than scrolling levels. Reception In Japan, it was the top-grossing title on the Game Machine table arcade cabinet charts in July 1986, and became the fifth highest-grossing table arcade game during the latter half of 1986. In the United Kingdom, the ZX Spectrum version was the top-selling computer game on the monthly all-formats chart in September 1987. It also topped the ZX Spectrum charts from September to October 1987, and then it was number three the following month. The game was voted by Your Sinclair readers as the second best game of 1987. In 1993, the Spectrum version was voted number 48 on the Your Sinclair "Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time" list. David M. Wilson reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, saying that the arcade feel was carried over into the personal computer versions of Renegade, in which the players feel like martial arts fighters. Legacy The NES port of Renegade was released for the Wii's Virtual Console in North America on May 5, 2008 at a cost of 500 Wii Points. It was re-released on February 27, 2014 both on the 3DS Virtual Console and Wii U Virtual Console. A port for the Nintendo Switch was released in June 2018 by Hamster as part or their Arcade Archives series. This port includes both original US and Japanese arcade game, making it the first time the original Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun being released in the west commercially. Impact Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun is considered the "first fully-developed beat ’em up" game, according to Andrew Williams. While elements of the genre were previously present in earlier side-scrolling martial arts action games, most notably Kung-Fu Master, Renegade introduced a number of key elements that more clearly defined the beat 'em up genre and established the standard format adopted by later games in the genre. The game set the standard for future beat 'em up games as it introduced the ability to move both horizontally and vertically, in a scrolling arena-like space, commonly called the belt scroll action game format. Its combat system was also more highly developed than earlier side-scrolling action games, such as its introduction of combo attacks. Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun also introduced street brawling to the beat 'em up genre, with the international version Renegade taking it further by adding an underworld revenge plot, proving more popular with gamers than the principled combat sports of earlier martial arts games.