This is one asskicking legion...
Legionnaire is a 1992 Beat 'em Up arcade game made by Tecmo and TAD Corporation.
Set in the fictional surbrurb of Blood City, a powerful crime lord called the Crimson King had taken control over the justice system, with his illicit activities of weapons and drug trafficking turning Blood City into a hotbed of corruption.
The Legionnaires are a team of four righteous martial artists and vigilantes, dedicated to take down the Crimson King and his gang. After they've thwarted the Crimson Gang's activities, the Crimson King orders for his minions to kidnap one of them, Judy, as ransom. The remaining three - consisting of karate trainee Alfred, kickboxer Chris and heavyweight boxer Frank, embarks on a rescue mission.
Unrelated to the trope about the French Foreign Legion. Or a certain Van Damme war movie.
Legionnaire contain examples of:
- Acrofatic: Pretty Piggy, one of the earlier bosses. Whose bulging, oversized stomach is huge, but doesn't stop him from leaping and pouncing at you.
- Action Bomb: A really weird example; sometimes you'll be assailed by suicide bombers, who leaps from above and detonates themselves upon landing.
- Advertised Extra: The intro cutscene depicts Judy as a major playable character, but gets kidnapped.
- Badass in Distress: Judy, another martial artist, spends the entire game kidnapped.
- Big Bad: The Crimson King leads the Crimson Gang in terrorizing Blood City. He's also the Final Boss you fought at the center of his space station hideout.
- Crate Expectations: Smashing crates and containers will produce bonus items and food to boost your health.
- Dual Boss:
- Dragon and Tiger, the boss of the train stage, attacks in tandem.
- Pretty Piggy's sprites are recycled and degraded into two enemies in a later stage.
- Dynamic Entry: Area 1 of Stage 1 have two mooks getting blown up and off their feet, by the players entering the area.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- In the first area, you're caught in an explosion and falls for three stories... only to land on your feet with zilch damage to your health. Yet you're still vulnerable to being punched in the face...
- In a later stage, you're on a Rope Bridge fighting assorted enemies, and after you defeat everyone a turret then automatically destroys the bridge you're on, causing you to fall for like a mile without hurting yourself.
- Game-Over Man: Run out of continues? You're then treated to a cutscene of the Crimson King menacingly observing a trapped Judy hanging on chains, gloating all the way.
- I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: The opening cinematics actually name-drops this trope when Judy gets abducted by Pretty Piggy:What fools you are, trying to stop us!
Your friend here will be punished as a warning to anyone else who dares to ressist our rules! - Locomotive Level: The third stage is set atop a moving train, and you fight your way from the back to the front.
- Palette Swap: Several of your enemies are recoloured versions of existing sprites. In particular, the Dual Boss, Dragon and Tiger, who uses the same body but wear different-coloured robes (one wears blue with magenta markings, one wears magenta with blue markings, no we can't tell which is which) - and even better, you fought a different-coloured version of one of them in the singular earlier in the stage!
- Piñata Enemy: One of the mooks (the skinny one in a blue jumpsuit, with goggles and a huge nose) can barely put up a fight, and once hit he'll scram from the area, dropping behind health and bonuses along the way. You can also hit him repeatedly as he flees and make him drop more items.
- Roaring Rampage of Rescue: The very premise of the game have you beating up assorted thugs and mooks of the Crimson Gang across Blood City in order to rescue Judy.
- Sequential Boss: Crimson King, the Final Boss, needs to be defeated twice. You take him down in the initial battle, and proceeds to the station's exit only to see him waiting for you, sans his overcoat, with a new, much larger healthbar and more dangerous moveset.
- Shoulders of Doom: There's an enemy dressed like a biker punk who wears spiked shoulder-pads... on his right shoulder, while keeping his left bare.
- Space Base: The final level is, inexplicably, set in the Crimson Gang's space station hideout. The second-to-last stage have you defeating the boss and entering a rocket ready to take off, and somehow you're fighting enemies with the cosmos in the background windows.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Alfred, Frank and Chris, in that order. It was a Four-Man Band until Judy got kidnapped.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: After the final stage, the game then skips to a few years later depicting the heroes in the aftermath of the Crimson Kings' downfall; Frank fulfills his childhood dream of opening a hot-dog stand in a nearby amusement park, Chris joins various martial arts tournaments worldwide and wins championships everywhere she goes, and Alfred settles down with Judy to raise a family.
- Wolverine Claws: There's a recurring midget mook enemy who attacks with a pair of knuckle-attached claws on both hands.
