Street Smart
System: Genesis
Release Date: August 1991
Developer: Treco
Publisher: Treco
Genre: Fighting
To be the man, you gotta beat the man in Street Smart! Do you want to rack up the big bucks? Then you’re going to need to take your fighting skills to the streets. Pick your favorite fighter from Karate Man or Crusher and then it’s time to get it on. Can you beat up all of your opponents?
The default character is Karate Man. If you only have one controller plugged in, you can choose to play as Crusher, as well. Are they much different? No, not really, just a different sprite and different looking attacks. Characters punch with the A Button, Kick with the B Button, and jump with the C Button. Fighting is as simple as that. There’s a lot of get in to attack and then try to jump away quickly. You can do a jump kick, but I never got it to connect. A back flip is possible by pressing A and B together. Then your special attack is done by pressing B and C together. As you may expect, the special attack drains your health so you can’t spam it.
After the first fight, you’ll have earned some money. Now you can choose to gamble that money in your subsequent fights. You can bet some or all of your cash on yourself, or if you think you might take a dive, on your opponent. Some enemies are pretty easy and you can make the quick bucks by winning the fight outright, but others are going to knock your health down. If you use an extra life in the fight, it’s as if you’ve lost. Comparing what pays out more may influence your decision.
Between fights, you can level up your stats. Three stats govern how well you fight. Life is the most important, because the more life you have, the more times you can use your special attack. Whether power or defense is better is up to you. I typically went power because if they want to hit you, they will. Later fights double the number of opponents in your way. Hit and run is the name of the game when this occurs.
The final two fights are against giant roided out dudes that look like they should destroy you, but are really a cakewalk. The goal is to reach a total of $8,000,000 by the end of the game. This can only be done through betting, but I ended with over 37 million bucks, so that felt like a win to me. Chicks dig millionaires.
Graphics: 3.0
Sprites, animations, and backgrounds all look pretty good.
Sound: 2.0
I’m not overly impressed by the music and the sound effects are pretty ugly.
Gameplay: 2.0
The fighting is pretty shallow overall, but it works as a proto-fighting game.
Difficulty: 2.5
It’s pretty easy to learn how to exploit the weaknesses of the computer fighters and the betting system.
Fun Factor: 2.5
I actually had an alright time. Not my favorite or anything, but not bad.
Overall Rating: 2.4
Street Smart earns a C+. This isn’t going to be your favorite game, but it isn’t totally offensive. Give it a shot before you write it off.