A tough brawler with attitude, Taito’s Renegade appeared on home computers in 1987.

Ryan takes a look back.

So youre on a train platform, when all of a sudden this gang surrounds you.

He just stands there, totally stunned.

But then this other bloke comes up behind you, and hes got a baseball bat.

You back kick him, and this stuns him, too.

Im paraphrasing, but this was me, boring a classmate half to death, circa 1989.

The weird thing was, Id ownedRenegadefor about a year, and it initially left me cold.

That train platform full of thugs was only the first level, and it was viciously hard.

And, well, just plain vicious.

It was after reading some tips in an issue ofYour Sinclairmagazine that my fascination withRenegadewas suddenly kindled.

Subsequent levels could be conquered using the same techniques, but each heightened the tension in their own ways.

The second stage, set by a harbor, saw you beset by bad guys on motorcycles.

But Imagines port actually does a lot to tighten up what was once quite a scrappy game.

Even when working with the Spectrums limited graphics and sound, Imagine managed to giveRenegades moves real impact.

Kneeling on top of a downed assailant and punching them repeatedly in the face still feels bruisingly violent today.

A back kick to the crotch results in a satisfyingly crunchy noise.

Renegadeleaves you constantly straddling a line between vulnerability and empowermen.

Make a mistake, and its game over.

The first wasTarget: Renegade,released in 1988.

This time, the action took place over longer flip-screen levels rather than a confined, two-screen-wide space.

Renegade III: The Final Chapteremerged in 1989, and it was an odd swansong for the series.

At this stage, street-level toughness of the previous games had long since departed.

By 1989, things were changing rapidly in the games industry.

The 16-bit era was overtaking the ageing 8-bit age.

DoesRenegadestill stand as a decent fighting game after more than a quarter of a century?

So youre on a train platform, when all of a sudden this gang surrounds you…