I maintain that if a game is undeniably fun, then your plot can be incredibly basic. Honestly, so many games nowadays are ruined by striving to have some sort of meaningful storytelling when all the game is really about is punching bad guys. Sometimes hitting bad guys is really enough, and any sort of attempt to weave some grand insight into the dark nature of man's inhumanity against man (or worse, some sort of life is worth living despite the harshness so don't give up! message) comes across pretty bleh. At the very least it's distracting, but at the worst it can completely ruin an otherwise perfectly fine game.

The point I'm trying to get to is that some game developers could learn something from Bad Dudes.

Bad Dudes is a classic Arcade beat-em up that was ported to the NES like any other classic Arcade Beat-em up. It's entire plot consists of two sentences showcased at the beginning of your adventure.

"The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?"

That's it. There's never any talk about where these ninjas came from. How they got past Secret Service. What their ultimate endgame is. There's no character development for the Bad Dudes. I have no idea how they became Bad Dudes and why we as a country would trust such Bad Dudes to save our President. I've never known, but I didn't care then and I really don't care now.

I know all I need to. President's been kidnapped. Ninjas are involved. If I'm going to rescue him, I'm going to have to be one hell of a bad dude.

I'm not saying that I'm against games having stories; hell my greatest gaming experience is still the first time I played through Final Fantasy 7 and realizing games could actually pull off legitimate stories. My point is simply that not all games need to have grand plots, that sometimes less is more, and that it can be very easy to explain away things to the point of destruction.

I mean, would a heavier plot have made Bad Dude's ending any sweeter?


I seriously doubt it.

In short, more of this, less of that.