Kung-Fu Master

The Good
Kung-Fu Master is a side-scrolling action game released in the arcades in 1984 by Irem, running on the M-62 hardware. It was originally released as Spartan X in Japan as a tie-in based on the Jackie Chan film Wheels on Meals when it was released in the west. It received ports on popular 8-bit platforms such as the Apple II, Nintendo NES, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and MSX.

The game is housed in a black arcade cabinet with artwork showing Thomas defeating an enemy with a low-kick plastered on the left side. The marquee features all the main characters from the game, with Mr. X preventing Silvia from shouting out to Thomas. It’s strange how Silvia resembles Annie from the movies based on a musical, but with blonde hair and a bow-tie. The CRT monitor is surrounded by images of characters from the game, and a dragon, as well as Silvia and Mr. X, looking down at them.

In Kung-Fu Master, you play Thomas trying to rescue his love Silvia who is kidnapped under your watch and held somewhere on the fifth floor. Mr. X, her captor, challenges you to defeat the “five sons of the devil” blocking access to the next floor. To get her back, Thomas must punch and kick his way to the other side of the floor where he encounters one son. Once he does so, he climbs the stairs to the next floor ready to face the next boss.

The enemies come in different varieties. You will first encounter men wearing pink vests, who have their arms up ready to give you a hug. Once they do, the only way to break free of their grip is to wiggle the joystick left and right. I find it amusing that it can be a “threesome” or “foursome”. There are also midgets and men wearing bandanas. What’s common about all the enemies is that they approach you from both sides, so it is important to stay alert. From the second floor onward, there are also vases that drop on you as you pass. When they break, they will release dragons that either scurry past you or breathe fire at you.

The graphics are quite colorful, and the animations of the different characters are excellent. I find it quite amusing that Thomas is the only one walking as if he’s on drugs. The backgrounds are basically the same with Japanese lettering on posts and murals in between them. Kung-Fu Master features cut-scenes in between some of the levels.

The game’s AY-3-8910A sound chip provides the digitized sound effects, while the MSM5205 provides the music. The music is done by Kōji Kondō, who also worked on the Mario and Zelda games. He composed three pieces for the game, with the most notable one being the background music while you are fighting your way through each floor. I love the echoes Thomas makes when he runs out of energy, and also Mr. X’s laugh in the cut-scenes.

The Bad
There is no continue feature, which means if you run out of all your lives, you are jettisoned back to the start.

The Bottom Line
In Kung-Fu Master, punch and kick your way to the end of each floor using the variety of moves available to you, defeat the boss, and climb up the stairs to get to the next floor. That’s about it really. The graphics and sound are very good, and there is always the opportunity to have “just one more go”.

The Good
Kung-fu was certainly an interesting game, if not odd. The storyline was quite the same as a dubbed Japanese kung-fu movie, with the fighting styles of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the graphics of Excite Bike.

The basic drive of the game was that you were a kung-fu master, determined to rescue your girlfriend. You must reach the top-most level of the pagoda, while facing enemies and bosses along the way.

The moves you have at your disposal are finely crafted. It has a total of six moves, combining A, B, and the up and down buttons on the D-pad. This is a nice refresher from Ice Climber and Mario, both of which had very limited ways of defeating your foes.

The graphics you do have to give a hand to. As soon as you see then you will be instantly reminded of Excite Bike, Ice Climber, Clu-clu Land, Pinball, etc. To put it simply, the graphics are no more remarkable than any other graphics at the time.

The Bad
The game has some flaws which really bring it down.

The game play, you will discover, is quite repetitive and hard. The only strategy which seems to work is trial and error, accompanied with luck. It took me at least ten tries to figure out how to successfully beat the first level, only to die on the even harder second level and have to restart. Even when you finally get up to the top level and beat the ending boss, there is very little replay value in it. Enemies do not change, they only get faster, and the game will get very old.

The sound is not magnificent for the time. This game, like Excite-Bike, Clu-clu Land, and Pinball, did not bring us catchy tunes that stick as icons even today, like the Super Mario Bros. and Zelda theme. Most of it is NES midis (do not get me wrong, a lot of NES midis sound great!) and are typical of cheesy kung-fu movies back in the 80’s. SFX is not notable here either.

Lastly, the two player mode is not much of two-player mode. Players take turns, which makes it fairly easy for the person not playing to lose interest and wait until you are gone to play one-player. I am fairly impressed at the nice number of co-op games such as Clu-clu Land, and Ice Climber, but I am disappointed at the lack of co-op in other games such as this. Truly two players is not an incentive to get this game

The Bottom Line
The game, while it does entertain you for a while, will slowly frustrate you with its hard, repetitive game play and cheesy music and sounds. Unfortunately, it adds to this with a very bad replay value and a bland two player mode. The game is probably best for those who like to collect NES games, or for someone who had it as a childhood favorite. Otherwise, this game might just collect dust.

The Good
It's a funny game. The storyline and cutscenes are cheesy such that they are hilarious instead of annoying. You're a Kung Fu master trying to save your girlfriend, Sylvia, from Mr. X (5th level boss). The game is driven by the old 5 story pagoda thing, where you have to beat the story's boss to climb the stairs to the next story of increasing difficulty. It's kind of fun going through the varied levels to see the different bosses and such. The 3rd level has a large black guy for its boss, whom my little brother as a 4 year old kid dubbed "George Bush."

The Bad
The worst thing about this game is that it repeats and doesn't resolve. Once you beat Mr. X, your happiness doesn't last long, and you're back at the bottom of the pagoda (with the bad guys moving slightly faster and sneakier). The game just sort of goes on like this until you either die or become so fed up you turn your NES off. The midget boss on the 4th level is also extremely irritating.

The Bottom Line
It's an odd little game that kind of has its own personality that's hard to describe. It has purple guys trying to hug you, little greet midgets that jump at you, and knife guys that throw knives at you, all of whom you must knock off the pagoda with kung fu moves (high kick low kick, high punch low punch, or jump kick or punch.) Then there are the 5 bosses (Sword Guy, Boomerang Guy, George Bush, Midget Guy, and Mr X.) It's a game worth playing, for the experience, but it's probably not the most well made game in the realm of the NES.