your way through the dungeon as you improve yourself, and you’ll eventually clear some quests along the way.
Unfortunately, you won’t get too far in this game without knowledge of Japanese, and the near complete lack of english language info on this game doesn’t help matters either if you want to stumble around and figure it out on a deeper level. Still, I was pretty charmed by what I played, and while DunQuest is nowhere near as quality as Shiren The Wanderer or A Link to the Past, you still have a decently fun action RPG with an intriguing gameplay loop. I just wished this got a full translation so more people could appreciate it, and so I could understand the intricate mechanics of this game more.
Super Dodge Ball- By far the best game in the entire collection hands down, as one of Technos’s final games before they went under. Being one of only a couple of Neo Geo games they put out, Super Dodge Ball is the only one viable for reissue, and thank god because it just so happens to be the best one they put out on the entire platform, and arguably one of the best games in the Kunio franchise.
This is the Neo Geo AES version, which has preset, limited credits compared to the MVS version, but the full game is still here and accounted for, and is just so darn fun to play. You pick from various Dodgeball teams in order to compete against other Dodgeball teams, in 3 on 3 matches. Your team leader has the capability of pulling off a super special move if the meter in the corner of the screen is fully filled up, but everyone on the team can do at least one special move performed by doing a typical fireball style input, and this is where Super Dodge Ball gets much more exciting than the past entires.
See, Super Dodge Ball for Neo Geo is fast. Very fast. Even if you pick the shortest time for matches, you can still bring the match to a traditional conclusion one way or the other, since the constant special moves and speed of the game really combine for non-stop intensity. One of your three gets knocked out? Well, they can just use their special move from the sidelines and still hit the opponent regardless, leaving truly no room for rest, with only the elimination of all three players netting you a satisfying victory.
Once more, upon defeating the opposing team, you can even choose to replace one of your two backup team members with their leader! This adds some nice variety across multiple playthrough, since your final team will be different with every session unless you stick to the same three. Beat all the CPUs, fight the final boss team, and that’s the solo game.
Of course, on higher difficulties, Super Dodge Ball can still bring out that classic Neo Geo difficulty, with the CPUs going absolutely bananas with combos and counter throws or catches to your super moves. Yet unlike the SNES game, I barely felt frustrated to the same extent, and really found the tug of war on these higher difficulties much more exciting than I anticipated. So whether you play vs the computer or with a friend, Super Dodge Ball is an incredible sendoff for Technos, and one I’m pumped finally got brought to the home.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Super Technos World is a mixed bag of Technos obscurities, mostly propped up by the quality of The Combatribes, Shadow Force and Super Dodge Ball. The other games will depend on your mileage with their various quirks and associated jank, along with the fact two are them are fully in Japanese. One of which is still not a fun game even if you do know enough of the language to get through, and the other being a darn fun, lengthy gem that really should have been translated.
Still, if you like the River City series, River City Renegade isn’t a bad game at all, just an acquired taste and not as good as other entries in the series. You can definitely tell Technos had some growing pains making it to the Super Nintendo, and while River City Renegade is still generally fun, I had a way better time with Shadow Force than I ever could have possibly imagined, and a game of that quality being in here with a bunch of other slower brawlers and action games really makes the overall package a lot tougher to recommend, especially compared to the Brawler Bundle which had more fun games to boot.
Even for $30, I’d argue if stuff like Super Dodge Ball or Shadow Force were on your dream game list, as they were mine, then you’ll absolutely enjoy this collection for those two games alone, with the other games being pretty fun bonuses. Dicenics can stay unlocalized for all I care though, and you’re better off getting the recent port of the actually good entry in that series, instead. It’s just a shame the SFC Kunio sports games were generally far weaker than their NES counterparts.
I give Super Technos World: River City & Technos Arcade Classics a 6 out of 10.