Kung-Fu Master

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The fictional character Shang-Chi is also known as The Master of Kung Fu.

Kung-Fu Master
Developer(s)	Irem
Publisher(s)	Irem, Data East
Release date(s)	1984
Genre(s)	Beat 'em up
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Platform(s)	Arcade, NES, PlayChoice-10 and others
Input	4-way Joystick, 2 buttons
Arcade cabinet	Upright, mini-upright, and cocktail
Arcade system(s)	CPU: Z80 main, M6803 Snd, 2x AY-3-8910, 2x MSM5205 (=Irem-M62)
Arcade display	Raster (Horizontal) 4:3

Kung-Fu Master is a 1984 arcade game developed by the Japanese company Irem Corporation. It was manufactured under license in the United States by Data East. 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 game contains elements of Bruce Lee's Game of Death.

Contents 1 Story 2 Gameplay 3 Level details 4 Technology 5 Ports 5.1 Sequels 6 Legacy 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Story

The player takes the role of Keiji Thomas, a man in a Keikogi and 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...."

[edit] Gameplay

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.

The first level contains standard Kung Fu henchmen and knife throwers. But subsequent levels introduces dwarves, killer bees, fire-breathing dragons, snakes, and butterflies of death.

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, an acoustic warning sounds. If a boss defeats the player, the boss laughs. Although there are five bosses, the game only uses two different synthesized laughs.

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. A visual indication of the current house is displayed on the screen. For each series of five completed levels, a dragon symbol appears in the upper right corner of the screen. After three dragons have been added, the dragons symbols blink.

[edit] Level details

In the film, Game of Death, the pagoda is the Buddhist temple 'Pope Jusaw' in South Korea. The inside and outside are displayed in the movie Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey (a Game of Death documentary). In the movie, Lee has four companions. The pagoda is guarded by ten karate-guards on the outside.

In the game, the player is alone. The five levels not only feature five different fighting-styles, but require different tactics for successfully completing each level.

Level 1: Right-to-left. Enemies are Grippers (men who charge Tom and grab him, draining his life bar) and Knife Throwers (men who throw knives high or low). Grippers usually come in large numbers. 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" and the boss is Master of the Escrima (Filipino stick fighting-style), played by Dan Inosanto. As Lee died, before filming level one and two, this level is the third. Originally, it was planned an expert kicker and student of Chi with no weapon on level one.

Level 2: Left-to-right. Enemies are snakes, dragons (player must kick them before they breathe fire), and beehives (jump attack), followed by more 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 four), with the Hapkido-fighter played by Ji Han Jae. It was planned a boss with fast and direct attack on level two, which was which was to be called "Floor of the Preying Mantis".

Between levels 2 and 3, and between 4 and 5, Mr. X off screen 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).

In the film, The Giant is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. On A Warrior's Journey (2000) Jabbar is on the fifth level. In the original Game of Death, Jabbar comes even after level five, 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.

In Game of Death, he was the 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 the player's crouch kicks).

In Game of Death there was a document instead of the girl. She was held elsewhere.

[edit] Technology

The game ran on an Irem M62 platform controlled by a set of 3 PCBs using a 3.072 MHz Z80 CPU, and an 894.886 kHz Motorola 6803 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 was generated by 2 General Instruments AY-3-8910s and 2 Oki MSM5205 noise generators.

Via dipswitch settings, the number of lives (normally 3), difficulty (easy/hard) and faster decrease of the life-bar can be set. Additionally, there is a test, a freeze and an invisible option. With this option, the player can walk through grippers without danger.

The game has more than 10,000 lines of assembly code and 28 ROMs (including 177 KB of graphics), main code 2x 16 KB.

[edit] Ports

Kung-Fu Master was ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, BeOS x86, Commodore 64, DOS, Java, Linux, Nintendo Entertainment System/Nintendo Famicom (as simply 'Kung Fu'), MSX (Irem/ASCII version), PlayChoice-10 (arcade, nearly the same as the NES version), Game Boy, Sega SG-1000, Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Windows. It was also made for the 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 under the title Kung-Fu in the US and Europe; sometimes, Nintendo is erroneously credited as the developer of the game.

Other ports (mostly different):

• Kung-Fu Master: MSX (ASCII, 1983)
• Kung Fu (Karate): ZX Spectrum (Bug Byte, 1984, first home computer port)
• Kung-Fu Master: IAC/Irem Arcade Classics for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, Japan only (1996, I'Max)
• Kung-Fu Master DX: EmuDX (2005)
• Kung-Fu Master: cell phone
• Kung-Fu Master 3D (WIP, 2005)

[edit] Sequels

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.

There is also a game by Irem known as Vigilante, which shares the same gameplay.

[edit] Legacy

In 1985 a successor was planned, to be called Super Kung-Fu Master. A prototype was made, but tested poorly. The ROM images are not available.

[edit] References

• '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.

[edit] External links

• Kung-Fu Master guide at StrategyWiki
• Kung-Fu Master at the Killer List of Videogames
• The home versions of Kung-Fu Master at MobyGames
• Kung Fu Master at Catalogue of Arcade Emulation Software - the Absolute Reference
• Download Kung-Fu Master Returns
• Kung-Fu Master at World of Spectrum
• 5 Sons of the Devil Will Entertain You