Gekido (also known as Gekido: Urban Fighters) is a 3D Beat 'em Up action game developed by Italian studios NAPS Team for the PlayStation.
Set in an urban zone in the midst of a Gang War, a local crime lord, Kintaro, has made a Deal with the Devil for power. Besides having his most trusted lieutenants guarding sub-areas of the city, Kintaro's minions also kidnapped Angela, daughter of a billionaire, for ransom.
The players are in control of Travis, a private detective, and his partners - the Dark Action Girl mercenary Michelle, The Big Guy military brute Ushi, and kung-fu fighting Bruce Lee Clone Tetsuo - hired by Angela's parents on a daring rescue mission, with a massive reward promised to those who defeats Kintaro and his goons and retrieved Angela.
It's worth noting that this game's character design, cover art, posters, background illustration and conceptual storyboards is handled by veteran Marvel comic artist, Joe Madureira, and features background music composed by Apartment 26 and Fatboy Slim.
NAPS would later release a sequel titled Gekido: Kintaro's Revenge for the GBA.
The gameboy-exclusive follow-up features Tetsuo as the sole playable character, who returns home a year later after the events of the first game; only to find out Kintaro is still alive and is after the children in the village. Tetsuo immediately goes on a lengthy solo mission to track down Kintaro...
The sequel was later given an Updated Re Release on the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
Another sequel, Gekido: Dark Angel was planned but ultimately scrapped.
Gekido: Urban Fighters contain examples of:
- Angry Guard Dog: Fierce wolfhounds are a recurring mook enemy than can be taken down with a few kicks. And one of the possible bosses is Kioko's fierce Siberian Husky, named "Asky".
- Big Bad: Kintaro, for both games.
- Bruce Lee Clone: Tetsuo, despite being Japanese (at least, given his name) is obviously based on Bruce Lee. He fights using Jeet Kun-doe style moves, emits Funny Bruce Lee Noises with each punch and kick, rubs his nose after each battle, and one of his alternate costumes (not his default, playable one though) is a yellow tracksuit.
- Car Fu: Mooks on motorcycles will attack by speeding their bikes all over the place trying to run over the players. They're among the fastest enemies in the entire game, and difficult to take down without special moves.
- Colonel Badass: One of the bosses, only identified by the name "Generale", who's clad in military gear, complete with beret, and puts up one heck of a fight. He's flanked by a number of soldiers as well to enforce his military ranking.
- Die, Chair, Die!: All the onscreen environment, from shipping containers to crates, tires and dustbins, potedd plants and dumpsters, all can be smashed apart for points or be used to pummel mooks. Even cars can be picked up and flung!
- Doppelgänger Attack: Kintaro, one of the bosses, can summon translucent copies of himself to attack the players. His copies can be defeated, but his main body (which remains stationary when his clones are around) will be invincible until his clones are taken down.
- Dual Boss:
- RK21 and RK22 are a Big Guy, Little Guy duo of robots, the former a gigantic yellow mecha towering over the heroes while the latter a red, fast-moving human-sized robot. Both robots are armed with flamethrowers and attacks in tandem, RK21 trying to stomp and pummel while RK22 lashes out with fists, besides trying to incinerate the players.
- Kioko the kunoichi attacks alongside her pet Husky, who's named... Asky.
- The Shuju Twins are a pair of muscular albino brawlers who attacks together, with a Shared Life-Meter.
- The Mokushi Twins attacks together while floating all over the place.
- Elevator Action Sequence: Downplayed; there is an elevator level for every single playable character (like every other punch-em-up games of it's type) but said elevator is large enough to hold a few cars. So while you're indeed battling mooks in a moving elevator, the levels avert the cramped spaces commonly associated with this trope.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon:
- The RK21 and RK22 robot duo have flamethrowers built into their defenses, allowing them to blast flames as a ranged attack.
- Another one of the bosses, Homer, is a fat brute wearing a yellow Hazmat Suit and wielding a high-powered flamethrower. One he can use as an impromptu rocket booster and launch himself sky-high...
- Guns Are Worthless: You can obtain firearms and use them on enemies, and most of the time bullets functions pretty much as a stronger punch. And is actually less effective because you're not granted combo hits if you're using bullets. The only firearms worthy of respect are the shotgun, which can take away a significant portion of a mook's health when hit and can easily deal a One-Hit Kill from point-blank, and the machine guns with 50 bullets that deal those "stronger punches" worth of damage VERY quickly.
- Kevlard: The fat mooks in the game can soak up far more hits than regular enemies before they go down. There's also Homer, an overweight giant in a hazmat suit, whose guts allows him to tank plenty punches and kicks before he's defeated.
- Killer Gorilla: One of the possible boss encounters is a fierce gorilla draped in chains who can dish out quite some damage. His onscreen name? Gorilla.
- Metronomic Man Mashing: Players using larger, Mighty Glacier characters like Mushi can pull this off when executing a grab move on mooks, which have them snatching enemies and slamming them up and down repeatedly.
- Mirror Match: In Angela's path, her last boss is... Angela. What. Said boss is a Palette Swap of Angela's sprite, with her red dress recoloured orange.
- Ninja:
- One of the bosses, Kioko, is a kunoichi.
- Angela's path have red-clad ninja enemies as regular mooks.
- Player Versus Player:
- If you chose Versus Mode instead of Story Mode. You can select any combination of characters you want, and duke it out in an arena recycled from one of the game's stages.
- Within proper story mode, Tetsuo's route have one of these where instead of bosses, an area ends with Tetsuo fighting Ushio, Michelle and another randomly-created playable character.
- Power Floats: The Mokushi Twins, owing to their internal chi, doesn't need to walk, simply hovering above ground for the entirety of their battle.
- Primal Chest-Pound: The gorilla boss pounds his chest during his introduction cutscene, before attacking as a proper boss.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Mokushi Twins, whose glowing red eyes (on both) is a warning that the players are in for a difficult boss fight.
- Route Boss: Owing to the fact that you can choose between multiple fighters, each set of characters fights a different boss depending on the paths taken; for instance, Kioko and Asky can only be fought by Tetsuo, the Shuju Twins is faced only by Angela, the RK21 - RK22 robots is fought by Travis and Michelle, and so on.
- Secret Character: Some of the bosses can be unlocked:
- Kobuchi - finishing Urban Fighters mode with Tetsuo and Ushi
- Gorilla - finishing Urban Fighters mode with Travis and Michelle
- Kintaro - finishing Urban Fighters mode with Gorilla; available for all modes except Urban Fighters
- Angela - finishing Urban Fighters mode with Kobuchi to unlock Angela in all modes except Urban Fighters
- Akujin - finishing Urban Fighters mode on the hard difficulty setting
- Shock and Awe:
- Both Travis and Mushi can deal severe damage with electrically-charged punches, which can even spam ranged thunderbolts with each impact when fully-powered.
- Michelle's ranged attacks have her releasing purple lightning blasts. Ditto for Angela, whose lightning are coloured red instead but functions in the same way.
- One of the bosses, Ishiganame, uses exclusively electric attacks.
- Both Mokushi Twins can spam lightning bolts as their attacks.
- Shockwave Stomp: Ushio's most powerful Limit Break attack have him pummeling the ground with his fists, which sends out a circular shockwave wiping mooks off their feet.
- The Squadette: Michelle, one of the playable characters and the only one who seems to be of military background, wearing army pants, a beret, combat boots and having military gear strapped all over her belt.
- Traintop Battle: One level is set on a moving subway train, allowing you to fling mooks off the sides. It's actually foreshadowed in the opening FMV which have the characters running alongside a train to it's front.
- Throw a Barrel at It: The game have wooden barrels as obstacles, which can be smashed or picked up and flung at enemies. Some of the larger enemies can fling at you first, however, unless you throw a different projectile at them and make the barrels they're carrying explode in their hands.
- Gorilla will occasionally take to higher ground during his boss fight and throw shitloads of barrels down on you. Gotta wonder why.
- Timed Mission: You're given 90 seconds to clear each area. The countdown turns from yellow to red when you have 30 seconds left, accompanied by a "DANGER" alert.
- Use Your Head: Shuju, one of the earlier bosses available in some stages, attacks by using his head to knock the players down. He doesn't have any other moves, but be wary when he starts ramming with a headfirst tackle.
- Villain in a White Suit: The "Martin" enemies, hulking brutes in white suits and bowties, all of them whom are armed with machine-guns. They can take quite some punishment before getting defeated, though you can recover their items to be used on mooks.
- Wolverine Claws:
- Worn by the muscular Shuju twins on both hands, which they use to claw and slice.
- Kobuchi, one of the game's largest bosses, wears these on his right hand, and they're huge.
- Kintaro have extended claws of the "sporting-from-fingertips" variety.
- World of Action Girls: The game's full of them. There's playable characters Michelle and Angella, the kunoichi Kioki, and hordes and hordes of female mooks who proves deadlier than their recurring male counterparts.
Gekido: Kintaro's Revenge contain examples of:
- And the Adventure Continues: The second game ends with Tetsuo, after destroying Kintaro, receiving a new mission and that his old comrades, Travis and Michelle, are waiting for him. He then sets off on another mission...
- Battle Amongst the Flames: The Final Boss against Kintaro is in a burning graveyard.
- Bat Out of Hell: Bloodsucking vampire bats shows up as minor enemies. They can be hard to hit, but otherwise goes down with a single hit.
- Blackout Basement: The underground cavern levels, where visibility is limited to just a circle with Tetsuo in the middle.
- Bottomless Pits: A new feature absent in the previous game, levels set in underground caves and within monasteries have collapsing floors with bottomless drops. Step right in to lose a life.
- Cast from Hit Points: Tetsuo's crowd clearing attack costs HP if you do it multiple times in a row without waiting for the special gauge to refill first. This is a mechanic borrowed from Streets of Rage 3.
- Creepy Crows: Koji, The Dragon to Kintaro, whose demonic form have a raven motif on him, complete with a flowing black cape, abilities to summon raven-shaped projectiles and black, feathered wings sprouting from his back as results of his ritual. He's as difficult a boss as he looks.
- Dark Action Girl: Female martial artists weaping Qipao are a recurring enemy in the game.
- Dual Boss: The Soul Snatchers, two dark priests serving Kintaro, attacks together. Their appearance and Power Floats abilities seems to be a Call-Back to the previous game's Mokushi Twins.
- Fake Difficulty: The game's levels are very, very badly designed.
- Obstacles such as crushers come out of nowhere with no time to react, often causing a cartoonish chain of hits and forcing you to tip-toe around rooms just to try to avoid being hit.
- Enemy encounters, as usual for the genre, are set on specific unmarked spots. They often have an enemy attack Tetsuo on the first frame of the encounter, meaning the only way to avoid damage is to know the encounter's trigger beforehand and be in midair when it starts!
- The game was so poorly tested that in multiple stages both of the above issues can happen the moment you enter a room, while Tetsuo's control is disabled! Given the game's maze-like levels and the need of backtracking to look for keys, players can easily take a ton of damage from those things for no fault of their own.
- The Updated Re-release adds Relic Hunter mode, which has randomly-generated levels. None of the above issues were fixed and it constantly spawns enemies and pits right next to entry points of rooms, so you're at constant risk of taking either just barely avoidable or downright unavoidable damage.
- Genre Shift: The first game is a high-tech brawler in an urbanized setting with overblown, fantastical elements, while the follow-up feels more like an old-timey, more traditional martial arts film from the 1970s, with a setting in a more rural countryside. The sequel also have RPG elements in it, allowing Tetsuo to interact with villagers, enquire NPC characters for clues, and take branching paths while hunting for Kintaro.
- Giant Mook: The stone, bare-chested HULK MASH!-Up enemies who towers over Tetsuo, and has a Ground Punch that's ripped off from Hulk's moveset in Marvel vs. Capcom. Some of them even have green skin to complete the look!
- Groin Attack: A possible attack you can inflict on the Hulk-expies
◊. - Launcher Move: Tetsuo's Dash B attack can launch enemies into the air. It's even possible to stunlock them on corners thanks to this, though it can be difficult to pull off in all the chaos and doesn't work on bosses due to them following different damage rules.
- Licking the Blade: Zombie mooks will sometimes taunt Tetsuo by licking their kunai if left idle for too long.
- Living Statue: The first boss is a pair of stone statues animated by magic, which attacks Tetsuo when he tries entering a cave. These enemies get degraded into the Hulk-like Giant Mook enemies.
- Luck-Based Mission: The Updated Re-release features a Relic Hunter mode with randomly generated levels. The first thing you must do in every room is check for pits placed right next to your spawn point because the game loves doing that. Furthermore, at least one enemy type can spawn next to Tetsuo when a room loads and attack him before control is restored.
- Necromancer: Kintaro's rituals seems to have granted him necromantic abilities, given the amount of undead enemies present in this sequel (absent in the first).
- Night of the Living Mooks: The underground crypt levels, unsurprisingly, is populated entirely by undead enemies. Including pale-skinned, Undead Counterpart of the henchwomen mooks!
- Nonlethal Bottomless Pits: Upon falling into a pit, Tetsuo will lose some health and respawn nearby.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Unlike the first game, this one has zombie mooks who claws their way out of the ground as soon as Tetsuo approaches an area. They're armed with short kunai for stabbing and fights like a normal person, save for their visibly decomposing skin.
- Palette Swap: Owing to the sequel being ported to the Gameboy instead of the PlayStation, the enemy variety is severely limited in this one. So there are swapped versions of the zombies with green and red skin, the Hulk-lookalikes with green or brown skin, and basic Kintaro mooks wearing multi-coloured uniforms.
- Poison Mushroom: Three items dropped by defeated enemies can either slow Tetsuo down, invert his controls or outright disable his attacks for a few seconds.
- Power Floats: Kintaro in both his forms, and his Soul Snatcher mooks and bosses all have abilities to float all over the place using their dark powers.
- Recurring Boss: Kintaro appears as early as the second boss. He comes back as a Final Boss, a lot stronger than his previous battle.
- Revenge of the Sequel: With the villain doing the revenging.
- Shoryuken: Tetsuo have a new attack in this sequel, a flaming uppercut that sets his enemies on fire.
- Would Hurt a Child: Kintaro's dealings involves trafficking of children and sacrificing them for his dark rituals, and Tetsuo is NOT happy about it.
- You Killed My Father: Tetsuo's quest to defeat Kintaro have him uncovering a revelation about his past, namely, the truth behind his father's death as a child. To nobody's big surprise...Tetsuo: You killed my father? I can't believe it! I have been searching all my life for the man who did that!
