As this is the first of these “Revisiting” features I thought I’d better start with a quick explanation! When I started Retro Arcadia back in 2017, I had this vague idea about documenting the games that had been a part of my own history, and one way or another had influenced where I am today. There was no bigger plan that that though, and little rhyme or reason to what I covered or how I did it, so things just tended to appear on a whim over time… And that could be a big chunk of time too, sometimes with many months between posts! Obviously, things evolve though, and those original, barely formatted, almost diary-like shortform musings as and when I felt like it gradually got more involved and became deep-dives, supplemented by the other regular features you’ll see at Retro Arcadia every week now. And hopefully they’ll all continue to evolve too! But while I’ve got no intention of ever going back and rewriting history (although in this specific case I think I did once go back and add some actual screenshots!), there are certain games I think deserve the current deep-dive treatment – especially those that seem to get referenced regularly elsewhere…

I’ve had this in mind for a while but it was when I was putting together a recent (as I write) deep-dive into Bruce Lee on the Commodore 64 that I decided now was the time! I got sidetracked into recapping some other martial arts-related ramblings previously covered when I’d looked at things like Kung-Fu Master before, and Shao-Lin’s Road, and I was thinking how the latter had also done exactly the same by referencing the former, which also seems to get mentioned whenever I’m talking about other old beat ‘em ups, or dreadful home ports of arcade games, or the most disappointing games I ever bought… You get the point – everything goes in circles, and everything also seems to lead back to Kung-Fu Master! When I looked at what I’d actually got into when I wrote about it though, there just wasn’t a lot there, so here we are, ready to put that right! As said, I’m not going to wild with these but there are a handful of other examples where constantly looping back to them bothers me, as well as a few all-time favourites I’d like to give a bit more coverage to, or simply consolidate from across several defunct features, so look out for occasional upcoming revisits to the likes of Out-Run and California Games too, to name a couple I find especially irksome, but for now, let’s get back into Kung-Fu Master!

I think I was about done with my first stint at learning kung fu by the time the game arrived in the leisure centre cafe area where the class was, which would have been at some point later on in 1985 going by its appearance in Computer & Video Games magazine’s Arcade Action section in the April issue that year. I think I’d started when I was nine or ten, which would have coincided with those early days of video rentals around 1982, when the slightly older kids next door began lapping up everything Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and so on, which meant we did too… And I really did! Both me and my middle brother soon got involved in Lau Gar Kung Fu; I’m not entirely sure why this one versus any other martial art but I guess every Saturday lunchtime somewhere a couple of hundred metres down the road was convenient! Anyway, it turned out to be a pretty good choice, not only teaching fast and powerful fighting techniques (including with some very cool weapons!) but also had equal focus on body-conditioning and strength training, which was ideal when was a scrawny short kid! That said, fifteen minutes of press-ups on your fists then fingers then the back of your hands, or squatting against a wall with someone standing on your knees while you held a car battery straight out in front of you, with the threat of the kendo stick hovering beneath it if it dropped, didn’t seem like much fun at the time! I did pretty well over the course of three years or so though, reaching a couple of belts from black, but by that point it was getting very technical, involving memorising huge routines (one of which I recognised watching the James Bond movie, The Man With The Golden Gun, just yesterday as I write!), and I’d never enjoyed that aspect of it. And in addition, I was having growth-related problems with my knees by then, which ended up preventing me doing much sport whatsoever for a couple of years, so that ended up being that, for a while at least…

If martial arts had seen a resurgence thanks to the video boom of the early eighties, as the decade progressed, it wasn’t far off being as ubiquitous as roller skates or the BMX for boys of a certain age, as the movies were soon supplemented video games, posters, magazines such as Combat, Martial Arts and Fighters, then the learn-it-yourself books advertised in them, and, of course, even more movies, especially stuff like The Octagon, Enter the Ninja, American Ninja and (literally!) a hundred others with “Ninja” in the title that turned ninjas into the coolest thing ever, as well as making their throwing stars every school’s worst nightmare until The Beastie Boys and their VW badges came along! And I eventually ended up back at the same place doing kung fu again, although this time it was more of a glamorous way of sorting out the chubbiness all that enforced inactivity had resulted in! That’s not to say we weren’t still regulars at Bedford’s Bunyan Centre, just to give it a name, with five-a-side football every Monday after Inspector Gadget for a while, and trampolining on Wednesdays after Danger Mouse for a bit less of a while, and the occasional roller-disco, and then, every summer over several years, their school holiday clubs, or, as I referred to them in my previous attempt at Kung-Fu Master, Lord of the Flies!

These were a barely structured free-for-all where the idea was you could pick your poison for a couple of hours, with badminton and the like in the main hall (photo courtesy of Hussle), or squash until you got bored and started trying to shred the ball in the courts’ ceiling fans, or seeing who could lift the most in the weight room we probably weren’t supposed to be in, then after all that, they’d reset the hall for a big five-a-side football session (with one of those lovely fuzzy yellow indoor footballs) to finish. I think most of our time was spent simply running wild though, playing 45-and-in, which was hide and seek where one person stood at the base and counted to forty-five, then had to find and tag the others, who in the meantime had to try and get back to the base unmolested where they’d call 45-and-in. Great fun with a gang of you, and we’d also play it on bikes around the alleyways near where we lived, or on the roof of the school behind us, or in the bushes in the park down the road, but it also worked perfectly around a big, multi-floored leisure centre that was mostly empty except for us! And apart from that, there was that café area I mentioned earlier, with its rotating (albeit very slowly!) selection of two arcade games, which, at the time we’re discussing, were Kung-Fu Master and Elevator Action… It was also the only place anywhere you could buy Dr Pepper but let’s skip another can of that and get into the game instead!

As I like to when it’s one of their books I’ve not done an in-depth review of, I’m going to refer to the wonderful Go Straight: The Ultimate Guide to Scrolling Beat ‘Em-Ups by Bitmap Books for a bit of background to Kung-Fu Master. Now, with one final reference to the last time I wrote about it, I did speculate that Kung-Fu Master was possibly the first side-scrolling beat ‘em up but Go Straight confirms it, released in Japanese arcades in November 1984, where it was known as Spartan X, an official license of the recent Jackie Chan movie, Meals on Wheels. That said, I’m not sure it had anything in common with the movie beyond the name of its protagonist, Thomas, and is far more reminiscent of the boss-rush, pagoda-ascent finale to Bruce Lee’s Game of Death, which it was originally created to be the, er, game of! Anyway, it was renamed Kung-Fu Master by Data East when they distributed it in North America, which was then further shortened by Nintendo to simply Kung-Fu when it came out on the NES. We’ll come back to that but in the meantime, it was developed by the legendary Irem Corp, of Moon Patrol, 10-Yard Fight, In The Hunt and R-Type fame, with a fellow by the name of Takashi Nishiyama on design duty, who, as well as the aforementioned Moon Patrol, you might also know from such legendary fighting games as Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown!

Right, back to Thomas, and at the start of the game we see him and his girlfriend getting beaten up by “several unknown guys.” She’s then kidnapped, as described in a note from the dastardly gang-leader X, who’s got her tied up in a chair at the top of The Devil’s Temple… “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. 5 sons of the Devil will entertain you.” There’s no further explanation as to why but it means you’re going to have to fight your way up five floors, each with their own their own unique boss to overcome – as said, Game of Death!  To get at them, you’ll first need to make it through some increasingly even more unique enemies, which I’ll mention as we go but in the meantime, as you might expect, Thomas is something of a kung fu master himself, so you’ve got a regular and low punch, a front-kick and a sweeping-kick to hit back with, plus a spectacular but finicky flying-kick if you time a kick with a jump just right! Thus equipped, you begin the game, initially moving from right to left along the temple’s iconic lilac-panelled ground floor corridor. Actually, while we’re on the ground floor, shoutout to the thoughtfully placed bushes on the other side of the wall where you begin, and the stilt things along the bottom, under the floor! For a relatively simple-looking game, these details, together with things like the ornate roof tiles and pillar dressings and fancy staircases with the trapdoor you emerge from at the top really add character. Right, now we need to get all the way to the first of those staircases, over on the other side of the building, so we can go up then left to right, then up and right to left again and so on until we get to poor, helpless Sylvia at the top!

By the way, on the subject of Sylvia, who appears on the title screen in what seems like traditional Chinese dress (apart from the odd shoes), if we look at the marquee from the arcade cabinet, she’s now got a false eyelashes and huge blonde perm with a red bow in it, like (as Ian from Spinal Tap might say) an Australian’s nightmare! Whatever, we were just starting our trip to the left before I interrupted myself, and there’s very little easing you in gently as the first of a mass of enemies start appearing, initially one after the other in a line, and then from both sides all at once! At this stage, they’re the most basic of goons, who will run at you and grab you, and can quickly overwhelm you if you let too many get close, but a punch or a kick will take each one down fast enough, and even if they do grab you, a waggle of the stick will shake them off before they do too much damage to your energy bar. Lose that and it’s one of your three lives lost though, and you’re back to the start of the floor to boot, heartbreakingly however far in you’d got! Another enemy type will quickly appear too, this time solo but carrying knives that he’ll throw either high or low with very little notice, but at long as you’re not too close (or too overwhelmed) you should have time to jump or duck out of the way, then you just need a window between throws for the couple of low punches or leg sweeps he’ll take to dispatch.

If there was ever an arcade game you wanted to try and beat, I think Kung-Fu Master might be a decent candidate. Yes, enemies do get tougher the higher you go but they’re always in the same place, and once you’ve got your range and the timing for each one, none of them individually are that difficult – it’s just the stress of so many of them to deal with, and in what order… Do you take out the goons first or the guy with the knife? Do you jump the snake that’s just jumped out of the vase or flying kick the exploding egg thing or simply do a runner from both? Do you risk a flying kick to take out the fire-breathing dragon just as it appears from behind its very impressive puff of smoke or duck its flame attack first then go low? You get the picture – it will get frantic regardless but, as said, you can learn how to best mitigate each enemy type, and while you’re doing so, you’ll also be able to anticipate what’s coming from where and when, and develop a bit of precision to deal with it rather than panic and button-mash while waggling the joystick left and right to try and deal with all-comers willy-nilly! Apart from the midgets that like to rush beneath your attacks and squeeze you to death or somersault onto your head, and the deadly moths that will swarm all over you given the chance, I think I covered most of the regular enemies there, so let’s close on the opposition with a quick look at the bosses…

These guys will be standing in front of each stairwell, blocking your way up to the next floor, and like the rest, can generally be dealt with pretty quickly with a bit of practice. The first has a big wooden pole he’ll swing either high or low, with a small giveaway in his shoulder animation giving you a chance to duck or step back a bit before getting a punch or kick in. However, get in with a flying kick while he’s still motionless as he first appears then one quick follow-up punch will take him down in a second! The guy in the way of the next set of stairs has this bladed boomerang attack you just need to get above or below until you’re close enough for a couple of low kicks. The next, blocking the way to floor four now, is a big guy who looks like Chunk out of The Goonies but you can pretty much just run up and punch him to death if you’re not hanging around! The last stair guardian isn’t so easy, mainly because this little flame-throwing hunchback regenerates on most attacks, but with a bit of patience, avoiding or punching out the fireballs then inching towards him a bit further will soon get you close enough for some low punches to beat him. And then there is X, who’ll take a bit of sticking and moving with a few low kicks or punches but again, a bit of patience (but not too much…) and knowing your range will get you to Sylvia so you can untie her from the chair and enjoy some brief time together before it happens all over again and the game loops with a lot more enemies. And it’s less than ten minutes a pop if you can.

I hope I haven’t trivialised it too much though because I know with forty years of practice, most people can get decent at most things, but at the time I do remember struggling to even get past the second floor, which actually I think is probably the toughest of the lot, with loads of stuff like those big dragons and exploding stuff dropping all around you from the ceiling, while those snakes slither across the bottom of the screen in quick succession, and then the human enemies start mixing it up even more! It’s all fine until you start missing a flying kick or someone grabs you though, then all those plans to quickly and carefully take out everything one at a time in order of greatest danger quickly go to pot, and you find that a couple of hits and a prolonged grab equals dead! You really need to get into the zone and stay there or you’re probably screwed. As it stands now, I can just about get to the second floor on the second loop. No idea about high scores though! You get points for everything, more points for bosses, and a bonus for how long it’s taken and how your health meter is looking (which resets on the next floor), but it’s one of those games where I’d always measure success based on how far I got rather than how high I scored, mainly because that’s more or less going to dictate the score you get anyway. You are against the clock too, although apart from bonus score, it’s not really an issue unless you’re playing a bit too conservative with the final boss. Let me quickly close on presentation, which, as said, is simple throughout, with no significant variety in environments but plenty in the enemies (not withstanding every enemy of each type understandably looking exactly the same). Each has its own distinct look, from haircut to belts, cuffs and footwear, all with what I think is an impressive level of shadowing and creasing for 1984.

The addition of animals and mythical beasts, such as the traditional Chinese dragon, was a genius move too, not only adding even more variety to the enemy roster, but really bringing more character to the game too, with so much detail on top of the bit of artistic license they afford. I think that’s where the animation really shines too – okay, at no point are you going to be comparing it to something like Darkstalkers, with most of the characters moving just about fine in a stiff and primitive way, but that puff of smoke I mentioned earlier, which expands in an upwards-column, revealing the cleverly-shaded green dragon with its exaggerated, fiery breath effect are game changers when it comes to eye-candy. I love the vase smashing as it hits the floor to reveal the snake inside too, even if they can be a bugger to avoid once they’re loose – loads of damage too! The sound comes alive here in exactly the same way, with these realistic smashes and crashes, as well as the Bruce Lee-esque cries and shrieks as you attack, really elevating the regular whipping sounds of your kicks and punches. I guess these are all sampled, and the deep, evil laugh as you enter each new floor certainly is! The music certainly isn’t though, playing a simple, short, recurring melody over what sounds like a single channel, with some very basic white-noisy percussion driving it along like someone impersonating the clop of a horses hooves with a pair of coconut shells! It’s pretty memorable I guess, in its own way, and there’s a few little jingles to mix things up as well, so it all does its job!

If only the same were true of the ZX Spectrum conversion! If I were to list the most disappointing games I ever bought, somewhere above Slaine, Highlander, Street Hawk and Miami Vice would be Kung-Fu Master! Now, in general, like most other kids of the eighties, I was thrilled just to be able to play anything resembling my favourite arcade games at home – talk of arcade perfect would come from the next generation onwards but for now, if I had something resembling it that I didn’t need to feed money into then I was more than happy, and if it turned out to be a masterpiece like Renegade or Gauntlet that was a bonus! But then there was Kung-Fu Master, and I couldn’t wait to spend all that pocket money on it… Starts out promising too, with a decent loading screen that unfortunately is very quickly forgotten as some of the most horrendous music (or dense collection of random notes) gets forced upon you, playing in full, before your character appears on the screen, and now you’re wishing the music had never ended! Where to go next? Well, there’s more music of a similar vintage playing throughout, as your all-white, C64-blocky sprite starts slowly shuffling from right to left, against a chugging, only-on-the-Spectrum red, blue and bright green background, where each of those colours will show through all the pixellated details making up your little guy as you pass by! Then here come the magenta baddies, and all the flickering and the wild colour-clash as they finally get close enough to kick, which may or may not happen because of the awful controls and even worse collision detection. It still hurts to even talk about this one – it has no redeeming features whatsoever, with zero thrills at any point and no compulsion to ever try again when you’re finally put out of your misery unless plodding monotony that will only bring pain to most of your senses is your cup of tea!

I know I’m running long as usual so I’m not going to get into it here but if you want a decent conversion for the Spectrum, check out Mister Kung Fu, a 2018 homebrew that’s everything 14-year old me ever wanted instead! I do want to quickly mention a couple of other versions I’m very familiar with though… Kung-Fu Master got the usual Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC treatment, as well as MSX, Apple II, NES, Game Boy, Atari 7800 and a very impressive, considering, Atari 2600 port. I’m not sure what I was expecting of that Game Boy version (called “Kung’ Fu Master” with an apostrophe) when I bought it sometime after its 1990 release but it wasn’t a similar but completely different game! It’s a good one though, with fluid and authentic combat and a bit of platforming (because Game Boy) on top of the left to right, traditional level-based enemy onslaught… Your character is called Bruce Leap too! In terms of straight ports, even though the name is a bit different again, it’s the 1986 NES version that I’ve probably played the most of the years, and is one I’ll regularly go back to. It was developed and published by Nintendo themselves, as Spartan X in Japan and Kung Fu elsewhere, and as far as I’m concerned is pretty much spot-on in every respect – it plays right, it looks and sounds the part, and everything is there… That young Miyamoto fellow knew what he was doing! Actually, I think it even goes a bit further than the original too because our hero Thomas is actually modelled on Jackie Chan this time, which I also think might make it the first game to feature a real-life person. Maybe?  

Speaking of the NES and Miyamoto, apparently, as well as being the very first side-scrolling beat ‘em up, Kung-Fu Master was also a direct inspiration for a pioneering little Italian plumber too! I don’t know about that but, Spectrum abomination aside, it was definitely a very influential early touchstone for my ongoing love of video games… And not just because my entire experience of the golden age of the arcade was played out between a couple of vending machines! Okay, slight exaggeration by that point, but also really not that far off, and I’ll always consider myself very lucky that Kung-Fu Master, Elevator Action and Shao-Lin’s Road ended up where they did, when they did! As for Kung-Fu Master, while I didn’t really appreciate its significance at the time, and games like Renegade would quickly follow and really define the genre it created, I have always loved its simplicity, its elegance and its almost rhythmic action – a lot like its subject matter, which has never hurt its cause either! Still not sure about the Jackie Chan connection but no denying it will always be a very special Game of Death to me!

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