You probably haven't thought about Knights of the City in years. Or, honestly, maybe you’ve never heard of it at all. That’s because the 1990s were a messy, crowded time for side-scrolling beat 'em ups. Everyone wanted to be Streets of Rage or Final Fight. Developers were throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck.
Back in 1992, a Japanese developer called SOS decided they wanted a piece of the arcade action. They released Knights of the City, and it was... weird. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it was fascinatingly specific to its era. If you’ve ever spent an afternoon in a dim arcade smelling of stale popcorn and ozone, you know the vibe.
What Knights of the City Actually Was (And Wasn't)
Most people get this game confused with other "Knights" titles. It’s not Knights of the Round. There are no swords, no plate armor, and definitely no dragons. Instead, you get 1990s street toughs. It’s a urban brawl through the kind of hyper-stylized city that only existed in the minds of 16-bit era developers—lots of neon, suspicious trash cans, and guys in denim vests who really want to kick your teeth in.
The game follows a pretty standard blueprint. You pick a character. You walk right. You punch things. You keep walking. But the rhythm of Knights of the City felt off-beat compared to Capcom's polished hits. It was clunkier. Heavy. The sprites were massive for the time, taking up a huge chunk of the screen real estate. This made the combat feel claustrophobic. You weren't dancing around enemies; you were surviving them.
Some critics at the time, and even retro-reviewers today, ding the game for its stiff controls. They aren't wrong. If you're used to the fluid combos of Streets of Rage 2, playing this feels like wading through molasses. But there’s a charm in that weight. Every punch feels like it has the mass of a wrecking ball.
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The Weirdness of SOS and 90s Arcade Culture
SOS wasn't exactly a household name like Konami. They were a smaller outfit, and Knights of the City reflects that "B-movie" energy. The sound design is a perfect example. The hits sound like wet planks of wood slapping together. The music? Pure FM-synth grit. It captures that specific 1992 transition period where games were moving from "cute" to "edgy."
One thing that stands out is the enemy variety. You aren't just fighting generic thugs. You’ve got bikers, guys who look like they wandered off a glam-metal stage, and bosses that defy any logical sense of anatomy. It’s a fever dream of late-century pop culture.
Why Does Knights of the City Still Matter?
In the current landscape of gaming—wait, I promised not to use that phrase. Basically, in the world of modern gaming where everything is a polished 4K remake, we lose the rough edges. Knights of the City is all rough edges. It represents a moment when the genre was peaking and everyone was trying to find a "gimmick."
For SOS, the gimmick was the scale. They wanted the characters to look "real," or at least as real as pixels allowed.
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- The Scale: Characters are huge.
- The Difficulty: It's an absolute quarter-muncher. It was designed to be unfair so you’d keep feeding the machine.
- The Vibe: Pure 1990s urban decay.
If you look at the Sharp X68000 port, things get even more interesting. The X68000 was a powerhouse computer in Japan, often getting "arcade-perfect" ports that the Super Nintendo or Genesis just couldn't handle. The X68000 version of Knights of the City is actually the way most collectors experience it now. It retains that chunky, aggressive art style that defined the arcade original.
The Mechanics of the Brawl
Let's talk about the actual fighting. You have your standard punch, kick, and jump. But the "special" moves are where things get dicey. Like most games of the era, using a special move drains your health. It’s a risk-reward system that feels particularly brutal here because the enemy AI is relentless. They don't wait their turn. They swarm.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking at how these old beat 'em ups handled hitboxes. In Knights of the City, the hitboxes are... generous. Sometimes you’ll hit a guy who looks like he’s three feet away. Other times, your fist will pass right through a biker's chest. It’s inconsistent, sure, but it adds to the chaotic energy of the play session. It’s not a game you play for technical mastery. You play it to see the next ridiculous background or boss design.
How to Actually Play It Today
Finding an original Knights of the City arcade board (PCB) is a nightmare. They didn't make a ton of them, and many have succumbed to "bit rot" or general hardware failure over the last thirty years. If you’re a purist, you're looking at a heavy investment on auction sites like Yahoo Japan.
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For the rest of us, emulation is the path.
- MAME: This is the standard for the arcade version. It’s been supported for a long time, though you might need to fiddle with the ROM sets to get it running perfectly.
- X68000 Emulation: Programs like XM6 Type G allow you to run the home port. In many ways, this is the superior version because it feels more "contained" for a home experience.
- Real Hardware: If you have an X68000 (lucky you), finding the floppy disks is the ultimate challenge. Be prepared to pay a premium.
Honestly, the game is a "hidden gem" only in the sense that it’s hidden. Whether it’s a gem is up for debate. But for anyone documenting the history of the beat 'em up, it’s a mandatory stop. It shows the path not taken—a world where characters got bigger and clunkier instead of faster and more agile.
The Legacy of the Urban Knight
Knights of the City didn't spawn a massive franchise. There is no Knights of the City 4 on the PS5. SOS eventually faded away, like so many other small Japanese studios from that era. But the DNA of this game lives on in the "indie" beat 'em up scene. You can see echoes of its grit in modern titles that prioritize "oomph" over speed.
It’s a reminder that gaming history isn't just made by the winners like Street Fighter. It’s made by the weird experiments that sat in the corner of the arcade, waiting for a kid with one last quarter and a lot of patience.
If you want to dive deeper into this specific niche of gaming history, start by looking into the library of the Sharp X68000. It’s a goldmine of arcade ports that never made it to the West, often featuring better graphics and sound than anything we had on the SNES. Check out titles like Akumajō Dracula (the original Castlevania remake) or Cyber Core to see what that hardware could really do.
Then, fire up a MAME session of Knights of the City. Don't expect perfection. Expect a loud, clunky, brightly colored punch to the face. It’s exactly what 1992 felt like.