Kung fu stick fighting games series#

The Devil's Temple has five floors, each ending with a different boss (described as 'sons of the devil' at the start of the game). On even-numbered floors, the player must also deal with falling balls and pots, snakes, poisonous moths, fire-breathing dragons, and exploding confetti balls. Underlings encountered by the player include Grippers, who can grab Thomas and drain his energy until shaken off Knife Throwers, who can throw at two different heights and must be hit twice and Tom Toms, short fighters who can either grab Thomas or somersault to strike his head when he is crouching. He can absorb a significant amount of damage, but loses a life if he takes too many hits. Thomas has a health meter indicating how much damage he can take. Punches award more points than kicks and do more damage, but their range is shorter. Punches and kicks can be performed from a standing, crouching or jumping position. Unlike more conventional side-scrolling games, the joystick is used not only to crouch, but also to jump. The player controls Thomas with a four-way joystick and two attack buttons to punch and kick.

Kung fu stick fighting games series#

Kung-Fu Master also influenced other media, such as the Red Ribbon Army saga (1985-1986) of the manga and anime series Dragon Ball, as well as the French film Kung Fu Master (1988). (1985), while Nishiyama was hired by Capcom where he used the game's boss battles as the basis for the fighting game Street Fighter (1987), before working for SNK on fighting games such as Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters. Miyamoto's work on the NES port inspired his development of the side-scrolling platform game Super Mario Bros.

It is regarded as the first beat 'em up brawler, and an early example of the side-scrolling character action game genre, which became popular during the mid-to-late 1980s. Kung-Fu Master was an influential game that had a significant cultural impact. It spawned the sequel Spartan X 2 (1991) and the spiritual successors Trojan (1986) and Vigilante (1988). It was also one of the top five best-selling Commodore 64 games of 1986. A port for the Nintendo Entertainment System (known as the Famicom in Japan) was developed by Nintendo under the direction of Shigeru Miyamoto, released as Spartan X in Japan and Kung Fu in the West, selling 3.5 million copies worldwide. The game was a major commercial success, topping the Japanese arcade charts and becoming America's second highest-grossing arcade game of 1985, while receiving critical acclaim for its fast-paced, side-scrolling gameplay and detailed, colorful graphics. Thomas and each boss have a health meter, and the game temporarily becomes a one-on-one fighting game during boss battles. As he ascends the tower, he has to fight many enemies along the way and five end-of-level boss battles, a concept inspired by Game of Death. The player controls Thomas, the titular Kung-Fu Master, as he fights his way through the five levels of the Devil's Temple to rescue his girlfriend Sylvia from the crime boss Mr. Irem and Data East exported the game to the West without the Spartan X license. Nishiyama, who had previously designed the side-scrolling shooter Moon Patrol (1982), combined fighting elements with a shoot 'em up gameplay rhythm. However, the game is more heavily inspired by the Bruce Lee film Game of Death (1972), which was the basis for the game's concept. It is loosely adapted from the Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung film Wheels on Meals (1984), called Spartan X in Japan, with the protagonist Thomas named after Jackie Chan's character in the film. Designed by Takashi Nishiyama, the game was based on Hong Kong martial arts films. Kung-Fu Master, known as Spartan X in Japan, is a side-scrolling beat 'em up game developed by Irem as an arcade game in 1984, and distributed by Data East in North America.