#namcot

'Tekken'

[PS1] [JAPAN] [MAGAZINE] [1995]

"What can be said about Tekken? It is surely a next generation brawler classic, rivaled only by the Virtua Fighter series for sheer beauty and control. It helped set a high water mark for polygon fighters, and continues to do so with its more recent sequel, Tekken 2. Tekken, however, is an excellent game in its own right, and deserves to be regarded as such." ~IGN

PAC-MAN ghost redesigns I did as part of writing a reboot concept for the series… right before Namco announced a remake of the first PAC-MAN World! Like literally within the week! That was wild.

Kung-Fu Heroes (NES)

Developed/Published by: Nihon Game / Namcot/Culture Brain Released: 19/06/1986 Completed: 11/07/2024 Completion: Beat it using the 1-2 to 3-1 warp and the 3-2 to 4-1 warp, saving at the start of every level.

Kung-Fu Heroes was released mere days after Star Soldier for Famicom in Japan, then also released in 1989 for NES in North America, and you can really see the staggered success of the NES and Famicom through these two titles. In 1986 for Famicom you have perfectly respectable publishers–Hudson Soft and Namco (as Namcot)–shoving out loose arcade ports* that are no great shakes as part of a gold rush. By 1989, the NES isn’t seen so much as a gold rush but a gravy train, and smaller publishers are desperate to publish anything quickly in the hopes of making as much money as possible, leading to some barrel scraping–Hudson and Namco probably didn’t consider them good enough for Nintendo’s limited, per-publisher release slots, but a computer hardware manufacturer (Taxan) would dump Star Soldier in the US market, and Nihon Game, by that point renamed “Culture Brain” would go as far as publishing Kung-Fu Heroes themselves.

Well, we all know what happens when you’re looking for gold and scrape the bottom of a barrel on a gravy train [“Do we?”--Ed.] you end up with a bunch of nasty congealed gravy. I assume. Whatever you end up with, it’s nothing you wanted.

(*Star Soldier isn’t actually an arcade port–but it’s very clearly based on Tekhan’s earlier arcade shooter Star Force. And that’s Tekhan, not Taxan. Tekhan would go on to become Tecmo though!)

Kung-Fu Heroes also situates itself dead on in the context of the Famicom of 1986 thanks to slavishly following the design rules of the era. If you haven’t been following along, at this point there are two eras of design: post-Xevious/Tower of Druaga (“do something obscure to reveal something hidden you’ll need to beat the game!”) and post-Super Mario Bros. (“do something obscure to reveal something hidden to unlock… warp zones!!!”)* and like Atlantis No Nazo or Mighty Bomb Jack before it, Kung-Fu Heroes makes sure to adhere to both, despite (like Mighty Bomb Jack, actually) being based on an earlier arcade title that doesn’t have any of that stuff.

(*It’s worth noting, which I’ll admit I haven’t before, that warp zones were used before Super Mario Bros. in Atari’s Crystal Castles in 1983, and is probably where the idea was originally swiped from. But it’s Super Mario Bros. that made them a phenomenon in Japanese video games.)

Unlike Mighty Bomb Jack, though, Kung-Fu Heroes is still quite faithful to the arcade original in general. A single-screen beat-em-up, it preceded the likes of Nekketsu Koha Kunio-Kun and so errs closer to the style of Tower of Druaga or maze games, just with a lot less emphasis on “maze” with each screen essentially an arena where you and enemies walk around–cardinal directions (no diagonals) only attempting to attack each other. Kill enough enemies, get to the next screen.

The problem? It’s clumsy as fuck. Moving around feels anything but good, and understanding enemy hitboxes absolutely eluded me. You have three attacks. A short punch, which is really only useful for the enemies that cannot be defeated by any other attack, a tumbling kick, which has the benefit that it keeps you in the air and you can slightly air control, and a miracle kick, which costs some stock but goes further and I believe does more damage–though I basically never used it!

It’s easy to die from attacks you can’t see or prepare for while wiffing on attacks that seem like they should hit, and most of the game is experienced, genuinely, by smashing the tumbling kick to survive while hoping you can hit the enemies from behind or the side.

That obviously wouldn’t be enough for a cartridge people were spending thousands of yen or tens or dollars on, which is where all the slapped-on design goes. Unlike the original, all the level features here can be attacked, and they spit out treasure boxes which contain power-ups. This literally just includes Super Mario’s Fire Flower, because Nihon Game had no shame. There are ten Tower of Druaga-esque treasures to collect, but there’s a surprising lack of obscurity to finding them; almost all of them are just in things you would already punch on the level, though a couple are in invisible squares.

They’re also not, interestingly, strictly essential. The game has the unusual quirk that enemies spawn forever and you just have a set number to kill, so if there’s an enemy you have trouble with–let’s say the guys you have to punch instead of kick–you can just try and avoid them and kill enough other dudes in the level. Enemies notably don’t really seek you out (apart from in some cases.) I collected them all, but the only one that I’d wager you need is the sword, because there’s one level where the only enemy you can actually kill you can only kill with the sword (plus it increases your reach anyway, so it’s handy. Get it on 3-2 or 5-1 #hottips)

Warps are just as easily found: punch a rock or whatever and there it is! You might skip some treasures, admittedly. And levels are short, so you’re better off just doing 1-2 to 3-1 and then 3-2 to 4-1 as I did (#hottips). 

Actually hang on that’s assuming you’d actually play this, when the hot tip to end all #hotttips is… don’t bother. For all the extra stuff layered on, it just doesn’t feel good to play, and once it starts getting properly hard, it’s just annoying. For all the lack of obscurity to power-ups or treasures, you still have to remember where they are, and there are enough enemies with different requirements that it feels more like a test of memory than your abilities. And big moments–like when the huge, Nemesis-like Uni-Gon or Dragon enemies appear–the collision detection sucks enough that you are far better just running away until they walk off the screen again [“#hottips?”--Ed.].

The only thing that really makes this game notable is that it–again much like Star Soldier–spawned a franchise that few outside of Japan would remember fondly, awkwardly hacking this style of play into a series of RPGs before giving up completely and becoming a series of one-on-one fighters to ape Street Fighter. I hope to avoid playing these!!!

Will I ever play it again? Something I have failed to mention is that you can actually play this entire game in two-player, and with the game’s forgiving continue system, I suppose that might be… fine. Probably anyone who remembers this fondly played it that way. But even if I was sitting with the world’s number one Kung-Fu Heroes fan, I’m good.

Final Thought: I have also somehow failed to mention that in Japan this is called “Super Chinese.” Seems… wrong.