Fighting
November 1986 (Technos Japan/Data East)
Fencing is cool. Fencing disguised as a fighting game is not. This isn’t some high tech fighting game. This isn’t even an NES fighting game. It’s disguised fencing. Nothing more.
Ok, I’ll back off of that a little. Karate tournaments really use a point system. So I’ll give the game a point for emulating real life.
I got a half point on things. So I’ll give the game a point for having hit detection and move distinction down well enough to distinguish between whole and half points1.
But sadly, I give myself the match for the game play. It’s just not cool.
I’ve said this elsewhere2, but I’ll say it again here. I think a large part of liking a game or not is the mindset we have going into it. I saw this game and thought it would be at the worst a decent fighting game that was maybe held back by the limitations of its time. I wasn’t expecting Street Fighter II or anything. I was just expecting something sort of along the lines of Kart Fighter.
I would have been very happy with it, but it didn’t live up to what I was expecting. I’m hoping that when people bought the game back in 1986 they had a better idea of what they were getting.
Oh well. The rest of this month should be epic.
- I’m giving myself 7 points if this is all randomized. [↩]
- Over at GBA Weekly in fact. [↩]
I will forever think of it as “A step above Urban Champion!”