River City Ransom Underground

This page details pre-release information and/or media for River City Ransom Underground.

This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this.

To do: Lots to do... Conatus Creative & Andrew Russell's YouTube channels documents the games development from start to finish. Kickstarter Update posts (specifically ones that have some major stuff that could be documented here). 2014-16 sections need to be filled out more. Due to the way Kickstarter archives the images, use Image convert to convert the pictures into PNG, JPG or Gifs. Some update posts have early sprites, rip those too. If this page gets long, make sub-Pages if necessary.

River City Ransom Underground was in development for 5 years created by a Indie development team with little to no history, being Conatus Creative.

Development Timeline#

2005#

• September 5, 2005 - Conatus Creative was founded.¹

Unknown dates#

• 2013? - Conatus Creative gets a license to create a Kunio-Kun game.

2013#

• Spetember 9 - The Kickstarter launches.
• September 11 - Disasterpiece joins the team.²
• September 16 - Yoshihisa Kishimoto (the creator of the Double Dragon franchise) joins the team.³
• September 18 - The Kickstarter reaches the $80,000 mark, Dustin Crenna joins the team to create the sound effects, and the game's Pixel3D engine goes open-source.⁴
• September 20 - Greg Winters creates a box art for the game. Some merch is also created.⁵
• September 22 - The Kickstarter reaches 50% of the Stretch goal.⁶ At the same time, 1morecastle posts an interview on the game's development and origin of the project.⁷
• September 24 - Conatus Creative hosts a reddit AMA.⁸
• September 25 - Conatus makes a limited run of boxed copies of the game as a Kickstarter reward.⁹
• September 26 - Conatus shows a featurette of how the sprites are created for the game.¹⁰
  • Conatus also proposes stretch goals for ports of the game on consoles.¹¹
• September 30 - Nina Matsumoto joins the team as the artist for the Japanese cover.¹²
• October 9 - The Kickstarter reaches its stretch goal.

2014#

• September 27 - Development begins.¹³

2015#

• August 22 - The game is put on Steam Greenlight.

2016#

• November 16 - Development wraps up.

2017#

• February 1 - Conatus reveals and confirms a release date for the game.¹⁴
• February 27 - The Steam version is released.
• February 28 - The GOG version is released.
• May 22? - the Humble Bundle version is released.

2019#

• September 5 - River City Girls is released. Inwhich Bannon Rudis joins WayForward.

2025#

• December 31 - The game got delisted on Steam, Hundle Bundle and Gog due to the license expiring.

River City Ransom: Underground Fighting Concept Trailer#

Watch on YouTubeAn animation of how the gameplay would looked like was released September 18th, 2013 (was released at the time when Underground reach 80K on Kickstarter). There are some major changes between this trailer and the final release:

• The Player UI is completely different then the final games version and doesn't display an icon of the character currently used.
  • The "Join in!" text is unimplemented.
• The talking bubble is different, showing a "!" instead of "..." and is animated.
• Bruno was originally name "Bannon" (like the lead designer of Underground, Bannon Rudis). this was changed as a fan complained about it on Facebook.
• The Arcade has a different layout, The Ski Ball machines are where the shooting range is meant to go, and there are less arcade machines. and there seems to be 1 less Air hockey table.
  • Lucha's also don't appear in the Arcade as the Arcade is exclusively the Nerds turf.
• The Roids are near identical to their final appearance, however there is a scrapped head swap of a Roid that had a different face and was African American.
  • Only one of the roids is a pallete swap of the second head-variant Roid (black haired mullet).
  • The Ring has different design and was likely meant to be an explorable location. It would become an Arena for the game.
• Paul has a stubble in the trailer; his final sprite removed the stubble.
  • Also, if you look closely, Paul doesn't have a nose bandage as he does in his final sprites.
• The Warlock that Provie attacks with her Windmill is completely different.
• The Subway is near identical to the final version's subway.
• The Player characters would have had dialogue when doing moves; however, they would remain silent in the final game.

River City Ransom: Underground Gameplay Trailer#

To do: List more.

Watch on YouTubeA gameplay trailer was released on August 22nd, 2015. About 2 years before the full game is released, this was released when the game was voted on Steam Greenlight. Their some differences that are either tiny or big:

• The art-style was finalized to match the Original NES game.
• The HUD is near identical to the final.
  • the Willpower meter is not implemented or likely not shown.
• Enemies do not Combo Break after 3 hits of the same attack.
• Ryan's Stone Hand moves him forward, in the final game he stays in one place. It's likely that Stone Hand had Dragon Feets code.
• Certain characters appears in other gang's turfs.
  • R.C.R.H.'s Basement: Lucha's appear in the turf that Glen is attacking. This is the Warlocks turf.
  • Arcade: the first 4 Gangs appear even though like mention above, this is the Nerds turf.
  • Old River City High: Same as Arcade. This is the Bombers turf.
  • Gymnasium: Same as Arcade. This is the Roids turf.
• Enemies appear in A&R Workshop even though it's a hideout.
  • Roxy wasn't added yet.
• Enemies appear in Moe's, although you can bring enemies into a shop if you carry them.
• Adam appears at the Warehouse, even though he only can be fought at the top of Vision Night Club's roof.

Concept Art#

To do: If there is a scan of the games artbook somewhere out there (it was a Kickstarter reward at the time), add concept art from that too.

Concept & Early Sprites#

To do: rip the Screenshots from the Kickstarter page, there is also some early sprites shown there too. Link Add the final games portraits for comparison. (a good enough screenshot is ok or you can take the portraits from )

"Screenshots"#

Early Portrait Arts#

Early Sprites#

The Making of Ryan#

Ryan's sprites were way different than the final release.

References#