Hi, I’m Bannon Rudis. I’m one of the directors of WayForward. WayForward makes these Shantae and River City Girls games, among other things. I have personally been creating River City games for nearly a decade now alongside Arc System Works. I started by reverse engineering the sprites and animations of River City and did my best to figure out how to animate. It pushed me down my path of game development. But I know you’re not there for me. Marian, one of the new playable characters in River City Girls 2, is the main attraction of this article, so let’s get right into it.
Marian has a long and storied career as a damsel in distress. For many decades, she was either publicly assaulted in the streets, kidnapped by a gang of shadowy criminals, held hostage in exchange for magic stones, or outright shot (although she was later resurrected). Needless to say, she had it pretty hard. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that her friends, Billy and Jimmy, fought to the death over who could date her. It’s a bit much.
Final production art of Marian, as well as concept art showing her hard-hitting moves in action.
Times have changed and so has Marian. She is no longer the helpless victim of those street thugs, villains and maniacal skeleton wizards. Over the years, Marian has trained her body to reject the kind of physical and mental abuse she has suffered against her will over the past few decades. The unsolicited punches to her stomach were just a dim memory of the old Marian.
Two of Marian’s many expressions. Something mysterious seems to be brewing!
Marian learned the techniques of boxing and wrestling. She didn’t want to be typecast as the “slow but mighty wrestler” type. Her quick barrage of punches and grapple moves make her a very unique, yet at the same time very familiar fighter.
Here is Marian as she appeared in the first River City Girls. By popular demand, she has gone from a lowly trader to a playable character in RCG2!
Marian’s current River City Girls design appeared in the first River City Girls game in 2019. Gamers and fans of the series immediately gravitated towards this new take on Marian. She was a fan favorite and the obvious choice for one of the sequel’s new playable characters. Marian also bridges the narrowing gap between the Double Dragon and River City series. We handled this through Arc System Works, who are the licensees, and they were fine with the decision.
A frame-by-frame exploration of one of Marian’s powerful moves, the KO Cutter!
Even though she’s a grappler, she’s not necessarily slower than other characters, and she has various moves that make her incredibly versatile. She is the only playable character who has command sockets. These moves are great for dealing damage to a single enemy, and they also have plenty of splash damage for taking out a mob near her.
Marian unleashes a combo that launches her enemy into the air, then brings them back to Earth with the Air Pancake.
She also has high-flying moves that can help her launch into a crowd of enemies from above using her Party Crasher Move. This move can quickly launch her forward to get the drop on enemies that are far away, or be used as an anti-air spin attack, or if you wait until the last second while she stops spinning , you can drop her Elbow Piston special tune to attack unsuspecting enemies below her.
Another special is a command grab that only works if it’s between two enemies in range. The Mind Meld is done by Marian grabbing an enemy on either side of her and smashing them into each other. If she uses the move on a single enemy, she’ll whip them instead (that silly move in pro wrestling where an opponent can’t stop running after being pushed into the ropes). This will allow Marian to attack them while they are vulnerable.
Marian proves that two heads are better than one with the Mind Meld splitting the skull, followed by the KO Cutter!
And finally, there is his KO Cutter. This move is a dashing right punch that can take out multiple enemies in front of her. Or, if you time it right, the move can be charged by holding down the Special button until it triggers automatically. This will do more damage and have the added benefit of bouncing enemies off walls.
Another useful move in Marian’s arsenal is the carousel throw, which not only damages the thrown enemy, but also any enemies unlucky enough to get in the way!
Marian is very different from the other playable characters in the game, but she should be fairly easy to pick up and comfortable around everyone. Our two new characters, Marian and Provie, were such fun characters to play that it made me personally feel that the original characters needed a playstyle overhaul so they could keep up with how well the new comers are cool. I hope you enjoy playing as Marian, Provie, and our returning characters (all of whom got a shine in the sequel) as much as we do when it comes to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
