| Kung-Fu Master | |
|---|---|
 North American arcade flyer of Kung Fu Master. |
|
| Developer(s) | Irem |
| Publisher(s) | Irem Data East USA |
| Series | Spartan X |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release date(s) | Arcade version: JP December 1984 |
| Genre(s) | Beat 'em up |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players, alternating turns |
| Input methods | 4-way Joystick, 2 buttons |
| Cabinet | Upright, mini-upright, and cocktail |
| Arcade system | CPU: Z80 main, M6803 Snd, 2x AY-3-8910, 2x MSM5205 (=Irem-M62) |
Kung-Fu Master, known in Japan as Spartan X (スパルタンX), is a 1984 beat 'em up arcade game developed and published in Japan by Irem. It was later published in North America by Data East. The Japanese version was based on the movie starring Jackie Chan of one of the alternate names of the film, Wheels on Meals, and credited "Paragon Films Ltd., Towa Promotion", who produced the film upon which it was based. The game is considered by many to be the first beat 'em up video game, and contains elements of Bruce Lee's Game of Death.
Contents |
The player takes the role of Keiji Thomas, a man in a Keikogi and slippers. Thomas's girlfriend, Sylvia, has been kidnapped by "Mr. X", and Thomas must fight through five side-scrolling floors full of enemies to rescue her.
Brutally summarized as "rescue girlfriend – hit people", the US and UK version opened with the clumsy phrase "Thomas and Sylvia were attacked by several unknown guys...."
The game was an early beat 'em up. It is cited as one of the inspirations for subsequent successes like Double Dragon, Final Fight, Captain Commando, Streets of Rage, P.O.W.: Prisoners of War and Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja.
Thomas can punch with the A button and kick with the B button. Either move can be done from a crouching or jumping position. Punches are worth twice as much as kicks and do twice as much damage, but their range is shorter.
The first floor of the temple contains Grippers (standard Kung Fu henchmen who charge Thomas and grab him, draining his life bar) and Knife Throwers (men who throw knives high or low). Subsequent levels introduce Tom Toms (small dwarves who can surprise Thomas by jumping on his head), poisonous moths, fire-breathing dragons (Thomas must punch or kick them before they breathe fire), snakes, and confetti balls. (These hang in mid-air for a few seconds and then explode into three pieces after a few seconds; Thomas must jump kick these before they explode. If Thomas is hit by any pieces of debris from an exploding confetti ball, he takes massive damage.)
Each of the five floors ends with a different boss who must be defeated before Thomas can climb the stairs to the next floor. The first two bosses are ordinary men armed with a stick and honed boomerangs, respectively. The third is a Giant, the fourth a Black Magician, and the fifth is Mr. X, a versatile Kung Fu master. Thomas must complete each floor within a fixed time. The timer starts at 2000. If it falls below 330, an acoustic warning sounds. If a boss defeats Thomas, the boss laughs. Although there are five bosses, the game only uses two different synthesized laughs. (The NES port uses a third, high-pitched synthesized laugh for the Black Magician.)
Once the player has completed all five floors, the game restarts with a more demanding version of the Devil's Temple, although the essential details remain unchanged. A visual indication of the current house is displayed on the screen. For each series of five completed floors, a dragon symbol appears in the upper-right corner of the screen. After three dragons have been added, the dragon symbols blink.
Kung-Fu Master was ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, BeOS x86, Commodore 64, DOS, Java, Linux, NES/Famicom, MSX (Irem/ASCII version as Seiken Achō), PlayChoice-10 (arcade, nearly the same as the NES version), Sega SG-1000, Sinclair ZX Spectrum (released simply as "Kung Fu (Karate)" by Bug Byte as the first home computer port) and Windows. It was also made for the 8-bit Gameking console, under the name of Nagual. Some of the 8-bit conversions offered highly degraded performance, sound and image resolution. The NES version was ported and published by Nintendo simply under the title "Kung Fu" in North America and the PAL region. It is also one of two NES/Famicom games that had Jackie Chan as its lead character, the other being Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu (which was also released for the TurboGrafx-16). The original arcade version was later included along with the arcade versions of 10-Yard Fight and Zippy Race in IAC/Irem Arcade Classics for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, released in Japan only in 1996 by Irem and I'Max. The arcade version was also released to cell phones.
In 1988, another arcade game by Irem titled as Vigilante was created and released, which is a spin-off of Kung-Fu Master, due to the gameplay being the same, but with a completely different plot added to it that takes place in the urban areas of New York City, where a nameless titular character must save his girlfriend, Madonna ("Maria" in the Sega Master System version) who was captured by the Skinheads ("Rogues" in the Sega Master System version). About a year later in 1990, the arcade game received a completely different Game Boy sequel as "Kung-Fu Master" ("Spartan X" in Japan), which has similar gameplay to the arcade game, but with a completely different plot, setting, set of enemies and stages. Some of Keiji Thomas's new abilities are back-flip kicks and grenades dropped by enemies. The flat levels were modified into stages with different platforms and objects in an urban city style similar to Vigilante's. Another year later in 1991, a Japan-exclusive sequel to the game was released for the Famicom, titled Spartan X 2. In this game, players control "Jonny Spartan", who wears a costume that resembles a red jumpsuit. Like Vigilante and the Game Boy version of Kung-Fu Master, the plot is also quite different and takes place in an urban area, with no mention of Sylvia, but rather "Jonny" is now a member of an unnamed crime-fighting unit charged with foiling a group of drug smugglers.
Agnès Varda featured the game prominently in a film of the same name (Kung-Fu Master!), dealing with an affair between a 40 year-old woman and a fourteen year-old boy obsessed with the game. When he finally beats it after 6 months, he asks a bartender to giver her a call to let her know. The bartender is initially a bit dismissive but still picks up the phone. However, she cannot get the message because she is not home, and the bartender reaches her daughter who is too young to be a messenger. The film was retitled Le Petit Amour for U.S. release so it would not be perceived as a martial arts film.
Kung-Fu Master | Table of Contents | Walkthrough
| Kung-Fu Master | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Developer(s) | Irem |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Japanese title | スパルタンX (Spartan X) |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Beat 'em up |
| System(s) | Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Commodore 64/128, Apple II, Amstrad CPC, NES, Sinclair ZX Spectrum |
| Players | 1-2 |
Kung-Fu Master is the undisputed grandfather of the Beat 'em up genre. It was the earliest game to feature a lone martial artist who must go up against a massive army of less capable fighters, as well as bosses that require special strategies to defeat. The main player does not die from one hit. Instead, it has a life bar that decreases every time the player fails to dodge an attack. The player could choose between punches or kicks, high or low attacks, and jumping or crouching.
Known as Spartan X in Japan, the game was actually based upon a movie of the same name which starred Jackie Chan. More of a comedy than an action title, the game's story is taken directly from the movie, but the content differs quite a bit. Some of the content is actually taken from several Bruce Lee movies. The 5-Floor Pagoda and the third boss which mimics the giant Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is taken from "Game of Death". The shot of a kidnapping letter and a tied-up girl in a red dress is taken from "Bruce's Finger". And the red pillars and ceiling tape were inspired from "Goodbye Bruce Lee, his Last Game of Death".
Because the success of the game roughly coincided with the launch of the Famicom in Japan, Nintendo saw the game as a must-have title for their system. So they licensed the game from Irem and published it themselves. It was the third best selling Famicom game released in 1985, selling approximately 1,420,000 copies in it's lifetime. When they brought the game to America, they shortened the title to Kung Fu, perhaps to avoid legal problems with Data East who held the rights to the game in America. Data East licensed the game to popular European home computer systems, while Activision (later, Absolute) provided ports to popular Atari systems available at the time.
Thomas, the game's hero, and his girlfriend Sylvia are suddenly ambushed by a group of unknown assailants, and Sylvia is kidnapped. Thomas receives a ransom demand from the mysterious 'X' informing him that Sylvia is being held in the Devil's Temple.
Thomas must kick and punch through the five enemy-packed floors of the temple to reach Sylvia and rescue her. A fearsome guardian awaits the player at the end of each floor, and must be defeated before Thomas can continue his progress up through the temple.
 Title screen. |
 Spartan X arcade flyer, featuring Jackie Chan |
|
|
Wikis
Search
