Fuuun Shaolin Ken (Famicom Disk System)

 I think this game's title translates to something like "Elements of the Shaolin Fist", which sounds like the English title of a Shaw Bros. movie. Which is appropriate, since there is quite a bit of a Shaw Bros. feel to the game. It's an early fighting gam,e of the single-player style that was the norm before Street Fighter II, and you play as a generic kung fu guy who fights a series of opponents, each with different gimmicks, a lot like Konami's much more famous arcade game Yie Ar Kung Fu. But I think Fuuun Shaolin Ken has enough of its own quirks to be interesting as more than an also-ran knock-off.

 

There's a lot of personality in it right from the start. Your first two opponents are two palette swapped kung fu fighters with ponytails (who I've chosen to interpret as identical twin siblings - you fight the sister first, then the brother), nect there's two giant opponents who are disappointingly boring and very easy once you figure out the trick to beating them. Then there's two rotund opponents, each with a strange and unique special power, and after them, a fight that's interesting from a technical, as well as a design standpoint.

 

The seventh stage sees you fight another kung fu duo, but this time you fight both at the same time. Obviously, this is a lot more difficult than before, even though they share the same amount of health as each other individual opponent, but more interestingly is how this fight is done. I assume all the characters must be made up of multiple sprites, since to have three fighters in the game at once, your twin opponents only exist on alternating frames. This is a cool bit of ingenuity, but it also has the slightly annoying side effect that it's impossible to take a screenshot of the two of them together! Still, I love these little tricks developers did to squeeze a little more out of eight bit systems, and I don't think I've seen this particular one before.

 

The stages are represented as temples on a hill, and judging by the hill, there's still several more stages I haven't seen, but this is a difficult game as it is, and at the time of writing, having to fight off two opponents at once is the wall I've hit. I've managed to get them down to their very last bit of health a few times, so I think I'll break through eventually, but I do also have to stop playing and write this review at some point, right? 

 

I've been enjoying this game a lot, and as I inferred in the previous paragraph, I'm probably going to keep playing it onwards. So obviously, I recommend giving it a try yourself. It's a little user-unfriendly in the way that original home games from the eighties often are, but get through that, and there's a fun and surprisingly atmospheric little game to be found.