River City Ransom/Gameplay

Starting a new game
You must make several selections when starting a new game.
 * 1 or 2 players: Choose whether you will be playing by yourself, or with a friend. When two people play, the play simultaneously together.
 * Alex or Ryan: If you are playing a one-player game, you must choose whether you control Alex or Ryan. If you are player a two-player game, you must choose which player will control which character.  Other than their appearance, the two characters start out identical to one another.  If you'd like to rename the characters, you can do so by pressing.
 * Message Speed: You can choose from three different speeds which determine the rate at which letters appear as communication is spelled out in text windows.
 * Difficulty: Your final choice is between Novice and Advanced difficulty. Advanced difficulty is significantly harder with enemies fighting particularly aggressive compared to Novice.  But do not underestimate Novice difficulty; the enemies are no pushovers on Novice either.

Alex and Ryan
Throughout the game you guide one of these two characters through the mean streets of River City in an effort to take down various gangs and rescue Ryan's girlfriend from the hands of Slick. Alex and Ryan are both capable fighters who start the game off with a basic arsenal of street fighting moves. Over time, they can purchase items, don equipment, and even read books which improve their effectiveness as fighters. But in order to do that, they must collect money. And in order to collect money, they have to beat up various members of the gangs that prowl River City's alleyways.

Alex and Ryan start with a certain amount of stamina. Successful attacks from gang members will reduce their Stamina. If they lose all of their stamina completely, they will pass out and wake up in the last town they visited with half of their money stolen. Don't let this happen! When they are low on health, it is best to avoid fighting as much as possible, and make it to the nearest town to purchase some food and other items which can restore their Stamina and enable them to take the fight back to the gangs.

There are no lives in River City Ransom, so you can technically get knocked out forever. However, you can collect passwords which record the state of either character at a particular moment, and then re-enter those passwords on a subsequent play-through to pick up where you left off and continue making each character stronger.

Statistics
Alex and Ryan have a variety of stats that can change throughout the game. Depending on your style of play, some will be more important than others, and it's useful to know what the effect of each one is so that you know what types of items to invest in so that you can improve the right ones. Each stat begins the game at the lowest possible value (15 for most, 63 for some). In order to increase them, you must purchase specific kinds of foods and other items that influence particular stats when consumed. Note that once a stat reaches the highest value possible, consuming items which affect that stat will have no additional benefit.

To view the statistics screen, hit, point to Status and hit.