River City Saga: Three Kingdoms Takes Street Fights To Ancient China

The River City series is going (imagine Huey Lewis' voice here) back in time. Arc System Works has announced River City Saga: Three Kingdoms, a goofy brawler take on the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is coming to the West on July 21. It will be available on PC via Steam, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.

The trailer shows off what you might expect from a River City game: squat, pixelated muscle-men beating the spit out of each other, including some large crowds dispatched with super-moves like you might expect in a Dynasty Warriors game. Which is appropriate enough, considering that game series is also based on the Three Kingdoms historical text. It's said to include 4-player co-op and a total of 24 playable characters.

It's a big year for River City, as Arc also released River City Girls Zero--a remastered version of the 1994 Super Famicom game that introduced Kunio and Riki as playable characters. Those two would go on to be the stars of the criminally under-appreciated River City Girls in 2020, which is getting a sequel called River City Girls 2 this year.

River City Girls and its sequel both feature an updated visual style, while this River City Saga game is very much based on the classic look you may remember from the NES original. We can only hope that means historical figures will shout "BARF" when they get socked in the breadbasket.