In case you missed it earlier this week, Natsume’s River City: Tokyo Rumble launched in full for the Nintendo 3DS for $29.99.

The game features Kunio and his friends making their way through the beat-’em-up brawler as they take down baddies, buy power-ups and fight through River City. The RPG brawler has been famous within deep circles of hardcore gaming for being one of the very best beat-’em-up games ever made.

There’s no contesting that anyone who played the originals on the NES and SNES likely fell in love with the River City Ransom franchise due to the deep mechanic-creep gameplay that unlocks the further you make it into the game, as well as the semi open-world structure of exploration. I used to play the Nekketsu games and Shodai a lot, but eventually lost track of the series as the PSX and PS2 era started kicking into full swing.

Hiro Maekawa, the president and CEO of Natsume, commented in the press release about how early impressions of the game showed that Natsume still has it and that gamers are as feverish as ever about the River City franchise, saying…

“We have already gotten early feedback that River City: Tokyo Rumble is a ‘cant-put-it-down’ experience, and we love hearing that reaction,” “The series has an amazing following, and we know that this will be another great addition for fans and newcomers to the series alike!”

If you have absolutely no idea what the gameplay is like or how it works, there’s a surprisingly in-depth video for River City: Tokyo Rumble that was posted up over on UpUpDownDown that you can check out below.

The video covers the game’s early part of the story mode, as well as introduces gamers to some of the gameplay mechanics and some of the dodgeball gameplay. For those of you unfamiliar, the River City series was also popular for dodgeball… and it’s fun!

The video shows off how you can recruit other NPCs to join your party and go around and beat the crap out of people in River City.

This is a great throwback to a classic series and it’s nice to see it being paid some love by Natsume in today’s generation of gaming. You can pick up a digital or physical copy of River City: Tokyo Rumble for the Nintendo 3DS for $29.99.