this kind of thing has only happened to me about twice, so far, and thats mainly because i dont remember their names til i go on r/tipofmyjoystick and somebody immediately finds it, and yeah you can probably find my reddit posts, but i feel like writing about it instead.

One time i was watching Vinesause (Vinny) on youtube years ago, and i just remembered this weird beat-em-up on MS-DOS, the big joke about it was that it looked like a Buff Tommy Wiseau out of The Room beating the shit out of some guys who look like Rob Halford while somebody keeps saying "Fuck Off".



I forget about it and then, I RANDOMLY REMEMBERED this GAME .

But thats kinda all i remembered about it, nothing else so i took to reddit and boom immediately found as " Franko: The Crazy Revenge " which released on Amiga in 1994 and MS-DOS in 1996, seemingly exclusive to the country of Poland.


allow me to basically read off wikipedia and the sources i found from it or at least try since most of it is in polish and its not a very easy language to translate, and google to basically tell you about this game do not tell hbomberguy that i did this...

Franko: The Crazy Revenge is a 1994 beat-em-up developed by polish studio World Software and published by Mirage Software in 1994 for Commodore Amiga and 1996 for MS-DOS, the game was made in 1992, reportedly as said by the artist and "primary idea originator" Mariusz Pawluk [he] was a fan of the beat-em-up genre and wanted to make one for the Commodore Amiga after being less than pleased with many Amiga ports of popular beat-em-up titles from the era. The game takes place in the developers city of Szczecin in the year 1987 where the titular Franko and his brother Alex are jumped by a gang lead by a guy called Klocek (which fittingly with the games tone, according to wikipedia either means "Block" or "Fecal"), the two teenagers fight back but were overwhelmed by the gang leading to Alex being murdered and Franko barely clinging onto life, swearing his revenge by 1989 (according to Polish Wikipedia https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franko:_The_Crazy_Revenge)

The game is incredibly crude and violent, in a kind of "Postal 2" or "GTA" way, many curses, blood and even nudity are in the game, including "coat flashers" (which might be guys in trenchcoats who flash you seemingly enough)

Despite this story, Alex is one of the playable characters along with Franko, the game was originally planned to be much more massive than it ended up being, according to the devs this version of the game would've been on 12 entire floppy disks! whilst the final game was only 3 disks (and apparently 2 on MS-DOS). The game apparently recieved a lot of hype and praise within its home country apon release in 1994 apparently it was because it was the first of its kind from Poland, the MS-DOS version was received more negatively but both gained a cult following in the country, which lead to the many attempts of making a sequel. For the longest time the only other Franko game was technically the Spiritual Successor Doman: Grzechy Ardana (Sins of Ardan) a Fantasy themed beat-em-up/hack-and-slash title released in 1995 but the series would gain its long awaited second entry in 2023.

Franko 2 started life as a planned Amiga title but Mirage didnt really care for the waining platform by that time and apparently also a lack of interest in releasing a mature/violent video game, then Mirage seemingly planned/shifted development to MS-DOS but that also did not go anywhere, in 2003 Marisuz would be the artist and director for a Game Boy Advance title called Franko 2: No Mercy but was scrapped, according to Marisuz it was due to Nintendo objecting to the mature nature of the game.

Franko 2 would also be attempted again in 2013 but this was also haulted due to the small development team until 2023's Skinny & Franko: Fists of Violence which is, oddly enough available on Nintendo's Switch as well as other platforms, the original Franko was written in AMOS Basic but sadly the source code is not available to the public as far as i know, meaning we may never see the original franko on the GBA, or to be ported onto other platforms for no reason other than its funny to put Franko on the Smart Fridge...

But we can play Franko 2 on Nintendo and we can enjoy Franko as freeware these days. I love the future sometimes....

sources
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franko:_The_Crazy_Revenge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franko:_The_Crazy_Revenge
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/02/franko-2-no-mercy/