It just wants to burn a hole in your wallet as fast as it can. Running Battle is flawed, buggy and problematic
Running Battle is easily one of the games that is best to be avoided on Sega Master System, it is problematic and there is very little to like about this game and even less little that distinguishes it from any other side scrolling beat em' up, shoot em' up or whatever the game tries to be during the game.
First though let us get our facts straight. The graphics on this game are terrible. The animation is flawed in that some frames look stiff and don't even animate properly.
Also, everything lacks real colour or detail. The backgrounds themselves too are repeated frequently throughout the game. There is also a sign of blinking sprites and textures, which isn't a good sign either, in fact they even appear to be translucent – definitely not a good sign at all.
Even the scrolling of the game itself feels very rough with sprites reacting bad to it also. projectiles are perhaps the only thing that look nice in the game, which is funny considering this is the biggest flaw in many other titles like this.
On the plus side though the sound is generally OK in Running Battle. When you first play it there will be no disappointments in the music as it is good, the only problem is, it feels out of place in Running Battle and overused.
The sound effects themselves however do their job fine, there are few issues there. Although there is isn't anything that is either really bad or really good about the sound in Running Battle otherwise.
The gameplay itself is a mixed bag. Running Battle was on to something by using it's generic gameplay with the inclusion of weapon upgrades such as the pistol and rifle. These weapons are a nice change compared to other fighters although there are two problems.
One, the developers could have added more weapons since we're only entitled to use 3 weapons in total. Two, Running Battle plays like a confused game, what I mean by this is that it can't decide between being a sidescroller shooter or a fighter.
There are going to many times you'll think this yourself as you get stampeded by endless amounts of enemies because they fight very similar to baddies found in Contra rather than Double Dragon. Another example is during boss fights where you lose your weapon upgrades and have a 1 vs 1 fight against a boss, no issue with that, but it seems odd how it is laid out in the game and not in a good way either.
It also doesn't help that the graphics are badly flawed as they make a huge impact on already annoying issues. If the graphical issues with the animation and sidescrolling were less of a problem, Running Battle would have been a far easier game to play.
If the music wasn't that irritating to listen to perhaps us gamers would be far less fustrated while playing. It is all these little issues that eventually pick up and make this game a big problem. It is a wonder how the developers never noticed or even attempted to help fix issues.
As far as lives and continues are concerned, Running Battle doesn't care how angry you get as it sends you to the beginning of the game as you reach the end.
It doesn't care if you finish the game in less than an hour and it doesn't care if you find the boss fights unfair or ridiculously easy. It just wants to burn a hole in your wallet as fast as it can and that is the overall feeling you will get if you try to buy Running Battle.
Like I said at the beginning, it tries hard to be different, and it could have been given more careful development, but given the issues that are created instead, it looks no different to any other normal game that tries the same thing; flawed, buggy and problematic