Retro Arena: Kung-Fu Master, Vigilante, or Splatterhouse?

[JazzFunk]

Apologies, I know I seem to write in Japlish at times, I have bottlenecks in my processors.

[BigDeadFreak]

Never change, JazzFunk

[Leon Retro]

Apologies, I know I seem to write in Japlish at times, I have bottlenecks in my processors.

If it's not a "civilized urinating", Mike Haggar will smash your face in.

[Dogg Thang]

I don't think I have ever played Vigilante. I loved Kung Fu Master and I guess it's possible it's the better game but the visuals and fun of Splatterhouse wins for me. In all honesty, it's not one I can play for very long and stay interested but it's a lot of fun in short bursts.

[Leon Retro]

In all honesty, it's not one I can play for very long and stay interested but it's a lot of fun in short bursts.

It's one of those classic games that I'll go back to every year or so. A great thing about old arcade games is you can often go through them in less than 45 minutes and feel satisfied.

It's such a shame that the Amiga didn't get a port of Splatterhouse, as I think it would have worked well.

[zipper]

QualityChimp nailed it.
Kung Fu Master is still great today, let alone for '84. The controls are tight and quick. So satisfying knocking down huggers at 120 sweeps per second. The intro music is iconic of arcades for me.... As soon as the 10p drops and the ransom letter appears, the bassy intro tune booms out across the whole arcade.
It was a proper trailblazer of scrolling fighters - and even had the slightly tricky to pull off special move (running jump kick)... 'WHAAA TAA!!'.
I can finish it these days (if I get lucky with the magician). My high score is 293,130... which I got by doing a point press on the 2nd level.. If you let the falling eggs hatch into dragons before kicking them, you get 2000 points, which is about 10x more points than it should be.
It's just a great game. I got a little bored once and messed around with the arcade roms and changed the names and faces to the 2 guys that do the 10p Arcade Podcast :

.

Even with my huge love for Kung Fu Master, I love Splatterhouse more. These 2 games are in my top 10 of all time. I remember walking up to a standard cabinet on Southend Seafront many years ago, and just being awed by how dark the game was. Cleaving ghouls in half and having their guts spill out... it was shocking!
I didn't get very far back then. I just didn't have enough 10ps and no-one else was playing it for me to watch.
Coming back to it over the past few years, I've just loved playing Rick and working through the mansion. There are some fantastic levels, bosses and scenes. Poor Jennifer... you have to feel sorry for her.
I've not played it for a while now, but I remember I managed to kill the 'heart' of the mansion a few times, escaped the mansion and got to the hideous final boss... but not managed completed it. I really do have to go back to it. The music, the atmosphere - it's a brilliant game. I would love a copy of the Japanese flyer one day - the exact one garrz32 posted a link too. I've also seen an awesome hockey mask pop.

It's not that Vigilante is a bad game... I find it pretty iconic, with Madonna getting kidnapped at the start - tossed in the back of a van.... it's a game I remember loving as a kid. I was well up for a rescue. Infact, 13 year old me would have put Vigilante at the top of the list for sure.

[Leon Retro]

QualityChimp nailed it.
Kung Fu Master is still great today, let alone for '84. The controls are tight and quick. So satisfying knocking down huggers at 120 sweeps per second.

It's one of those really old games that has tight gameplay, so it still stands up today. There's also something really cool about the simple graphics that makes it charming.

cleaving ghouls in half and having their guts spill out... it was shocking!

One of my best friends loves gory games, so obviously he thought Splatterhouse was awesome!

It's not that Vigilante is a bad game... I find it pretty iconic, with Madonna getting kidnapped at the start - tossed in the back of a van....

Who's that girl?

[JazzFunk]

Awesome!!! I never saw that copyright-infringing poster before...so it really WAS Madonna...!

[JazzFunk]

After a few beers, a few jazz-fusion Woodbines, a leftover gin n' ton from last night, I realise one of the major reasons I always subconsciously champion Vigilante is it's almost-arcade perfectness on the PCE.

Splatterhouse looked passable but PCE Vigilante was the arcade at home like R-Type was. It stunned me at the time, knowing I could have a practically-as-good version at home, the arcade at home.

I was the 13yr old saddo with a paper round who read THAT C&VG Tony Takoushi article in early 1988 (with Victory Run and The Kung Fu) who saved all his paper round money til August '89 and bought a Jap PCE on import.

[JazzFunk]

And I know the grammar on "it's" is incorrect. It's the bloody predictive text on this arse of a phone.

[garrz32]

[QUOTE=zipper;2257982]
.I've also seen an awesome hockey mask pop.
QUOTE]

The pop up every now and then on JP Auction, but are expensive.

[QualityChimp]

I always thought the Irem team making Vigilante just had a meeting one day and asked:
"What's a popular American girl's name for our damsel in distress?"
"Madonna?"
"Yeah! That's a great idea. Do it."
It's weird, because I always saw Madonna (in the game) as a little girl needing rescuing, rather than his girlfriend. Anyone else?
She seems really small in-game, with a girl's dress on. In the Master System version, they changed her name to Maria, so maybe they found out later it's only one person with the name Madonna and bottled it.


Nobody seems to know much about Vigilante. I'd love to know a few anecdotes about how it was made like who was the hero modelled after, how did they choose the background posters and who did the sound samples.

One thing I have noticed though is that everyone assumes that Vigilante is a sequel to Kung-Fu Master, but it's not. For a start, it's different hero (Thomas and unnamed), damsels (Silvia and Madonna/Maria) and locations.

In fact, a few years ago, a true sequel to Kung-Fu Master was discovered!

BEYOND KUNG-FU

Here's a video (in French) about how the game was found:

->Open Spoiler<-

This is the summary of what he said:
#1 the board was aquired from an ex irem employe
#2 the pcb was the final game in the test location
#3 the original board is damaged an keeps rebooting
#4 before the board was damaged they dump the entire roms
#5 the roms were submitted to mame

The PCB was labelled "spartan 2" [no x], the reason this game was cancelled from the info he got was they wanted a more Americanised version so they made "Vigilante".

http://arcadeheroes.com/2015/04/28/kung-fu-master-2-prototype-discovered/

The full story is here, in French, but Google Translate does a pretty good job.

http://lejrs.e-monsite.com/pages/content/beyond-kung-fu.html

"In 1994, NANAO (of which IREM CORPORATION was a subsidiary), decided to close the division that was developing video games.


Leaving the company, some employees of IREM then took items which would probably have been destroyed in the process.


This is how a young arcade fan and collector acquired two prototypes:
BEST ELEVEN SOCCER (proto of DREAM SOCCER '94) and Beyond Kung-Fu.


A year and a half ago, this graphic artist has sold his entire collection of arcade games in order to finance his marriage. Unable to sell the two unique pieces, he simply offered them to his ex-colleague and friend (who still has them).


IREM was founded in the mid-70s, initially under the name IPM, by Kenzo Tsujimoto.
In the early 1980s, there was a merger with NANAO, which was a firm specializing in electronics.


In 1983, following a dispute with Nanao, Kenzo Tsujimoto left IREM, taking with him many talents: game creators, programmers, graphic designers and in the process, he founded CAPCOM. The game designer behind Kung- Fu Master followed Tsujimoto to CAPCOM."

There was also a German fan remake:

->Open Spoiler<-

[Gradius]

Irem even named a cab after Madonna!

[Leon Retro]

It's weird, because I always saw Madonna (in the game) as a little girl needing rescuing, rather than his girlfriend.

Looks like Madonna is doing Sailor Moon cosplay. She looks nothing like the girl in the flyer.

There was also a German fan remake:

That looks terrible.

After a few beers, a few jazz-fusion Woodbines, a leftover gin n' ton from last night

Now I know what will get me in the mood for some brawling action on the mean streets.

I was the 13yr old saddo with a paper round who read THAT C&VG Tony Takoushi article in early 1988 (with Victory Run and The Kung Fu) who saved all his paper round money til August '89 and bought a Jap PCE on import.

Those Victory Run screenshots were my first experience with porn.

I will always have a deep love for the PC Engine.

[JazzFunk]

Oh man that issue of C&VG rocked my world.

I had a C64 and Speccy at the time.

This WAS the arcade at home.