Uhh…I don’t have an opening joke. I have no idea what this is.
Okay, I’ve now Googled it. Fist of the North Star is based on a manga series centered on a tough, manly man in a post-apocalyptic world who is super strong and beats people up. There’s probably more to it than that, but I’m a busy guy. It is also, as I’ve discovered, not at all about Mike Modano:
That’s disappointing. In any case, the franchise is quite popular and has spawned numerous TV series, a live action film, and video games (aka the thing you came here for). This particular game was initially released for the Famicom in Japan in 1987 as the second in its series (Japan also got third and fourth entries as well). The U.S. version was released two years later by Taxan, a publisher who also brought us some other interesting titles including Low G Man and the blatant Castlevania rip off 8 Eyes.
Enough about games that aren’t this week’s game, though – Fist of the North Star a side-scrolling beat-em-up in the vein of Kung Fu Master or later games like Streets of Rage.
Our hero, strangely dressed like Michael Jackson on his Dangerous tour, basically just needs to walk around punching and kicking his way through life, fighting some interesting bosses and doing a bit of platforming along the way. The bosses were one of my favorite parts of this, as they’re genuinely quite unique.
Despite what the game’s name might suggest, I found kicks to be far more useful than punches, but every attack was sufficiently powerful. If the game’s goal is to make you feel like you have superhero-level strength, then mission accomplished. You can also jump super high, pretty much all the way up to your health bar:
Some other online reviews I’ve checked out absolutely hated Fist of the North Star, but I honestly kind of enjoyed it. While it’s not particularly challenging, and there isn’t a ton of variety throughout the game’s levels, it looks and plays pretty well. It’s not as tight and exciting as, say, a Ninja Gaiden game, but it’s decently fun. Also, the levels have…strange names:
Yeesh. Anyway, there are a surprising number of games Fist of the North Star series – a new one is coming out in the U.S. later this year, in fact. A handful of other retro games that are part of the series are, strangely, not obviously so – one example of this is the Sega Master System release Black Belt, a game featuring one of the laziest excuses for box art in the known universe:
I sometimes think about how someone got paid to make that, and how it was probably a non-trivial amount of money. I hope to meet that person one day, if only to tell them I hate them. Life’s just not fair.
Fist of the North Star is a little bit hard to find and the price reflects that – it’s been on the rise recently and runs about $15. It’s an okay pickup, but hardly essential. If you’re a collector and like beat-em-ups, you could certainly do worse.
Next week, we dive from the top rope and into the horrifying depths of the NES library. I am not looking forward to it, which means it’ll probably be a great article. See you then?