Kung Fu and Spartan X 2

A weekend ago we took a road trip down to visit my sister-in-law. While we were there I managed to find an original copy of Kung Fu for the NES. I could tell it was an original print because it has the five flathead screws that held the cartridge together.

Kung Fu was one of the original launch titles for the NES and a game that I remember well. I think the first time I saw Kung Fu was on the back of the NES box, where they had featured all these screen shots of other games that you could buy for the Nintendo. Eventually I think I ended up renting Kung Fu while on vacation one year. It was a very simple game with simple controls, but it was fun nevertheless.

Arcade advertisement for Spartan X

Kung Fu was made by Irem, and is known as Kung Fu Master when it was in the Arcade and as Spartan X in Japan. I thought is was just a simple karate style game, but that's when I opened the floodgates of weirdness. The Japanese version is loosely based on a Jackie Chan movie Wheels on Meals that was released in 1984.

I use the phrase loosely-based, because it does star Jackie Chan, who plays the character Thomas who works in a food truck, and there's a woman named Sylvia in the movie who gets kidnapped by some thugs...and there's a final battle at a castle. So I guess the game is really based on the final part of the movie.

Spartan X has apparently been turned into a franchise of games, comics, and other stuff, but I'm not sure if it stays true to the original idea of food service truck martial artist. Who knows. Image ran some issues of the comic not too long ago.

Kung Fu is considered the first side scrolling beat-em-up games. While being influence by Jackie Chan, the game also contains obvious elements of the Bruce Lee movie Game of Death, with the multi-level pagoda and different bosses on each level. After defeating each level of the Pagoda, the player advances to the top where the sinister Mr. X is holding Silvia hostage.

The North American version was published by Nintendo and changed the name to Kung Fu and removed the Jackie Chan styling from the packaging. Otherwise, the game remained the same. I've found little information on the development of the game. Irem still exists as a software developer, and they created the popular shooter R-Type, Spelunker, Metal Storm and others. Various developers left Irem in the 90's to make the Arcade classic Metal Slug. Irem is one of the unknown publishers of the NES/SNES era.

The Artwork

North America NES version

Euro version. With Japanese artwork.

Japanese Famicom version. 

I like the caricature of Jackie Chan used for the Japanese and European versions of the game. Once again the American version of the game is toned down to be part of the launch games that share the same pixelated artwork. I believe that game artwork can both help and hurt sales of games, and many games released in America just didn't have great art. 

The controls of the game are simple. The B button kicks, the A button punches, and you can jump kick or punch by pushing up and tapping the B or A buttons. That's about it. Each level is linear and you have to go left or right beating up the hundreds of endless dudes that try to grab you. Yeah. They just kinda grapple your character and suck his life away. There are some other enemies like snakes, dragons, knife throwers, but for the most part you are walking to the end of the stage as fast as you can trying to keep these enemies from grabbing you. Each stage has a bad boss that must be defeated to go to the next level of the pagoda. If you die from a boss you hear an awesome evil digitized laugh.

Advertising

At the very end of this commercial for Super Mario Bros. there's a brief cameo of Spartan X. It's amazing that they showed footage of actual game play through out, because most Japanese and 80's advertising used live action of people playing the game, without actually ever showing the game.

Here's an ad for the Arcade version of the game aimed at arcade owners. Data East published the arcade version of Kung Fu.

The Graphics

The graphics are simple and clean, something that changed in Nintendo games when developers tried to get all fancy with their sprite designs. When that happened they usually ended with weirdly contorted figures that were kinda vague. Early games were simple in design and it works very well. I also like how games like Kung Fu and others felt that there HAD to be a score, life bars, level indicators, and timers all visible at the top of the screen. That entire block of information takes up one third of the screen, and maybe it saved time for the programmers, but it isn't something seen much in modern games. I don't mind it though. I kinda wish more games had some of that cool stuff up there.

The graphics for the arcade version are better, but the sound is noticeably the same.

The Results

After goofing around with the controls I started to make my way through the endless onslaught of purple grabber people. Between the second and third stage is a cut scene of Thomas walking with all his might (because he doesn't run in the game) to a tied up Sylvia. Weird.

I beat the first and second stages without a problem, when I ran into the boss of the third level. He's this huge Shaq-like dude with kicks and punches that can kill you in two hits. After dying a few times, and starting over from the beginning, I found that if you time it right, you can punch the crap out of his gut. Bam! The next two stages were pretty easy and then I found myself at the feet of the dreaded Mr X. After jump kicking his face a few times and dodging some kicks... he died in a total underwhelming fury of fists.

VICTORY?

After defeating Mr X, you are reunited with Sylvia... and then this ominous text appears: "But their happiness does not continue long." And the game starts over. And you apparently can beat it over and over to infinity. I went back and beat the game in seven minutes just to make sure. There are internet rumors that after beating the game fifty times you actually fight Sylvia in the end instead of Mr. X, but this purported to be a hoax. What kind of ending is that?

Statistics

Deaths: 6 Continues: 2 Games Overs: 2 Levels: 10 High Score: 126420 Approximate Time: 25 minutes

But I didn't stop there.

I was freaking bugged that the game didn't have a definitive ending. Every time you beat it, you still get the "...happiness does not continue long." garbage, and come on... Does Thomas just let his girlfriend get kidnapped over and over?

So I found the sequel to Kung Fu, Spartan X 2 published in 1991 by Irem for the Famicom. This game features a guy named Thomas, who's sick of the drug lords that have destroyed his family so he becomes a secret agent. I didn't see Jackie Chan though, so I can only assume that he was there in spirit. The plot sounds like a martial arts movie.

With updated graphics, the game play is similar to the original game, but looks like a lot of those early 90's NES games... kinda cluttered with stuff all over the screen, and the design of the characters looks bad, like it was a movie licensed game. There's a load of flicker too. The controls are really clunky, like you aren't sure if you actually hit an enemy, and jump kicking and stuff doesn't seem to work very well. Even with those drawbacks... the game had some awesome city backgrounds, and some great cut scenes.

When I started playing I figured that I'd stop once I got the idea, or when I got to a hard part, but I didn't get my first game over until the sixth and final level. By that point I was going to finish it. One thing that I noticed was that the levels were really short, and the only real challenge where from enemies shooting at you, or boss fights. The amount of flicker throughout the game was weird, and it actually slowed down the game in places to make it easier. Flicker is caused by too many sprites on the screen, so the NES compensates with the flicker and slowdown.

Spartan X 2 had a lot of video game cliches: fighting on top of a train... fighting inside a train (like Final Fight!), and to my surprise: Fighting on top of a freaking jumbo jet while in flight. My favorite boss was the evil drug lord circus trainer. You have to beat up his trained gorilla first, and then take him down. Hilarious.

The final boss took a few tries... and then I got the timing right with my super ultra uppercut of death! The boss went down in a few hits, and I was left scratching my head about the Japanese ending. But I did it. And I think I rescued a girl. Was this the ending I was hoping for?

VICTORY!

I finally found closure. 

Statistics:

Deaths: 17 Continues: 5  Game Overs: 5  Levels: 6 Approximate Time: 45 minutes.