Kung Fu Master
Kung Fu Master was an
arcade game developed by the
Japanese company
Irem Corporation in
1984 and manufactured under licence in the
United States by Data East USA, Inc. of
Santa Clara, California. It was released in Japan as
Spartan X and credited "Paragon Films Ltd., Towa Promotion", who made the
movie Spartan X (
Wheels on Meals) upon which it was based. The movie (itself based on a
novel), was directed by
Sammo Hung who co-starred with
Jackie Chan, playing the hero Thomas.The game contains more elements of
Bruce Lee's Game of Death.
The player takes the role of Keiji Thomas, a man in a martial arts uniform with slippers. Thomas's girlfriend Sylvia has been kidnapped by "Mr. X", and Tom must fight through five side-scrolling levels 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 the first
beat 'em up. It is cited as the inspiration for subsequent successes like
Double Dragon,
Final Fight,
Captain Commando, and
Streets of Rage.
If you insert a coin, the player yells "Huah!" In the game he only yells if jumps and kicks simultanously.
The first
level involved nothing stronger than standard
Kung Fu henchmen and knife throwers (must be hit twice), but subsequent levels introduced dwarves, killer bees, fire breathing dragons, snakes, and butterflies of death. Fans of the game particularly appreciated the hobbling motion of the injured characters and decried the difficulty presented by the knife throwers. Completing the second level was notoriously challenging. Each of the five levels ends with a different
boss who must be defeated before Thomas can climb the stairs to the next level. The first two bosses are ordinary men armed with a baton and honed boomerangs, respectively. The third is a giant, the fourth a magician and the fifth is Mr. X, a versatile Kung Fu master. Each level must be completed within a fixed time. The timer starts at 2000. If it falls below 330, you hear an acoustic warning. If a boss defeats the player, the boss laughs. Although there are 5 bosses, there was only room for 2 different laughs.Note: Thomas actually never moves. Only background and enemies do.
Once the player has completed all five levels, the game restarts with a more demanding version of the Devil's Temple, although the essential details remain unchanged. You can see on which house the gamer is. For every completed 5 levels, a dragon symbol appears in the upper right corner (max. 3, then blink).
The pagoda is the Buddhist temple 'Pope Jusaw' in South Korea. You can see inside and outside in the movie
Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey (Game of Death documentary). In the movie, Bruce Lee has 4 companions. The pagoda is guarded by 10 karate-guards at the outside. On each level inside, one member of Bruce Lee's team dies. The 5 levels not only feature 5 different fighting-styles, but the steps for finding your own way.
Level 1: Right-to-left. Enemies are Grippers (men who charge Tom and grab him, draining his
life bar. Usually come in large numbers) and Knife Throwers (men who throw knives high or low). The boss is Stick Fighter (His high attacks miss if Tom crouches, and all attacks miss if Tom is directly next to him.) In
Game of Death, this level is called 'Hall of the Tiger'. The boss is Master of the Escrima (Filipino stick fighting-style), played by Dan Inosanto. As Bruce Lee died, before filming level 1 and 2, this level is the 3rd. Originally, it was planned an expert kicker/ student of chi with no weapon on level 1.
Level 2: Left-to-right. Enemies are Snakes, Dragons (kick them before they breathe fire for lots of points), and Beehives (jump attack), followed by Grippers and Knife Throwers. The boss is Boomerang Fighter (throws a boomerang, high or low). In
Game of Death this level is the 'Red Area' (level 4), with the Hapkido-fighter played by Ji Han Jae. It was planned a boss with fast and direct attack on level 2 which is called 'Floor of the Preying Mantis'.
Between levels 2 and 3, and 4 and 5, Mr. X offscreen taunts Thomas while Sylvia is tied to a chair.
Level 3: Right-to-left. Enemies consist of large numbers of Grippers, Tom Toms (small men who can surprise Thomas by jumping on his head), and Knife Throwers. The boss is Mr. Big (An orange giant). The Giant is
Kareem Abdul Jabbar (who appeared as a
villanious opponent of
Bruce Lee's character in
Game of Death). On
A Warrior's Journey (2000) Kareem is on the 5th level. On original Game of Death (1978), Kareem comes even after level 5, at the outside of the pagoda.
Level 4: Left-to-right. Enemies consist of killer moths, Tom Toms, and Grippers. The boss is the Black Magician, a hunchback who casts fire, summons Dragons and bats, and cannot be hurt with shots to the head. His fire can be attacked, and only a crouch-punch hurts him). Game of Death: Master of Illusion.
Level 5: Right-to-left. Grippers, Tom Toms, and Knife Throwers come at Thomas in droves. The boss is Mr. X himself (a decent karate master, but a glitch forces him to walk into your crouch kicks). On
Game of Death there was a document instead of the girl. She was held elsewhere. Note: The yellow suit of Bruce Lee wears Mr. X in the game. So, Thomas fights against Bruce Lee, or himself.
Fight Sylvia - False. Word was, after completing the game 50 consecutive times, a secret match against Sylvia would replace Mr. X. Some sites claim it's true, but has been verified false.
TwinGalaxies article(This should only work on the Playchoice-10 version)
Matrix Kick - True. Considered by some a glitch, Tom can do a reverse jump, able to kick enemies behind while evading them. Executed while moving one direction by jumping and turning around at the same time. Nearly impossible without an emulator.
Bonus Hugger - Mixed. In some places, the secret's description is to jump-kick twelve enemies in a row. The actual bonus is that every twelve enemies, the 12th will be worth a whopping 5000 pts if jump-kicked, but only if it is a hugger.
Movie Origin? - True.
A game-cameo listing mentions as follows...
"The Japanese name of this game is Spartan X, and is based on a Jackie Chan film (Wheels on Meals in the U.S.) Thomas and Sylvia are characters in the film as they are in the game. (Credit: Mark Kelly)Status: TRUE: Verified by FO. Source: Nintendo Database. "
The game ran on an Irem M62 platform controlled by a set of 3
PCB using a 3.072MHz
Z80 CPU main, and an 894.886 kHz
M6803 for sound, The horizontal 4:3 screen used a 512-colour
raster display. Accommodating one or two players. it was controlled by a 4-way joystick and two buttons: Punch and Kick, respectively.Sound: 2x
AY-3-8910 (
General Instrument) tone, 2x MSM5205 (
Oki) noise (mono).
A successor was planned: Super Kung-Fu Master (1985). A prototype was made, but tested badly. Roms not dumped yet. Probably a collector owns it and doesn't want to ruin the PCB.
Via a dipswitch, the arcade-owner can enter the number of lifes (normally 3) and difficulty (easy/hard) and faster decrease of the life-bar. Additional there is a test, a freeze and an invisible option. Then you can walk through grippers without danger.
Emulated first on 27.3.97 (Ishmair's KunFu Master Emu V0.0000001A, DOS Version, doesn't work on modern PC's.
MAME Version since 0.23 (02.06.97) then wrong colors and only sound samples, instead of emulating sound hardware.
The game has ~ 10,000 lines of assembly code and 28 ROM's (incl. graphics 177 KB),main Code 2x 16 KB.
Data East, the Japanese parent company of Data East USA, Inc. got into financial difficulties in the early
1990s. In
1994 Data East USA was transferred to
Sega in settlement of significant debts. Data East Corporation was declared
bankrupt on
June 25 2003.
Sega sold the
pinball division of Data East USA to
Stern Pinball of
Melrose Park, Illinois. Data East's intellectual properties were acquired on February 2004 by
G-Mode, a Japanese mobile game content provider. None of the Data East arcade games are in production.
|
Screenshot of the NES version. |
It was ported to
Atari 2600,
Atari 7800,
Amstrad CPC,
Apple II,
BeOS x86,
Commodore 64,
DOS,
Java,
Linux,
Nintendo Entertainment System/
Nintendo Famicom (as simply '
Kung Fu'),
PlayChoice-10 (Arcade, nearly the same as NES-Version),
Game Boy,
Sega SG-1000,
Sinclair ZX Spectrum,
Windows and the recently made 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, and sometimes they are erronously credited as the creators of the game.
Other ports (mostly different):
* Kung-Fu Master (
MSX, ASCII Mass Tael, 1983! even before Arcade-Version)
* Kung Fu (Karate?) ZX Spectrum (Bug Byte, 1984/85? 1st port on Homecomputers)
* Jackie Chan- The Kung-Fu Master (Arcade,1995)
* Kung-Fu Master (IAC/Irem Arcade Classics) for jap. PS/SS (1996, I'Max) 1:1 port
* Kung-Fu Master DX (EmuDX,2005)
* Kung-Fu Master (on cell phones)
* Kung-Fu Master 3D (WIP, see Discussion) 2005
A Japanese-only sequel to the game was released for the
Famicom in 1991, titled simply
Spartan X 2. In this game, the main character's name has changed to "Jonny Spartan," and his costume resembles a red jumpsuit. The storyline is also quite different, 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.
*
'Kung Fu Master' at Catalogue of Arcade Emulation Software - the Absolute Reference*
MobyGames' entry for Kung-Fu Master*
Kung-Fu Master 3-D with polygons Fansite, PD*
Kung Fu Master at KLOV*
Play an online version of Kung Fu Master*
'Kung Fu Master (Coin-Op) by Data East', Great Game Database.com Retrieved
April 15 2005*
'Data East goes bankrupt', GameSpot (
July 7 2003) Retrieved
April 15 2005*
Bousiges, Alexis. 'Kung Fu Master', Arcade History, (
March 2 2005) Retrieved
April 15 2005.
