Kung-Fu Master/Spartan X: The Definitive Review – Full Reviews of 28 Games, Rip-Offs, and Sequels Inspired by the 1984 Arcade Classic including Splatterhouse, My Hero, Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu, and More!

This the first Definitive Review I’ve done since Able To Play started presenting my Retro Review Index. This is an amazing idea and a great cause. They’re creating a game accessibility database, so that people like me can look up what games have epilepsy risks, or so colorblind gamers can know what games might be more difficult or impossible for them to play, and every other game accessibility necessity you can imagine. Make sure to sign up for their list and start to contribute! I’m proud to use my platform to promote them, and I wanted to start that with a game I’ve wanted to review for a long time.

Not every in-depth look at a game has to be complicated. Kung-Fu Master is a very uncomplicated game. Six total basic enemies and five unique bosses. As far as action games go, it really doesn’t get less complex. Yet, few games are as famous as it. It’s based on the Jackie Chan movie that’s only called Spartan X in Japan but Wheels on Meals everywhere else, but it’s so disconnected from the movie that it’s not even worth mentioning. Especially since it’s really based on Enter the Dragon, a totally different movie. Then, in 1988, it had a completely different movie based on it that was made in France! Bet you didn’t know that! The French Kung-Fu Master movie, based on the game where you punch and kick people to rescue your girlfriend, is the story of a middle-aged housewife and mother who falls head over heels for a 14 year old boy and, um.. wait, WHAT?! Am I reading the right synopsis? Wait, the kid plays the arcade Kung-Fu Master in the movie, so they named a movie about a woman heartsick over a child Kung-Fu Master? You’re kidding me, right? Where’d they even get the idea for that?

Well, anyway I’ve wanted to do Kung-Fu Master for a while. I decided, while I’m at it, why not give it the Definitive Review treatment and check out ports of it? And hell, while I’m at that, wouldn’t it be neat to look at the games that rode its coattails? So, here are the 28 games included in this feature! I hope everyone enjoys!

• Kung-Fu Master (Arcade, 1984) aka Spartan X
• Kung-Fu Master (MSX, 1984)
• Seiken Achoo (MSX, 1985) aka Spartan X/Kung-Fu Master
• Knuckle Joe (Arcade, 1985)
• Shao-Lin’s Road (Arcade, 1985) aka Kicker
• Kung Fu (NES, 1985) aka Spartan X
• Dragon Wang (Sega SG-1000, 1985)
• My Hero (Arcade, 1985) aka Seishun Scandal
• My Hero (Sega Master System, 1986) aka Seishun Scandal
• FlashGal (Arcade, 1985)
• Kung-Fu Master (Commodore 64, 1985)
• Lady Master of Kung Fu (Arcade, 1985) aka Nunchackun
• Kung-Fu Master (ZX Spectrum, 1986)
• Mr. Goemon (Arcade, 1986)
• Black Belt (Sega Master System, 1986) aka Hokuto no Ken/Fist of the North Star
• Kung-Fu Master (Amstrad CPC, 1987)
• Kung-Fu Master (Atari 2600, 1987)
• Kung Fu Kid (Sega Master System, 1987) aka Sapo Xulé O Mestre do Kung Fu
• China Warrior (TurboGrafx-16, 1987) aka The Kung Fu
• Kuri Kinton (Arcade, 1988)
• Vigilante (Arcade, 1988)
• Splatterhouse (Arcade, 1988)
• Kung-Fu Master (Atari 7800, 1989)
• Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu (NES, 1990)
• Kung Fu Master (Game Boy, 1990) aka Spartan X
• Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu (TurboGrafx-16, 1991)
• Spartan X 2 (Famicom, 1991) aka Kung Fu 2
• Splatterhouse 2 (Sega Genesis, 1992)

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account, at least for the games themselves. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Kung-Fu Master
aka Spartan X
Platform: Arcade
Released November 24, 1984
Designed by Takashi Nishiyama
Distributed by Irem (Japan) Data East (US)
No Modern Release except Antstream

It’s really easy to understand why Kung-Fu Master ended up one of the most famous and legendary games ever made. It’s one of the more simple and straightforward games of its era, but with such a nice, snappy attack that it’s impossible to not get some satisfaction out of the combat. Most of the combat is based around two types of enemies who walk onto the screen and then fall off the screen with a single attack. It’s staged in a way where it really does feel kind of like a cheap, cheesy, but ultimately entertaining martial arts movie. It barely beat Karateka to the market, but despite having somewhat similar gameplay, this is a much more energetic, arcade-like experience that is a little more nuanced than it appears at first glance.

Like, for example, the difference between punches and kicks. I don’t know if this is simply the placebo effect, but I find the slightly faster punches to be more effective at handling timing issues that happen when enemies come at you from both sides. I figured that’s why they were added to the game, since the kicks are more viscerally satisfying and punches have a LOT less range. BUT, there’s more to it, because punches are worth more points than kicks. That means that arcade goers with dreams of high scores in the 1980s had actual risk/reward factors to consider. That doesn’t matter so much for people with nobody to challenge today, and I never used to consider scoring at all. These days, hey, I like to see what scores I get. It matters a little.

Kung-Fu Master is a very short game. The full five level cycle can be beaten in under ten minutes by even an average player. But the pacing of those five levels is nearly perfect. When fighting endless waves of “Grippers” and “Tom Toms” with the occasional knife thrower starts to get repetitive, BAM, jars falling from the ceiling with various contents in them. When that gets old, back to the guys in level one. When that starts to get old again, how about moths? Okay, so it’s weird most of the baddies that act as the cannon fodder opt to hug the life out of you. Maybe they smell bad. Like, really bad. I’m talking “old man wearing aftershave” bad. I don’t know why they opted not to have strikes be the primary enemy attack. Maybe it didn’t cause enough damage and made the game too easy. Maybe it caused collision issues. Who knows?

But the hugging-to-death stuff is pretty frustrating. First off, being forced into wiggling the controller in a strike-based game makes the offense and defense feel disconnected. This isn’t helped by the fact that you can’t do things like, say, punch the knives out of the air. It’s also surprisingly hard to do a jump kick in a way where you move forward. I was mostly familiar with the NES game, where it’s significantly easier to pull off. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if that, by itself, is why many consider the NES game superior. Your health drains relatively fast, too, and sometimes there’s so many enemies it’s hard to shake them off, and like in the picture above, later stages have an uncanny knack for unleashing the knife guys at the worst times. This is why games of Kung-Fu Master can turn on a dime. I think I got pretty good at it, but in over a dozen play sessions, I never came close to finishing the second cycle, which spawns basic enemies during boss fights. Speaking of which, the bosses are easily the highlight of Kung-Fu Master.

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If I had to guess why Kung-Fu Master was uniquely memorable, I think the bosses are probably the biggest part of it. Hell, I dare say that Spartan X cemented what a boss fight should be. It’s not the first game with boss fights, but it is among the first that had unique bosses for each stage. I have this theory that boss fights are like a game’s metronome. They don’t exactly set the tempo, but they do maintain it. This might actually be the first release that my theory applies to. It’s not just in appearance, but in personality and strategy. They nailed the scaling too, and the five boss fights all feel both unique and climatic. Besides final boss Mr. X being a little too block heavy (hell, I once timed-out against him on the first cycle), they’re genuinely fun to do battle with. Kung Fu Master certainly isn’t a perfect game. The grabbing aspect is just not exciting, you know? But, the offensive game is so very, very strong. Irem and their business partners need to figure the rights issues. Maybe try to get them in perpetuity, because this should be celebrated in the 2020s.
Verdict: YES!

Kung Fu Master
Platform: MSX
Released in 1984
Developed by Mass Tael
Published by ASCII Entertainment
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Yea, this isn’t Spartan X. As it turns out, an entirely different game called Kung Fu Master (no hyphen) was already out on MSX. Hell, my emulator said this came out in 1983, but all other sources say this came out in 1984. Either way, it almost certainly beat Spartan X to the market. Oh, the real Spartan X is coming, but with a different name. And then there’s this piece of crap. Holy cow, this is awful. It does have a similar punch/kick mechanic to the more famous Spartan X, only you have to fight robots. Blue ones can only be punched. Red ones can only be kicked. There’s an actual goal for each of the two levels. In the first, you have to walk into the background until you reach the end point, and to assure you don’t avoid combat, you must also kill X amount of baddies. That rule applies to the second level as well. How do you finish that level? I honestly don’t know. I never got past it. The combat is simply terrible. It’s one of those games where the challenge comes from getting on the correct plane to line-up with the enemies. I never got a feel for it. It never felt consistent, frankly. Neither did the collision for when the baddies got me, and I just gave up. This doesn’t really belong in this feature, anyway. It’s hard to imagine I can possibly find a worse game in 2025. (Cathy from the future here, and I really have to learn to stop saying that, because boy, was I wrong).
Verdict: NO!

Seiken Achoo
aka Kung-Fu Master aka Spartan X
Platform: MSX
Released in 1985
Developed by ASCII Entertainment
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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Here’s the real Spartan X for MSX. Real in the sense that it resembles the game you’re hoping for. Not so real in the sense that it’s a good port. Maybe it’s not their fault. They seem to have sneezed while typing in the title, so maybe they were sick at the time. The combat’s satisfaction is dramatically scaled-down. Your health drains so much faster than in the arcade, which gives you very little wiggle room to make mistakes. I went from full health and next to a boss to “dead” in the blink of an eye because enemies spawned on both sides at the same time. On the plus side, the bosses are nearly as fun to fight in the MSX version. Of course they don’t quite feel the same as the coin-op, but given how poorly done the feel of the normal baddies are (especially the jars), I was stunned that all five bosses were such close approximations. Mr. X especially, the final boss, is really close. Well done, whoever did this.

Easily the hardest level is the second. It’s because the jars take half your life. So do the snakes, which somehow do as much or more damage than fire breathing dragons. The moths in level four also take half your life bar, but you see them coming, and they have very predictable patterns. I legitimately beat that part on my first try (oddly enough, I also beat the 4th and 5th bosses on my first attempt as well). The second level’s jars can drop on you in the same spot back-to-back, with not enough warning to avoid them. Since they take half a life bar, two jars, or a snake then a jar, if my math checks out is, you know, death! So the pitch-perfect scaling of the coin-op is lost in translation, and that badly hurts Kung Fu Master. A ROM hack that balances the damage would probably tilt this into the YES! column. Maybe. Hell, it took me a dozen or so non-cheating games just to reach the first boss thanks to the timing issues. I discovered a nifty trick that helped me out. I found making progress impossible until I started ignoring the knife throwers who were behind me. That ended any timing issues of being attacked by grippers from both sides and, all by itself, cut the difficulty in half. When they do attack from both sides, there’s often so many enemies that even making the screen scroll a step forward is a chore.

Unlike some MSX ports, Kung-Fu Master wasn’t a disaster by any stretch. In fact, it’s probably the best version of the game that I’m giving a NO! to. I put a LOT of stock in how well the bosses were made. Seriously impressive effort, given the limitations. Sigh. I really hate doing this because MSX fans are just first-rate fans who did a lot for this blog in 2024, but the lack of difficulty balance and the muffled satisfaction of the attacks really brings down this version of Kung-Fu Master. Reworking the damage would probably push this into the YES!, but I can only play the game I was given. This scales as badly as any action game I’ve ever played. It’s not an impossible game and, with practice, I could make it to the end without cheating. Fans of the coin-op in 1985 who were lucky enough to have an MSX weren’t entirely hosed, but this is a mere shadow of the coin-op. Kung-Fu Master as a coin-op holds up to the test of time, but this port doesn’t.
Verdict: NO!

Knuckle Joe
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1985
Developed by Seibu Kaihatsu
Distributed by Taito
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

From the studio that eventually birthed the Raiden shmup franchise comes this horrible wannabe. Instead of scrolling towards a goal, you’re placed into an arena where the object is to defeat X amount of enemies. It uses the same basic concept as Spartan X: a punch and a kick, both of which can be done while jumping or kneeling. Interestingly, holding the attack buttons causes you to hold the attack outward. Interesting in the sense that it’s different. There’s no point to it. I mean, it doesn’t really do damage and leaves you open to attack, plus you look silly doing it. Like you’ve just sh*t yourself and decided in the moment if don’t move, nobody will notice. On the other hand, Knuckle Joe (no relation to the Kirby character) could do a slam dunk from the NBA three point line from how far he can jump. And hey, this is the first game in this feature where you can block, which is done by holding both jump and kick at the same time. So, it seems like everything is here for a decent game. Well, except the combat is a wet fart. Oh, maybe I was onto something with the holding attack.

Knuckle Joe is one of the worst games in this genre, ever. Enemies block and/or counter attack nearly every attack, so even basic enemies are spongy and sloggy to fight. There is absolutely zero OOMPH to the attacks, so the only way to know that something is actually making contact (as opposed to being blocked, the sprites of which look too similar) is a barely visible point marker appearing when a strike lands. Non-basic enemies take even more hits and counter-punch right to the frame. This has HORRIBLE programming, because it’s literally trading punches with frame-perfect baddies. Go ahead and block enemy attacks. Most of the time, as soon as you release the block, they’re going to hit you anyway. There is no gameplay elegance to the attack. The CPU is just too damn perfect. Consequently the gameplay isn’t exciting. It’s just demoralizing with no upside. And I haven’t even gotten to the worst part yet.

I couldn’t make any progress at all. I watched Let’s Plays trying to figure out how to not go punch-for-punch with enemies and really tried, for hours, to finesse my way through this with all the settings on the easiest. Couldn’t do it. It’s just a terribly programmed game that gives too much advantage to the frame-perfect enemies. Thankfully, this is one of those games where one of the dip switch toggles is a cheat that gives you infinite health. Okay, so at least I can get media for the late game. Well, even when I can stand and throw hands with the enemies without risk of losing my health, I still suffered GAME OVERs, because I timed-out several levels in a row. Had the progress on reducing the enemy count not carried over between lives, I wouldn’t have beat the game even with cheating. In addition to perfectly counter-punching/blocking, enemies use the timer and avoid contact with you. I seriously want to ask the people who made this “did you really have fun play testing this?” I don’t think they did. Knuckle Joe is as bad as any coin-op gets. One of the worst I’ve ever played in my life. It’s one of those games that I would say is so bad that it’s practically a scam, except for the “unfair arcade game” scam to work, the game has to be fun enough for a player to reload quarters. The core gameplay is a total bore with some of the most weak violence in any punch ’em up I’ve played. Knuckle Joe deserves its place in gaming oblivion.
Verdict: NO!

Shao-Lin’s Road
aka Kicker
Platform: Arcade
Released March 23, 1985
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately on Arcade Archives ($7.99)

Okay, so, this recommendation from my unofficial-official curator Dave Sanders really doesn’t belong in a Kung-Fu Master feature in terms of gameplay. I’ll buy that the theme was inspired by the success of Kung-Fu Master and the ultra-satisfying kicks from that game. BUT, Shao-Lin’s Road’s connection to Spartan X stops at the theme and attack. It actually shares much more DNA with something like the original arcade Mario Bros. It’s a wave-based platform game where the object is to eliminate all the enemies with well-timed kicks. The basic enemies take a single kick to knock out. “Bosses” for lack of a better term (the stage doesn’t end when you beat them) take four kicks. When you defeat a green enemy, it throws out limited-use items like fireballs, deadly shields, and spiked balls. Besides the items, it’s all kicks, all the time. You have to press UP to jump high enough to reach the next platform while the jump button is really only effective for jump kicks or to jump across gaps. If you walk off the ledge of a platform instead of jumping, fall onto your head, and lose one of three hits that reset every stage. And, that’s pretty much the whole game.

Whether it’s called Shao-Lin’s Road or Kicker, the game is as shallow as a puddle of spit. And yet, I’ll be damned if it isn’t a lot of fun. The kicking action is solid, and it really helps that the pace is quick. Well, at least when you’re not down to the final enemy. Sometimes the last baddie seems more concerned with switching which platform they’re on than trying to kill you. This continues even after you’ve completed a cycle of levels. Hell, if anything, it feels like it increases as the game goes deeper. Kicker is also probably one of the easier coin-ops I’ve reviewed in recent years. I made it through the full cycle of levels on only my second game. This is the rare arcader where I felt compelled to beef-up the difficulty in the dip switches, as the default medium was a little too easy and low-stakes. I’m also hugely bummed-out that there’s no co-op. You would think this would be perfect for that, and maybe even with a Joust-like “kill the second player” twist to it. Alas, it’s alternating players only. Shao Lin’s Road is one of those ultra-simple titles that just plain works because sometimes a core gameplay concept is so foolproof it can’t go wrong unless you’re REALLY bad at making games. Will it be a game you go back to? Nah. It’s good for an hour at most, but it’s a pretty dang solid hour.
Verdict: YES!

Kung Fu
aka Spartan X
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released June 21, 1985
Designed by Shigeru Miyamoto
Developed by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Like I said above, Kung Fu is the thirteenth best-selling game on the NES, and the best seller most lost to history. This is largely based around being a Nintendo-developed title of another company’s game. A company that, until recently, really had mentally checked-out of the video game business. Now that Irem and ININ’s partnership is seeing the re-release of multiple games, they need to figure out something with Nintendo. I’m not sure if I would call this “superior” to the coin-op, but at the time it came out? Probably one of the ten best arcade ports ever made. I found the kicks a little more effective on the NES despite them allegedly having a smaller collision box. The most obvious change is to the 4th boss, the Black Magician, who is missing his spell that creates a clone of himself. On the second cycle (or B-Game), I found him to be the hardest boss because, when he teleports, you’re left frozen while the basic enemies are still free to move. There’s a BIG window before you get the controls back, and it doesn’t take long for a Gripper to kill you, especially if you’re already damaged going into the fight. You need luck against him.

UPDATE: The Magician DOES clone himself on the NES, but the circumstances that seem to generate this are ones I can’t imagine any player would do unless you’re deliberately chasing a high score. You basically have to not try to win the fight and just kick his fireballs and stall until the timer reaches a certain point. I was certain that I had timed out against him, but there’s no way I did because the clone always shows up at around 880 seconds. So, my new operating theory is that I just won every fight against him too fast. I maintain he’s the most dangerous boss in the game because of the fact that he can prevent your movement while the rest of the game, including any normal enemies, don’t pause around him. You wouldn’t want to stall for time with him. Thank you btribble3000 for sending that in! But then, after I wrote this update, I tried it again to show off to my family and..

HE NEVER F’N CLONED HIMSELF! Now my family thinks I’m cray-cray. Why does it have to be so weird? Why can’t it just be a move he does regularly like in the coin-op? ARRRRRRGH!

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Otherwise, the NES game is pretty spot on. It’s such a simple game, but Kung Fu, be it arcade or the NES, is one of the most cathartic games of its era. The bosses are still every bit as satisfying as before, even if the Magician’s attack pattern doesn’t quite match the coin-op. It never gets dull knocking the basic enemies off the stage no matter how many times you do it. The sound design plays a lot into that, not to mention the genuinely hilarious death sprites. There’s plenty of little details that help a lot, like when the little Tom Toms jump at you, you just have to stand up to kill them. Hell, why stand up when you can jump and score double the points? And, you can also set your own difficulty. The B-Game is no slouch, but don’t discount the A-Game. I never got past Mr. X on the 3rd cycle, which takes less time to reach than the length of a typical sitcom.

Now of course, what makes this version of Kung Fu a genuine historic curiosity is that it was designed and developed by the legendary creator of Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto. The volumes it speaks to how amazing the foundation of Kung-Fu Master is: a guy widely considered game development’s G.O.A.T. took such a shine to it that he wanted to personally oversee its transition to the NES. Even more profound? He did it to educate himself on how to make an amazing side scroller. This was the game that taught Big Shiggy Style how to make Super Mario Bros., and that means we owe everything that followed in its wake to Kung Fu. Wow. So, while I might give a slight, teeny tiny gameplay edge to the coin-op, there’s no doubt about it: the legend of NES Kung Fu will continue long after we’re all dust. Figure out the rights on this thing, Nintendo, and start celebrating it. Hell, carve a spot for it in Nintendo World Championships. It would be PERFECT for that, especially with the bosses! Some form of celebration is long overdue, because Kung Fu absolutely holds up to the test of time.
Verdict: YES!

Dragon Wang
I’m not giggling. You’re giggling. Seriously, stop giggling.
Platform: Sega SG-1000
Released July, 1985
Developed by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

At first glance, Dragon Wang looks like a stripped down but otherwise shameless Kung-Fu Master ripoff. The first thing you’ll encounter is identical basic enemies that take one shot to kill, knife throwers that take a couple shots, and a boss that uses a stick to attack you. But, cancel the cease and desist letter, because there’s a little more to Dragon Wang than just copying Spartan X. See, when you beat the stick guy, instead of going to the next level, it drops a key, and then you have to turn around and go searching for the next boss. There’s gaps in the ceiling and floor that you have to jump up and down. Yep, this is an exploration game with maze-like levels. The object is to find the bosses, slay them, and gather all the keys. Also, only the two basic enemies and the first boss copies Kung-Fu Master directly, so while this shares a TON of DNA, it’s also a new experience. One ruined by a single gameplay mechanic: false floors.

Dragon Wang has a strict timer of 8 minutes to finish every stage (says this FAQ), but movement is slow and exploration takes a while, so having these booby traps that can reset your progress quite a bit, with no warning and no means of evading them once activated, is just stupid. I’ve never liked the idea of no-clue/no warning false floors anyway. It’s one of those underrated gaming pet peeves that nobody would say is the absolute worst, until they happen. They always cause the same problems too, no matter the game. They add too much downtime, backtracking, and tedium. In the case of Dragon Wang, all of those issues apply to what is an otherwise genuinely decent combative game. One that, unlike Kung-Fu Master, had a tougher challenge when facing the test of time. The only attack is kicking, but it’s nowhere near as satisfying as the kicks in the game that inspired it. Not only is the collision detection fickle, but enemies poof out of existence instead of having a visually-pleasing death.

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Sega seems to have grasped that Kung-Fu Master’s memorable bosses were largely responsible for that game’s success, so Dragon Wang leans very heavily into them. In the first level, you have to find and slay three bosses. Each of the next three waves has you repeat each of those fights, plus adds one additional boss. The combat against the bosses is clearly the highlight of Dragon Wang. Even though one of them is just a basic enemy’s sprite that teleports around, the fights feel different from each-other and wisely restore your health to full upon completion. While the actual battles aren’t as dynamic as Kung-Fu Master’s, they do work and provide the necessary big moments that make Dragon Wang come close to making it just over the YES! line. Of course, they’re not all awesome. The last boss is named “Jonathan” and is, I’m not kidding, a disembodied pair of legs. It’s such an unimaginable letdown that I have to wonder if there was some kind of programming error that they didn’t catch until production. Dragon Wang isn’t a complete abomination, but alright combat and an alright concept doesn’t quite make up for some shoddy game design. This was closer than I expected, but it’s still a NO! Albeit it, a NO! done with a heavy heart. This is dying for a remake.
Verdict: NO!

My Hero
aka Seishun Scandal
Platform: Arcade, Sega Master System
Arcade Released July 10, 1985
SMS Released January 31, 1986
Arcade: Designed by Kenichi Kuma
SMS: Designed by Kotaro Hayashida
Developed by Coreland (Arcade) Sega (Home)
Published by Sega
Arcade version Included in the Astro City Mini
Master System version: NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

My Hero combines Kung-Fu Master’s cannon-fodder enemies with set pieces and some not-so-mild platforming elements. Tale as old as time: your main squeeze gets kidnapped and you have to rescue her. It’s one of the most hilarious kidnapping scenes in gaming history. It should be a meme to rival “shocked Pikachu face.”

Combat features one-shot kills that consist of punches, ducking kicks, and jump kicks. Interestingly, every jump is a jump kick and your foot doesn’t even have to be extended in the sprite for it to kill the baddies. It’s highly cheesable, which is kind of surprising for a coin-op. While it does make the basic baddies little more than cannon fodder, My Hero makes up for it tons of secondary hazards, some of which are flagrantly cheap. Bombs are thrown in from the side of the screen that are pretty hard to avoid, and the collision detection for them isn’t perfect. Thankfully, those rarely show up. There’s other quick-reaction traps too, but it never feels too much like a GOTCHA.

The other annoyances are a few enemies that you have to jump over rather than kill and the fact that there’s only three levels that loop to infinity. Three levels, even ones that are slightly above-average in length, isn’t a lot. Thankfully, there’s three decent bosses in the mix. When you reach them, suddenly the one-hit deaths end for both sides, and it’s instead first to score ten hits wins. They’re decent enough battles that feel more like Konami’s Yie Ar Kung-Fu than Kung-Fu Master. There’s also a nifty “power-up” where you basically rescue your pink-wearing twin brother, who follows you along until something hits him. There’s a few timing-based hazards that sure seem to mostly exist in order to prevent you from making it too far with the duplicate, but eh, it’s fine. I was told not to expect to like My Hero, but I’ve seen a LOT worse and was never bored, at least for the entire first cycle. This would make a good +1 for a collection. I wouldn’t call My Hero phenomenal, and I shouldn’t have picked this game for this feature at all, but it’s okay and that’s all I really ask for.

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And I really, REALLY shouldn’t have picked My Hero for the Sega Master System.

My Hero on the SMS is incredibly stripped-down from the coin-op, likely to accommodate the Sega Card file size limit. It only has one level theme that changes the color of the sky and slightly alters the basic layout. The main cannon fodder enemies never change after the first level, and there’s only one boss that’s fought at the end of every round. The arcade game was largely carried by the set pieces that gave a sense of freshness to go with the breezy, light-hearted action. This is really just the action, and that’s not enough. Not even close. Oddly enough, the console game uses a lot more cheap shots with the obstacles and timing-based hazards, and collision is really bad on the SMS too. Admittedly, sometimes it’s to your advantage. At one point, an RC car shot up at me and hit my sprite dead-on, but since I was in the middle of a jump kick, I survived. Even though I died the next time it happened. My Hero was a launch game for the Sega Master System in the United States that was meant to showcase quality gaming at a lower price point for consumers. Now I’m starting to understand why nobody wanted those stupid Sega Cards.
Verdicts – My Hero in Arcades: YES! – My Hero on the Sega Master System: NO!

Flashgal
Platform: Arcade
Released November, 1985
Developed by Kyugo
Published by Sega (JP) and Romstar (US)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Unlike My Hero, which was likely made not to ride the high tide of Kung-Fu Master but rather to be easy to adapt to the Master System, Flashgal was no doubt about it made to be Sega’s Kung-Fu Master. A faster, more action-oriented Kung-Fu Master with a female hero and lots of big action set-pieces. It’s an early example of a genre-mashup: a game with a Wonder Woman-like rip off (you think the sprite is bad? Look at the American marquee for it!) who auto-scrolls through a variety of simple set-pieces, sometimes punching and drop kicking, and other times riding vehicles or shooting guns. Hell, in one stage, you even get a sword. They really threw everything at the wall for this one, but nothing stuck. More like it oozed down the wall, probably staining it badly too.

Most jack of all trades, master of nothing games struggle to have any one aspect stand out, and Flashgal is no exception. The combat is okay, and the vehicle stuff is okay. The first thing that struck me about Flashgal was how strangely generous it is with health. If you take any damage, restoring it doesn’t take long. There’s no health refills to collect because slaying enemies does it. It wasn’t until the game showed its teeth near the end of the cycle of levels that I realized “oh, I get what’s supposed to make it hard now.” It’s the way enemies hit you. When you take damage, the knock-back is pretty violent, but you also don’t blink. Like, at all. More than once, a single hit during an especially crowded screen was enough to juggle me to my doom. It happened just enough times to verify it wasn’t some weird, unlucky fluke where the stars lined up perfectly. In later stages, the screen is so spammed with enemies that it’s clear Flashgal is going for the unadvertised one-shot KO. The vehicle sections aren’t as subtle about it. In those, one hit usually does result in a kill. I hate it when games do that. The rules are never consistent.

Most of my deaths happened when water mines or various other instakill hazards were spaced out perfectly during vehicle sections, which feature fixed-jumping. Those portions were so incredibly strict with the timing and jumping that they feel like traps designed to result in a game over by any underhanded means necessary. Granted, they don’t really start until you’ve gotten some decent time into Flashgal, but they feel like outright cheating on the designer’s part to force players off the machine. They look like this:

Or this:

And mind you, all the projectiles being dropped on you are also one-shot deaths. I’ve not seen many games that alternate between too easy and unfairly hard quite like Flashgal. And honestly, while I didn’t hate the experience by any stretch, I was often bored with it. The bosses especially are dumb. This fat gangster guy shoots you with a ray gun that freezes you like stone, so you really have to just kick him a bunch of times without letting him get a shot off. Since the bosses suffer knock back too, this usually means the fight ends with the villain dying out of frame. I *hate* that. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves with any game. It wasn’t just the ray gun guy, either. Nearly every boss I beat without seeing them die on the screen. Sigh.

I don’t think the “jeez, that’s really close to Wonder Woman” aspect is why this was vanished to gaming’s cornfield. I really think it’s just because it’s not that good. The punching/jump-kicking aspects and the helicopter section were as strong as it gets, but the combat lacks a nice snappiness to it and the helicopter section is a bare-bones space shooter painted as a helicopter game. Flashgal might be worth looking for a completely middle-of-the-road coin-op with serious tonal issues that, for whatever reason, never saw the light of day again. A weird historical curio for sure, but not one that’s worth playing deeply. Second game in this feature that is so close to a YES! it can taste it that ultimately came just short. See, this Definitive Review does make some sense.
Verdict: NO!

Kung-Fu Master
Platform: Commodore 64
Released November, 1985
Designed by Chris Hawley
Developed by Irem (?)
Published by Data East
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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“Five levels of adjustable difficulty? Sweet!” Wrong. There’s one difficulty level. All the adjustable difficulty does is change which level you start on. Want a “harder” version? You have to beat Mr. X. So, Kung-Fu Master on the Commodore 64 is the game you all know and love, only much, much slower. It does a lot of things right. The Black Magician does his duplicate spell. You can stand up to kill a jumping Tom Tom. The scoring difference between punches and kicks is present. It also has graphics that do a pretty good job of feeling like the coin-op. Kung-Fu Master on the Commodore 64 is a seriously impressive effort for its era. Also, I think I made a little poo in my panties when I saw the size of the 3rd boss. There’s a ton to admire about this version of the arcade classic, but it’s just not really fun.

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The jump kick is far too floaty and covers too much distance to be effective against most basic enemies, and having to press a button to alternate between using punches and kicks is very frustrating. The bosses are all push-overs, especially the boomerang fighter since his weapon is so slow now. Okay, one time the Giant beat me in a couple seconds, as his shots seem to be vastly overpowered. Oh, and Mr. X isn’t easy, and in fact, I couldn’t beat him until I realized the rules had apparently been changed. He requires two kicks, two punches, and two jump-kicks to beat. He’ll block every type of shot after the second. It’s not the worst idea, but it doesn’t fit with any other Mr. X fight. There’s also a whole ton of downtime. The first time I played, I rewound the first level to count the amount of basic grippers I encountered. It was seven. And I simply walked past the jars on level 2 like they meant nothing, and since they fell so slowly, they really didn’t. Only the moths and Mr. X put up a challenge. The C64 build of Kung-Fu Master is proof that a game can be incredibly impressive for its time and still not hold up to the test of time even a little bit.
Verdict: NO!

Lady Master of Kung Fu
aka Nunchackun
Platform: Arcade
Released December, 1985
Developed by Kaneko
Distributed by Taito (JP) Magic Electronics (US)
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Sort of like Elevator Action meets Kung-Fu Master, Lady Master/Nunchackun had me sit up in my chair for most of the first level, totally ready to crow about finding a hidden gem. The object is to go up and down elevators and walk through hallways searching for doors that contain mini-bosses. Defeating them gives you an item. Once you collect all four items and locate the final door for the level, you move onto the next stage. The normal basic combat is a quick, snappy nunchuk smack that does manage to satisfy well enough. In the overworld, you can also attack enemies above and below you. And, that’s where the fun ends, because once you beat one level, the bosses become both spongy and experts at avoiding your attacks, while the damage they deal is multiplied and the damage you deal is significantly shrank. It’s clear the developers really only wanted players to last one level and didn’t care if they were obvious about it. They already got your quarter, after all!

Kaneko has a loyal cult following, but it’s also not hard to see why they never made the leap to an elite developer with crap like this. I accept that some coin-ops play a little dirty with the difficulty scaling, but this isn’t a little dirty. This is flat-out bullsh*t. Even activating the 200+ life toggle didn’t do much to help me, because the health of the bosses resets between lives. I’m capable of having a high tolerance for cruel bosses if I have a good time while dying. But that’s not the case at all here, because these are not fun or exciting battles. They’re the embodiment of mind-numbing tedium that spam range attacks and force you to ping them to death while heel-toeing your way through battle. The only way to make any progress at all is to play Lady Master of Kung Fu as slowly and cautiously as possible. Nobody wants an action game like that. And now I understand why nobody bothered to port this to home PCs or consoles. Ever. Might be best to keep it that way.
Verdict: NO!

Kung-Fu Master
Platform: ZX Spectrum
Released in 1986
Developed by Americana
Published by US Gold
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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I’m sorry, ZX fans, but Kung-Fu Master is too stripped-down on the classic European PC. The charm is gone. The violence is muffled and flyweight. It’s slow. It’s clucky. The ZX Spectrum is capable of running some outstanding games, but a snappy coin-op probably wouldn’t be my first choice. The game resembles a terrible version of the arcade game until the 4th level, which I couldn’t get past even with cheating. Remember the moths? Ever wonder what it would be like to fight them while Grippers, Knife Throwers, and Tom Toms attack you at once?

I tried save states. I tried rewinding. I couldn’t get past this part. It’s hardly the only problem, either. The dragons can fire off one-hit kills, and the jars can drop in a way where you can’t possibly avoid them. I’m sure someone who had no other option could force themselves to finish this port of Kung-Fu Master, but this is the first version I didn’t finish in this feature. What drew me to the coin-op and NES game was the cathartic action. This is just interminably slow and clunky and one of the worst ports I’ve seen. Needless to say, I don’t recommend it.
Verdict: NO!

Mr. Goemon
Platform: Arcade
Released May, 1986
Developed by Konami
Sold Separately by Arcade Archives ($7.99)

Think of Mr. Goemon as Kung-Fu Master meets Capcom’s Son Son (see my review of Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium for that). You have to hop up and down four channels of action while whacking up to four enemies at a time with your pipe. This was one of Dave’s recommendations for this feature, and it only took me about five seconds to figure out why. Like Spartan X, the enemies mostly attempt to grab you. Unlike Spartan X, you don’t have a life meter, and so when they tie you up with a hug, you only have a second or two to free yourself by wiggling the controller before a KO registers. While it’s fundamentally the same principle as Kung-Fu Master, the hugging feels more like sumo wrestling with a greater sense of urgency. Well, except for the fact that it seems a lot easier to free yourself in this game. Until the enemies gain projectiles in later stages, Mr. Goemon is a touch on the easy side, even on the normal setting. Even late in the game, I don’t remember ever dying from the jostling with enemies. I won’t say winning the shoving matches isn’t satisfying, but it’s perhaps too subdued.

There’s also projectiles that are scattered throughout the stages that come in a wide variety of shapes, but they all function more or less the same: a straight shot that clears everything in front of it. There’s barrels that you can shove in front of you that also kill every enemy in their path, but because they move much slower, you can follow them down the screen for quite a ways before they leave the screen. Finally, golden mallets grant you star-like invincibility for a brief period, and any enemy you kill while flashing scores a lot more points than normal. Hard as it is to believe, this is even simpler than Kung-Fu Master. The strength of Mr. Goemon is largely that it cuts a peppy pace. This is an action game that doesn’t let up. Kill an enemy? You don’t have to wait long for one to take its place. It’s never boring, but it’s also not very exciting or deep. Frankly, I didn’t like Son Son, the game it shares the most DNA with, but this is fine. A lot of people think I’m hard to please, but really, sometimes an okay game is a-okay with me. I don’t know if I’d say it’s worth $7.99, but if it’s half off, eh, might be worth $3.99
Verdict: YES!

Black Belt
aka Hokuto no Ken, aka Fist of the North Star
Platform: Sega Master System
Released July 20, 1986
Designed by Yuji Naka
Developed by Sega
Black Belt: NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED
Hokuto no Ken: NO MODERN RELEASE*

*Unlockable in the PS4 exclusive Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise by Sega

Of all the games in Kung-Fu Master/Spartan X: The Definitive Review that aren’t part of that series, Black Belt/Fist of the North Star is easily the closest to that game. Oh and it’s by the creator of Sonic T. Hedgehog Esq. Cannon fodder enemies that you slay by throwing punches and kicks, ducking punches and sweeping kicks, and jump kicks. No jump punches, though. The combat is pretty basic, but the game makes up for it with a wide variety of mini-bosses. It also does a neat thing where the big bosses cut to different, larger sprites. So this:

Which is how it looks while you’re in the scrolling part of a level, changes when you enter the boss chamber into this:

I, for one, think that’s neat. And hell, the bosses aren’t just wildly throwing hands with reckless abandon. They usually have one specific pattern or weakness that you have to suss out. One boss can only be hit by a counter punch. Another requires a specific sequence of hits in order to drain their health. So, while it absolutely does copy the core gameplay of Spartan X, this is no run of the mill rip-off. This is a fresh experience that absolutely holds up. In fact, had this kept the Fist of the North Star license for North America, it’s arguable this would have been the first good licensed game on the Master System that wasn’t based on an arcade property.

Okay, so I’m not the biggest fan of anime or manga and I don’t have a clue about the property this is based on. But, I think that’s another point in the win column for Black Belt, because you don’t need to be a fan of Fist of the North Star to enjoy this. While it lacks the personality of Kung-Fu Master in terms of the character design and sprite work, the combat is pretty equal. I love how enemies break apart upon being punched. I love that there’s items to collect, which requires a high jump (you duck, then jump to do the screen-high jumps), and I love that you get a full slate of health for the boss fights. I love that there’s a ton of mini-bosses that are all unique. Hell, this is an under-the-radar contender for the best game in this entire feature. And to think, I almost missed it! I was this close to not including it because it just slipped everyone’s mind until the eleventh hour.

Now, I do have to render two separate verdicts because the Japan and US versions aren’t merely a re-spriting. These two ports are very close, but not quite the same. If you’re an American, EU, or Brazilian gamer who LOVED Black Belt, boy, are you in for a treat with Hokuto no Ken. The challenge is much greater in the Japanese game, for one thing. The level design in Black Belt is really flat, with nothing but straight corridors like in Kung-Fu Master. In Fist of the North Star, there’s the occasional platform in the layout to add a little bit more interactivity and immersion. On the SMS, the second level looks like this:

And here’s the same level in the Japanese game.

The basic enemies are tougher too, but they have a little more personality to go along with it. As stated in the above caption, they even managed to kill me, whereas the American version’s basic baddies never really put up a fight. The bosses play differently as well, and in fact, I struggled greatly to beat the first level’s final mini-boss, which every gosh darn strategy guide claims is the easiest. Well, that’s humiliating. I couldn’t figure out how to hit him. Maybe he’s just spongy, but he was nothing compared to the third big boss. In the Japanese version, its jumping attack is a one-hit-kill.

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The crying shame is, unless Sega adapts Fist of the North Star to the United States, players will likely be forever denied the full experience, at least by a legal means. But even the unlicensed version never got a Virtual Console release in the United States. It did come out for Wii in Japan, but that hardly helps most of the world. There’s a lot of mediocre Kung-Fu Master ports out there. This isn’t mediocre. It’s actually one of the best of its breed, and it even does it twice! The Japanese version is a little more interesting than the US version, but this should really get a full international re-release. I had a lot of fun playing this. Probably as much fun as Kung-Fu Master. Further proof that the base formula Irem created is foolproof as long as you copy the right elements. And with this, the Sega Master System losing streak at IGC is over!
Verdicts: YES! and YES!

Kung-Fu Master
Platform: Amstrad CPC
Released in 1987
Developed by U.S. Gold
Never Released Outside of Europe
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

My first ever review for the Amstrad CPC, and at first glance, I figured this was a better, faster version of the Commodore 64 port of Kung-Fu Master. I was 50% right. Faster? Sure, and smoother too. The character models are nearly identical, including the jaw-dropping size of the Giant in level #3. But, this port has whole new problems. The collision detection is, simply put, awful. Especially for kicking, where the “sweet spot” where you can score a hit is actually just in front of the sprite, which means there’s zero OOMPH. What’s the point of playing a martial arts game without the violence feeling, you know, violent? Like many PC versions, you have to hit the spacebar to change whether you’re throwing punches or kicks. The knife guys are especially hard to kill thanks to this, because they back away constantly. Of course, that prevents the Grippers/Tom Toms from spawning in that direction. All the bosses were too easy until I got to Mr. X, who I landed one total shot against even when I reloaded save states. He blocks everything and seems to always land a shot when you attempt to give yourself enough space to throw an attack in the damage zone. You know, I never landed a single jumping attack against anything but a single jar in the entire playthrough. I’ll take the C64 version over this.
Verdict: NO!

Kung-Fu Master
Platform: Atari 2600
Released May 12, 1987
Designed by Dan Kitchen
Published by Activision
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

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The Atari 2600 version of Kung-Fu Master is famous for packing a lot of the coin-op into a tiny, under-powered Atari cart. Maybe it was impressive for 1987 on the Atari 2600, but my review system doesn’t take technical achievements into consideration. All I want to know is, simply put, “is it fun?” And the answer is “nah.” The core gameplay might remain intact, but there’s only one boss who changes its attack. Arguably, only the second boss and the basic strategy of the fourth boss carries over from the coin-op. The first boss doesn’t have a stick. The third boss isn’t giant-sized. The fifth boss doesn’t block, or if it does, it didn’t block me. You can’t jump forward and there’s no jump kick. No jump kick means the moths are lame to fight. To punch you have to press the joystick and the button, which is required for the 4th boss. Standing up doesn’t kill the Tom Toms. You have to jump to do that. Enemies just blink out of existence with no death animation, muffling the exhilaration of the violence. I do think Dan Kitchen is underrated (and in the interest of full disclosure, I consider the Kitchens friends) as I enjoyed Bart vs. The World, along with Bartman Meets Radioactive Man and Swamp Thing, but this was just too tall a task for the 2600’s capabilities. It’s not hard to see how a kid stuck with an Atari 2600 in the late 80s could have enjoyed this, but it doesn’t hold up.
Verdict: NO!

Kung Fu Kid
aka Sapo Xulé O Mestre do Kung Fu (Brazil)
Platform: Sega Master System
Released May 17, 1987
Developed by Sega
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The direct sequel to Dragon Wang from above, only it doesn’t really feel anything like that game. Oh, it’s better for sure. A fairly basic My Hero-like kick-a-lot platformer where you traverse seven worlds, kicking basic enemies, throwing cards at others, and fighting bosses. There’s not a whole lot of depth or even meat on this one. It’s really simple, but it works. Eventually you do have to jump up gaps to reach above platforms like in Dragon Wang, and sometimes they’re so high up you have to do a wall jump. You can also use wall jumps to fight the bosses, but you’ll never need to. I didn’t.

I won’t say the OOMPH is fantastic or anything, but it’s there. You know what? Let’s uncapitalize it and call it oomph, in lowercase. What’s most notable is you jump really high, and with that comes the ability to aim your jump kicks. Okay, so it’s not THAT exciting, but it puts the emphasis on that flying kick to do most of the work. Especially since you’re usually safer mid-air than you are on the ground. Like with Kung-Fu Master, basic enemies are one-shot kills. And also like Kung-Fu Master, it’s all about the boss fights. I think Sega grasped this too, since the sixth level is just a boss rush with five new bosses. So in a game with seven levels, there’s 11 bosses, all of which are decent fights. It never feels that connected to Dragon Wang, which was unquestionably a Kung-Fu Master rip-off. With the emphasis on high jumping, this kind of feels a little more like Legend of Kage (see Taito Milestones 2: The Definitive Review for my review of that), but hey, I like that game. In a guilty pleasure kind of way, but it counts! And I kind of liked Kung Fu Kid too. Not a fantastic game by any stretch, but a decent way to use-up half an hour.
Verdict: YES!

China Warrior
aka The Kung Fu
Platform: TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine
Released November 21, 1987
Developed by Hudson Soft
NO MODERN RELEASE

First off, yes, I know about the 1986 arcade game Gladiator, which China Warrior more directly takes inspiration from than Kung-Fu Master. I thought about doing that too, but this feature was getting bloated enough. I imagine China Warrior, aka THE Kung Fu, was pretty impressive as a launch title in 1987 in Japan for the PC Engine. In fact, it released just three weeks after the console debuted there and wouldn’t have the Mega Drive (Sega Genesis) to compete with for nearly a full year. Hey, the Famicom didn’t do sprites this big. And that’s basically all China Warrior has going for it. It’s like a crappier version of Altered Beast if every molecule of personality was surgically removed from that iconic Sega game. Well, since this came out before the coin-op Altered Beast, perhaps Altered Beast is this with a personality transplant. You auto-scroll to the right and punch or kick whatever gets in your way. Mostly one enemy sprite that’s color-swapped for variety, along with twigs, rocks, fireballs, and knives. Then there’s three bosses in each of the four levels that are just about the most stiff fights of any of these games. Plus, they recycle the bosses multiple times, INCLUDING ones that use the hero’s sprite. See?

Do you know what China Warrior is? It’s an LCD game that wished upon a star and became a video game. Big sprites are only great if they’re animated great. These aren’t. Ideally you’d want a lot of OOMPH to go with the action, and while it’s not totally non-existent, it’s well below average. The real draw of the game, the boss fights, really have no finesse to them at all and feel like they come down to button mashing. I was really half-joking about the LCD thing. China Warrior was obviously meant to be a tech demo that could show off the graphic capabilities of the PCE. It’s one of those soulless, cynical games made only to look good in screenshots. It’s also one of the most critically lambasted games ever, and yea, it sort of deserves it. I’ve played a lot worse, but there’s something sinister feeling with this one. It wasn’t a legitimate attempt at making a cutting edge game. If it was any other company, I’d let it slide. But Hudson Soft in 1987 was better than making such a horribly boring game that really doesn’t do anything right INCLUDING the graphics. Ignore the big character sprites and it’s rather plain looking, ain’t it? That’s where my anger comes from, because do you know who wouldn’t look at these screenshots and have alarms go off? Well-meaning parents looking at the back of the box at a store, shopping for a game for their martial arts loving child. This is designed to stand out TO THEM, and not a kid who knows their games. And that’s just not cool.
Verdict: NO!

Kuri Kinton
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1988
Designed by Kei Shimizu
Developed by Taito
Sold Separately on Arcade Archives ($7.99)

Kuri Kinton is “let’s make Spartan X look like a cartoon!” And it does look good. While the character models are generic in a way where they look like no anime and every anime, they’re loaded with personality. So, why aren’t they fun to battle? The combat tries to be more fluid and fast-paced, but the decision to have spongy mini-bosses (functionally full bosses) give chase to you through the levels until you whittle their health away was foolhardy. The mini-bosses aren’t exactly the most thrilling fights, as whatever OOMPH the basic enemies had doesn’t carry over to them. The fights are just low-impact and drag out too long, all while basic enemies continue to spawn to cheap shot you from behind.

The more of these Kung-Fu Master coattail riders fail, the more it becomes clear to me that having a snappiness to the action and non-spongy bosses with distinct personalities is what put that original game over-the-top. It seems like it should be an easy formula to copy. For the basic enemies, Kuri Kinton does a dang good job. The enemies go flying when you smack them. The bosses don’t go flying, but I could deal with that if the battles felt unique and satisfying. All but one of the bosses feel samey, and when they die, they feel more like they’re pausing to think over all the decisions that led to this moment. Kung-Fu Master’s bosses instantly enter an ultra-satisfying death sprite and fall off the screen in the same way the basic enemies do. Combined with excellent sound design, it makes for, you know, really fun and cathartic combat. As great as the sprites are in Kuri Kinton, the sound design is bad and the victory sprites don’t give that instant sense of closure or accomplishment.

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There’s five end of stage bosses, but only one of them stood out: the third, which clones itself like the Black Magician. Only it does so many more clones. It was a genuinely decent fight, but that’s really it. I guess the fourth boss looks kind of like Dr. Doom and the Mummy had a baby, but the fight itself is dull. You know, I just played through Kuri Kinton twice and I don’t know what to say. There’s no level design moments that I can recall besides a couple points where the ceiling is too low to jump forward. That tells me the designers caught on to the fact that most players will opt to jump ahead since it’s faster than running. The level design, while offering more variety than the flat corridors of Kung-Fu Master, feels arbitrary and bland. I found myself legging it for the exit and then fighting the mini-bosses next to the elevators. Any purely combative game where my instinct tells me to forget the combat seems like a game that fails. Mind you, Kuri Kinton isn’t putrid or anything. It controls well enough, looks great, and has a relatively fast pace. It’s just very, very bland. Some games are more than the sum of their parts, but this one is far less.
Verdict: NO!

Vigilante
Platform: Arcade
Released in 1988
Developed by Irem
Distributed by Data East (US)
Sold Separately on Arcade Archives ($7.99)

After so many spin-offs and wannabes, I thought it would be so refreshing to play the actual direct sequel to Kung-Fu Master. Hah. It even started development under the name “Super Kung-Fu Master” and then “Beyond Kung-Fu: Return of the Master” and made it to route testing before someone said “eh, this sucks” and the game was cancelled. It was then slightly retooled and turned into this absolute slog of an experience. My god, what a bore is Vigilante, which is basically Kung Fu, only spongy. Like, so insanely spongy that it feels like it’s trolling players. The combat is a near copy of Kung-Fu Master. You punch and kick, both of which can be done while jumping and ducking. You can even pick up nunchuks. So far, so good, but my enjoyment didn’t even last a fifth of the way through the first level. Enemies quickly go from taking single shots to kill to taking three, four, or even five shots. With the damn weapon, too! What was even the point of it?  I was already bored and I hadn’t even reached the first boss yet.

First off, the bosses regain health. Second, the bosses actively run away from you, just like the knife guys from Kung-Fu Master. How far do they run away from you? The second boss is really two bosses, and after scrolling all the way to the right to reach them, the fight went all the way back to the left before wiggling a little bit to the right before I finally won the fight. I want to say the bosses were so successful in avoiding my attacks, but they didn’t actively block them or anything. My punches and kicks mostly just went right through their sprites. THEY get undeclared invincible frames. Ain’t that peachy keen? The only way I could get damage without taking an unsurvivable amount of counter damage was to employ a boring stick-and-move strategy that further slowed the action down. Then, by the time I won the fight, I only had eight seconds to get back to the end of the stage, but I didn’t of course. You know, because the fight went the full length of the level to the left, and the spongy normal enemies started spawning again as soon as the fight was over.

Do you know what’s fun about Vigilante? NOTHING! This is both one of the worst sequels and one of the worst coin-ops I’ve ever played. Want to see how much damage a shot with the weapon does to the 4th boss? Here’s the boss, with a single hit off its life bar.

And as a reminder, bosses get their health back. Oh, don’t worry. Eventually he gets down from that perch to walk backwards towards the start of the stage while two out of three of your attacks are shrugged off. All while he gets his health back. The one positive thing I can say about Vigilante is that Irem divorced it from Kung-Fu Master. It deserves no tie to that game’s legacy. Kung-Fu Master is fun and holds up. Vigilante is basically a scam game that doesn’t play fair and it absolutely doesn’t give a f*ck if anyone has fun playing it. The blistering pace of Kung-Fu Master is completely gone, replaced by a snail’s pace that literally erases progress as a boss strategy. Who wants to play a combat game where characters shrug off the majority of your attacks? That’s not fun. I can’t believe I even have to say that. I absolutely cannot believe this piece of crap gets good reviews. One of the worst games I’ve ever played in my life.
Verdict: NO!

Splatterhouse
Platform: Arcade
Released in November, 1988
Directed by Shigeru Yokoyama
Developed by Namco
Sold Separately on Arcade Archives ($7.99)
Included in Namco Museum (Nintendo Switch, $29.99)

I was confused why Dave was so insistent that Splatterhouse be included in this feature. I’d never really put significant playtime into Splatterhouse, but I remember thinking in my limited sample of it that it was shallow and cynically gimmicky. It only took me about ten seconds into my latest play session with the game to get why Dave wanted it here. It’s clearly “Kung-Fu Master, if gory and gross.” Levels are short and based around simple attacks. Even less attacks than Kung-Fu Master, actually. There’s a punch or a swing/shot of the weapon you’re holding, a jump kick, a ducking kick, and a somewhat hard to pull off standing kick. That’s it. Despite being four years older, the gameplay is even more simple than the game that inspired it.

Splatterhouse has an emphasis on weapons, and as long as you remember to swing a little earlier than you think, you should be able to keep the oversized meat cleaver or the stick that you pick up. One level has a pair of shotguns to pick up that each have eight shots. It’s okay, I guess. Nice change of pace. I also got a kick out of how the board that you pick up splatters the enemies against the background wall. Odd as this word is to use in a game like this, there’s charm to Splatterhouse. The sprite work is first rate, especially as a pioneer for M-rated gaming.

It’s actually not as bloody as you would think. This is more like HP Lovecraft or House on Haunted Hill more than Friday the 13th. But, I’m fine with that. Blood for the sake of blood is really just a strange form of pandering. The lack of blood actually gives Splatterhouse a sense of authenticity to it. They really did seem to want to make a spooky game and if they had to sacrifice the gore for it, so be it. They succeeded, too. There’s some genuinely creepy sh*t in this. But, there’s one thing I didn’t like. It’ll probably get me in trouble with fans of the franchise, but think the hockey mask thing is uninspired and desperate. Surely they could have come up with something more original for a hero, especially since they actually did pull out some cleverness many times. 

The most clever aspect are the bosses, mostly because they’re often not bosses in the “big boss” sense. It turns out, when I played the NES cute-em-up Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (see my review in Namco Archives Vol. 1: The Definitive Review), it was following in the footsteps of the coin-op by having non-traditional bosses. The first boss is a series of worms that attack you. The second boss is a haunted room that shakes so violently that it probably should be listed at Able To Play, and you have to fight various furniture that’s thrown at you by a malevolent spirit. It’s different, but it’s a welcome change of pace because at least the battles are exciting. I’ll take a series of silly chairs and paintings being thrown at you over a monster as long as it’s more exciting every day.

That leads me to the biggest flaw with Splatterhouse, and nearly the fatal flaw: the collision detection is just awful. Not the worst I’ve seen (just wait until Spartan X 2) but it’s not even close to sprite-accurate, with your hit box a little bit wider than the already large character. Even after two full sessions, I never got a feel for the safe distance of enemies and projectiles because my brain just refused to make the adjustment. What’s especially frustrating is the enemies design seems tailored specifically to go for the fringe of the hit box. It completely deflates the game, and it’s such a kick in the ass because I want to love Splatterhouse. But the violence is significantly hurt by the lack of contact, and elite-level OOMPH can’t exist when it only works one way. If enemies aren’t actually hitting you, it still creates a sense of disconnect between the player and the action regardless of how accurate your own attacks have to be. With that said, I still liked Splatterhouse more than my previous sample of it led me to believe I would, but it’s just okay instead of as good as its legend suggests it should be.
Verdict: YES!

Kung-Fu Master
Platform: Atari 7800
Released in 1989
Developed by Imagineering Inc
Published by Absolute Entertainment
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The 7800 version of Kung-Fu Master is more like the 2600 with more accurate sprites and the actual bosses from the coin-op. Sadly, besides those improvements, all the same problems from the 2600 build are here. To punch, you have to lean forward into the punch. A standing punch requires you to press up diagonally towards the thing you’re punching. You can’t jump forward and, if a jump kick is possible, I never managed to even throw one. Enemies just poof out of existence, and I died more times from getting killed by the knife guys AFTER I’d beaten the boss but before I could walk off the screen to finish the level (three times) than I did the bosses themselves (zero times). The bosses are total wimps, while the knife guys usually throw their knives in pairs at a high velocity, especially if you don’t dodge the first one. So, there’s no charm, no OOMPH, and no version of the standard game’s most fun attack. Also, this came out a full five years after the NES version. Why would anyone want to play this in 1989, let alone 2025?
Verdict: NO!

Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu
aka Jackie Chan (Japan)
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released December, 1990
Designed by Haruo Chatani
Developed by Now Production
Published by Hudson Soft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

I should make it a policy that whatever game I think should be skipped due to the redundancy is one I should probably do. I figured “well, I’m doing the TG-16 version of Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu, so I really have no reason to do the NES version.” And that was wrong, because the NES version is one of the most underrated games on the platform. Seriously, how come nobody talks about this one? It’s delightful! A smooth-controlling action platformer with fun combat, fast-paced level design and fun bosses to battle with. Oh, and it’s loaded with personality. Probably the worst part of this is the fact that it’s Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu, needlessly tying a licensing anchor around the game’s neck.

The biggest weakness of the NES version is the lack of enemies. You usually only fight one or two at a time. While the scale is larger than most NES games, the game does have a tiny bit of an empty vibe to it, which prevents the higher stakes of something like, say, a Super Mario game. On the other hand, the combat is varied and satisfying. Smacking a frog causes it to spit-up a seemingly random special attack, usually some form of a spin-kick that does extra damage. You also get a limited supply of fireballs that you get from charging-up the attack button. The variety assures that the combat never gets boring, even if there aren’t quite enough baddies to dial-up the excitement.

One oddity of Action Kung Fu is that the levels are not even in size. The first level is one of the longest opening stages in any game. In fact, it’s so long that I was legitimately startled when I reached the second boss much more quickly. Action Kung Fu has a total lack of tempo. It’s as if the team didn’t quite know how long to pace out the stages. Later, there’s an extended rafting/platforming section that wears out its welcome, but that’s probably the only “down time” the game suffers. Well, besides the bonus stages that tend to drag a little bit as well. On the other hand, the bosses are all really fun to fight and are the highlights of the game, as any self-respecting boss fight should be. Well, okay so the last two bosses don’t stick the landing. Going off the TG-16 game, I think they WANTED bigger bosses and this is what they could settle for. Neither are particularly good fights, either, but the NES game is still 4 for 6 on fun bosses. That’s a win in my books.

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Also, I feel like I should remind you (and myself) that last bosses can only let you down if the ride there is a fun one. Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu has got to be one of gaming’s all-time underrated platformers. Simple as it is, it’s genuinely one of the most fun platformers I’ve played on the NES. I can’t stress enough how well it controls. This thing is Mario-like in its movement accuracy, intuitive jumping, and the collision detection. Even with the inconsistent pacing, I would have been good to go another five levels. When the biggest knock on a game is that it leaves you wanting more, hell, that’s a problem I wish more games had. It also is a little on the easy side, but that’s fine, and actually, this might be a good game to introduce a young child to combative platformers. It’s always preferable for a game to be too easy than too hard, because at least with too easy, everyone of all skill levels can experience the full game. In the case of Action Kung Fu, that’s a positive, because this is a game that everyone should experience. Konami needs to figure out the rights issues on this, and if they do, I’d strongly advise they bundle both the NES and the TG-16 version, which offers slightly more bite than this. Combined, they would make a hell of a retro release. This is a game that appears on a ton of hidden gem lists. It deserves it.
Verdict: YES!

Kung Fu Master
aka Spartan X
Platform: Game Boy
Released December 11, 1990
Developed by Irem
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Despite having the same name as the arcade classic, the Game Boy version of Kung-Fu Master is a full-fledged sequel that’s FINALLY what I’ve been waiting twenty games to play. A legit evolution of Spartan X with the same basic combat, only with different bosses and better level design, and I’m there for it. This is a fantastic sequel that is also fantastically glitchy. Sometimes enemies shoot projectiles that don’t get drawn, be it bullets from a sniper or ninja stars thrown by a boss. I tried a couple different emulators and it’s present on all of them, so I guess it must be a thing. Fair trade because, in this version of Kung-Fu Master, you can do a MID-JUMP FLIP KICK! And it’s awesome!

The flip kick, combined with a ton of health refills and even throwable bombs, makes the Game Boy Spartan X even breezier than the NES game was. In fact, I only died once, during the third boss. He shoots bombs at you that can hit you multiple times before they hit the ground, at which point they blow up for additional hits. You don’t blink when you take damage, so it’s this one weirdly brief section where the difficulty radically spikes, but then returns to “could probably learn to beat this blindfolded” levels of cinchy.

Besides a few different sprites, the biggest difference between regions is the US version has a brief final stage, whereas the international version goes straight to the push-over final boss. Besides the occasional hidden projectiles (seemingly caused by the screen having too many moving sprites already), the biggest weakness is the bosses don’t have the personalities of the original game. A few are barely distinguishable for normal baddies. But, they’re not too spongy and fun to battle, just like the original game. The basic enemies are back to being satisfying and cathartic to fight. Every wrong from the failed would-be sequel Vigilante is righted here. It feels like the true sequel to Spartan X. Technically THAT sequel is still coming for the Famicom. Spoiler alert: that game really sucks. So, for all intents and purposes, this is the only good sequence to Kung-Fu Master, and what a sequel it is. For a second year Game Boy title, this ain’t bad at all.
Verdict: YES!

Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu
Platform: TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine
Released January 17, 1991
Designed by Haruo Chatani
Developed by Now Production
Published by Hudson Soft
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

The TG-16 build of Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu has more.. well, action! The biggest advantage the PC Engine offers over the NES is the ability to have more sprites on screen at once. That means more enemies, more challenge, and less downtime. The levels aren’t exactly the same, though the same uneven pacing and length of stages carries over from the NES. That’s fine, because all the positive aspects also carry over. A wide variety of enemies that are so satisfying to slay, along with solid level design and set pieces. Weirdly, a couple of those are dialed down from the NES. For example, the final level on Nintendo’s platform has a super-speedy auto-scrolling section near the final boss. The TG-16 build still auto-scrolls, but at a normal speed. Weird. Thankfully, for every baffling change there’s several positive ones, including plenty of segments not included in the NES game, like this:

The enemies aren’t just increased in volume, but also in their strategies. The NES game’s limits means that enemies can mostly be dealt with one-on-one. Consequently, there’s no close calls. I never died once from combat in the NES game, and for the most part, my health was nearly always full. I don’t recall having to be careful with enemies at any point (except the Ninja Turtle-like baddies in the river). That certainly wasn’t the case with the TG-16 build. It’s much more intense, with not just enemies but set-pieces like the above dragon. It can’t be killed and has to be avoided. You can’t just plow through this game with reckless abandon like the NES game. While the platforming elements are more or less unchanged, the TG-16 game certainly has a greater emphasis on combat. But, with the near-perfect controls and enjoyable fighting mechanics returning from the NES game, it really is more of a good thing.

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The sublime boss fights also return, and they’re far more ambitious and grand than in the NES game. Even the final boss is slightly improved, and while I still think it’s lacking in the type of climatic feel you want from a last boss (it really feels tacked-on), it’s more enjoyable. I suppose it’s fitting that the difference between the two Action Kung Fu ports reminded me a lot of playing Bonk’s Adventure for the TurboGrafx-16 and NES. Hudson really knew how to play to a console’s strengths and lessen the impact of their weaknesses. Unfortunately, the Jackie Chan likeness, secured before he became a worldwide A-lister, probably makes this cost prohibitive for a re-release. So, like, file off the serial number, Konami! I’ll tell you what: give me a dollar, do a gender swap and call it Cathy Vice’s Action Kung Fu! Come on! My name even sounds like an action star!
Verdict: YES!

Spartan X 2
aka Kung Fu 2
Platform: Famicom
Released September 27, 1991
Developed by Tamtex
Published by Irem
Never Released Outside of Japan
NO MODERN RELEASE

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I’M EMBARRASSED TO PRESENT..
THE WORST COLLISION DETECTION IN GAMING HISTORY!

Think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. This is the worst, at least in a way that benefits a player. Take a look:

Or how about this? By the way, this right here I think is legitimately a record.

And yes, even the last boss is affected by this.

Do I even need to continue the review? I mean, of course I do because I have too much dignity to phone it in. But holy hell, am I pissed at this Japanese-exclusive bastardization of one the Godfathers of OOMPH. Legitimately angry. HOW DARE A SEQUEL TO KUNG-FU MASTER HAVE THIS PATHETIC OF COLLISION? I’m so f*cking angry I could spit nails. It didn’t need to be this way, either. Just shrink the collision boxes! Why are they so big? It’s not like this would have been fantastic without the awful collision. Spartan X 2 is pretty generic, especially compared to the original game. Spartan X is dripping with charm. Spartan X 2 has the personality of drywall and some of the least memorable character sprites on the NES. This could be any game. It certainly doesn’t look like a sequel to Kung-Fu Master. It doesn’t look like it shares any connection at all, and even with the same basic attacks and enemies that take one hit to kill, it doesn’t feel like it either.

Spartan X 2 does try to evolve the formula somewhat. If you duck for two seconds, the character begins to blink, Super Mario 2-style. Pressing punch once you’re blinking unleashes an uppercut, while UP plus punch at the same time throws a flying uppercut. This would be great, if not for the comically large collision boxes. With them, the uppercut makes bosses absurdly easy to beat since you don’t have to worry about actually connecting with what should be a high-risk timing-based attack. It’s really hard to get excited about a game where the OOMPH is so poor that it’s actually Dark OOMPH. It’s sort of like dark matter, only instead of annihilating normal matter that it comes in contact with, it annihilates the concept of fun without any contact required.

The funny thing is, when I played Spartan X 2 a few years ago, I remember enjoying it. I have no idea what I was thinking. Perhaps it was the novelty of playing a Famicom exclusive based on a game I admired. Replaying this today, oh my God, what a piece of crap. Had the collision been better, I would have still liked the Game Boy version better, but this would have been a decently bland sequel. Instead, it feels like a game so poor that it killed the franchise for good. Like the original game, there’s only five levels that go by really quick. The whole thing takes under half-an-hour to finish. But, even though there’s set pieces and environmental traps, this feels like a rip-off of the original rather than a sequel. Sometimes the rest of the world is hosed by games staying exclusive to Japan. But with Spartan X 2, fans of the NES game dodged a bullet.
Verdict: NO!

Splatterhouse 2
Platform: Sega Genesis
Released July 3, 1992
Developed by Now Production
Published by Namco
Included in Sega Genesis Mini 2/Evercade’s Namco Collection 2

I wish I had a better game to end this feature on, but Splatterhouse 2 is just a total bore. Two straight games with absolutely no personality. What the hell? Even stranger is this from the same team that did Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (again, see Namco Archives Vol. 1: The Definitive Review for my coverage) You know, a game that was carried entirely by personality and charm. I guess they decided this had to be all ooze and no fun, because Splatterhouse 2 has all the charm of a sack of flour. No, wait. Flour can be thrown on someone, which is both silly AND makes them look silly. That sounds fun. This isn’t fun at all. This is a spoonful of flour. Just enough flour to make you question your life’s choices, but not enough flour for comedic purposes.

Splatterhouse 2 shouldn’t have a number attached to it. This feels like a glorified remake. In the 2020s, this would be DLC. Like, bad DLC. It offers nothing new and removes all the originality. Not that Splatterhouse had a ton of that to begin with. I mean, come on. But this has even less. It also has no OOMPH at all, but that’s not a collision thing this time. Actually, it’s a sound design issue. My longtime readers will note that I notoriously play most games muted. MOST, but not all. Music screws with my concentration because I’m tone deaf, but sound effects are a different beast. Those usually help with OOMPH, and in a combative game like Splatterhouse, I’ll put up with an irritating chip tune if the sound design will enhance the feeling of violence. This is missing a lot of sound effects. I even checked YouTube videos to make sure it wasn’t my emulator, and it wasn’t. The music isn’t really good anyway, so they should have focused on developing crunchy/smooshy sound effects to complement the violence and grossness. Instead, what’s here sounds like someone just picked whatever was available out of a sound library. It’s embarrassing. One of the worst sounding games of this type ever made.

When it comes to these older games, I usually wait until after I finish my play session before I see what contemporary critics had to say. My jaw literally hung loose when I saw some of the scores thrown at this thing. 5 out of 5 from Game Pro. 9 out of 10 from Game Informer. Are you f*cking kidding me? This is the exact same game from the first one, with nothing really new and every single good part gone. When it tries to straight-up copy the original, it feels muffled. The clever boss fights against several smaller enemies? It tries that (the above mentioned chainsaw bit) but it just doesn’t work this time. It’s not scary or spooky. Oddly, it doesn’t come across like it’s trying too hard, either. Instead, it feels like someone trying to copy a game they’re not passionate about. Maybe that’s what happened. Splatterhouse always has a touch of cynicism to it, but this one feels wholly cynical.

The basic enemies are a bore. The bosses are a REAL bore. There’s not a single memorable design in any of them except the second boss, which is pictured above. Even that kind of sucks, because it’s fought in a black void, like the Genesis version of Altered Beast. I get why it’s like that. A boss that big has to remove the background or the Genesis can’t do it, but it also makes it hard for me to get emotionally invested in the setting. Also, unlike Altered Beast, Splatterhouse relies heavily on the setting for the chills. You can’t just take that away. The setting is the whole crux of the game! Of course, for the most part, this feels like the setting is the same as well. The two locations that feel new-ish, the library and the portal, both fail. The portal has you falling down a shaft, but your character’s walking animation stays the same. It looks incredibly silly.

And the library does the “things in the foreground block you from seeing the baddies” shtick that I’ve never cared for.

The sum total of entertainment for this sequel to Splatterhouse is one single decent boss fight. One. I have to assume that all the critics that were falling over backwards to heap praise on this thing were coming off of recent dental surgery or something. I’ve played worse games in this feature, but the sheer length of boredom that Splatterhouse 2 subjected me to makes it one of the worst in this feature. Hell, it only gives you one shotgun in the entire game and they didn’t even make a satisfying BANG noise for it. When a dude is jacked the way Rick is (that’s not-Jason’s name), punching something should feel impactful. Here, it feels like he’s punching a series of oversized novelty pillows. Splatterhouse 2 is a game that feels like it intends to coast on the first game’s reputation and notoriety, but like with Kung-Fu Master, it’s now clear the franchise died for a reason: because they didn’t have a clue what they had in the original. Okay Dave, now I get why you insisted I include these.
Verdict: NO!