Kung-Fu
Master is a very special game to me. This is one that I'll always remember playing at
the Presidio of San Francisco PX, waiting in line for, and begging my parents for
"just one more quarter" about a million times. Everybody was hooked on this
game, and considering its high intensity, never ending challenge, and impressive (for its
time) audiovisuals, that's no surprise. The game is elegant, even poetic, in that it
suggests that we must be tenacious, persistant, and aggressive in accomplishing our goals
(hopefully most readers will empathize with this). Here, a Kung-Fu Master, Thomas,
literally climbs the precarious ladder of success after each level. It's games like this
that make us wonder it it's path and not the goal that keep us going in life. The NES version (where the name was changed to simply Kung-Fu, probably for some legal reason) was a miserable, horribly watered down translation retaining very little of the arcade original's quality. For those fortunate enough to have a Japanese Playstation plus the connections to find this disc (which also contains Zippy Race and 10-Yard Fight), it's well worth it for Kung-Fu Master alone.
Gameplay starts off with an explanatory letter stating: YOUR LOVE SILVIA IS IN CUSTODY NOW. IF YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR DEAR SILVIA'S LIFE, COME TO THE DEVIL'S TEMPLE AT ONCE. FIVE SONS OF THE DEVIL WILL ENTERTAIN YOU.
And so begins Thomas' quest.
A 2-D side-scroller, at first you will encounter myriad mindless goons who simply walk into your arsenal of kicks and punches. These goons pose little threat in and of themselves, having only the ability to grab onto you and slowly deplete your energy. However, they are quite taxing when accompanied by knife throwers. Throwing at the player's legs or head, they have the ability to retreat, and also take two hits rather than one to defeat, which is often enough time for them to throw one more knife before going down. Worse, after level one, midgets (or are they kids?) appear, and may flip to attack a crouching player, thus facing plahyers with one of the most infuriating scenarios of all time: A knife thrower just tossed a knife at your head as a midget simultaneously executed a flip. Should the player sit and take the damage from the midget, or try to stand up, hitting the midget, and risk being able to duck the knife in time? But there are also times when we come out looking really studly, too. One gets a feeling of genuine satisfaction simultaneously jumping over a knife, hitting a flipping midget, and jump kicking an approaching goon to the sound of "WHY-YA!"
Veteran players will recall the 2nd and 4th floor scenarios, the former containing falling pots, and explosive and dragon-containing balloons, and the latter pitting our protagonist against killer butterflies.
There are, however, many minor differences between Spartan X and Kung-Fu Master. The music is pretty much the same, but there's just one part where it changed tempo just a bit that's not included here. Also, when facing a boss, the goons and knife throwers would usually turn and walk away. Not here. In fact, there's even been a couple of times where a knife thrower ahead of me actually stepped behind the boss I was fighting. This never ever happened in the arcade. In the American version, the midgets may be jumped over, but oddly enough, that doesn't work either.
Despite these shortcomings, I find myself coming back to this one time and time again. Kung-Fu Master was and always will be one of my favorite video games.
