Kung Fu Master

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Template:Infobox Arcade Game 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.

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Story

The player takes the role of 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...."

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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.

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 laughter. 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).

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Level details

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.

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Rumor and Secrecy

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 is rather a mixture of at least 2 Bruce Lee Films, mainly "Game of Death" (1973/78). Only here you have a 5-Floor Pagoda with enemies blocking stairs. Additional Names: Level 1: Master of the Escrima, Level 4: Master of Illusion, Level 5 (Mr.X)=Mr. Wang. The Giant of Level 3 is the coloured basketball-star Kareem Abdul Jabbar. You can also see the kidnapping of the girl. The kidnapping-letter (at start) can you see in "Bruce's Finger" (1964) (on Bruce Lee:Best of the Best). There you see a tied-up girl on a chair with a red dress. (Main source:WWW.LEMON64.COM) Probably Irem couldn't make the game in the same year as the movie Wheels on Meals. The game has too much Game of Death elements. Maybe the game was ready and named afterwards after an actual movie with the living Jackie Chan.

On (Goodbye, Bruce Lee-His)Last Game of Death aka New Game of Death (with Bruce Li, 1975/76) you have a 7-floor pagoda. You see the red pillars (the color changes on upper levels (3xred,2xbrown,2xblack) and the ceiling tape. Very close to the game!

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Technology

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.

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Rights ownership

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.

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Ports

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', in 1985), 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. Gameboy version is totally different (b/w, outside as Spartan-X 2). Best port on homecomputer: C-64.

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
  • Rise to Honour: Kung-Fu Master (PS2,2004)
  • Kung-Fu Master DX (EmuDX,2005)
  • Kung-Fu Master (on cell phones)
  • Kung-Fu Master 3D (WIP, see Discussion) 2005
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External links

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References

fr:Kung Fu Master ja:スパルタンX (ゲーム) sv:Kung Fu Master

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