Shodai Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun

Description

The Kunio-kun series is a video game franchise started by Technos, the company that made the Double Dragon franchise. Million Corp. purchased all of Technos' assets (including the Kunio-kun game series) several years after Technos went defunct. The first game in the series is fully titled Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun, which roughly translates to "Hot Blood Tough Guy Kunio", with Nekketsu being the name of Kunio's high school. The kun suffix after his name is an informal Japanese honorific usually applied to young males.

The series originated in the arcades and the Famicom console; its title and its protagonist, Kunio (variously renamed "Alex" and "Crash Cooney" in the United States), were named after Technos Japan's former president, Kunio Taki. Although the original game was created by Yoshihisa Kishimoto — who later designed Double Dragon — many of the later games (particularly those under the Downtown Nekketsu moniker) were the handiwork of two men: Mitsuhiro "Yoshimitsu" Yoshida and Hiroyuki "Mokeke" Sekimoto.

A few of the early Kunio games for the NES were localized for the North American market. These includes Renegade, River City Ransom, Super Dodge Ball, Crash 'n the Boys: Street Challenge and Nintendo World Cup, which were heavily "Americanized" versions of the Kunio-kun games. Technos Japan has released over twenty Kunio-kun titles for the Famicom, Game Boy, and Super Famicom in Japan. In addition, licensed ports of the games were made for other platforms such as the PC-Engine (through Naxat Soft), Mega Drive (through Pal Soft) and the Sharp X68000 (through Sharp). After Technos went out of business, a company called Million purchased the intellectual rights for the games and characters.