The game begins with the following introduction: "Rampant ninja related crimes these days ... Whitehouse is not the exception".

A Secret Service agent speaks to the titular "Bad Dudes", a tough and heroic duo of street-smart brawlers named Blade and Striker: "President Ronnie has been kidnapped by the ninjas.

The Bad Dudes pursue the Dragon Ninja through the New York City streets, onto a moving big rig truck, through a large storm sewer, through a forest, onto a freight train on an old Southern Pacific line (where the titular character of another Data East arcade game, Chelnov, can be seen being transported in a frozen container in the arcade version), through a cave, and into an underground factory in order to save President Ronnie.

[8] After the Bad Dudes defeat the Dragon Ninja, they celebrate by eating hamburgers with President Ronnie.

President Ronnie gives the Bad Dudes a statue of them, as a reward for rescuing and protecting both Washington, D.C., and its leader.

Some moves are special like spinning kicks and the ability to charge themselves up with "inner energy" by holding the punch button to throw a powerful long-range attack that hits all opponents in front of the player.

The first of them, at the climax of the City stage, is Karnov, who makes a cameo appearance from the Data East game of the same name.

The shout, and the game's American wordmark logo are both similar to the Michael Jackson song "Bad", released the previous year.

The game was ported to home systems, including the Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX, MS-DOS in 1988.

In North America, the same version was released that year by Data East USA simply as Bad Dudes, featuring an illustration by Marc Ericksen.

In 2018, the Nintendo Switch version was released in the Johnny Turbo's Arcade series, featuring a live-action intro.

The Secret Service agent's quote on the intro screen of the NES version is phrased slightly differently as "The President has been kidnapped by ninjas.

In Japan, Game Machine listed DragonNinja on their May 15, 1988, issue as being the seventh most-successful table arcade unit of the month.

[41] In 2010, UGO wrote: "No ninja game retrospective could possibly be complete without some mention of ... Bad Dudes".

The Bad Dudes logo can be seen at the end of Stage 4 in Sly Spy, another Data East arcade game.

[45][note 2] The game's introduction, challenging the player to be a "bad enough dude to rescue the President", became a popular Internet meme and is often lampooned on various websites.

[46][47][48][49][50] The 2008 video game Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space spoofs on the Bad Dudes intro in the episode "Chariots of the Dogs".