Okay, so this isn't an obscure game, but it is a recently-release indie game that I think deserves highlighting. It's been over a decade since I reviewed Champion Kendou on SG-1000, and I still regularly play that game! It really gave me a taste for that kind of very old-fashioned martial-arts-as-a-sport style of play, and though other games like it do exist, none of them have really scratched the itch for me in the same way. As such, I've been fantasising for years now about a game that did, and also which offered some more modern amenities, like properly responsive controls and maybe multiple different styles to pick from.
When I first saw Dojo Masters last year, it was a pretty disturbing day, as it looks almost exactly like the game I've been imagining all this time! Obviously, I wishlisted it immediately, and a couple of weeks ago, it finally got released and I bought it immediately, too. I'm glad to say: it doesn't disappoint! It uses only the d-pad and two buttons, which are ostensibly designated punch and kick, but it's a little more complex than that. There's also six styles to play as: Karate, Taekwondo, Kendo, Boxing, Muay Thai, and Krav Maga. There's no actual named characters in the game, either: instead there's generic, androgynous fighters, and when you pick a style, you get to change the colour of their skin and clothes, and pick one of two hairstyles for them. Any other traits they have like personality or gender only exist in your own mental projections. Which is a pretty cool and unique way of doing things.
Regarding the punch and kick buttons, obviously some styles don't have both (or either!) of those things in them, in which cases, they obviously do different things instead. For example, Taekwondo has an elaborate system of stances taken by pressing the punch button with directions, and there are different attacks depending on which stand you're currently in when you press kick. Kendo can perform a quick three-hit combo with the punch button, while pressing kick raises their shinai above their head for more powerful attacks. Furthermore, press back and punch puts a kendo fighter into a defensive stance for a split second, resulting in a cool samurai movie cutdown, should the opponent attack.
Though I've dipped my toe into online play a little (which went surprisingly well! I think I had a win ration of around 50%), I've mainly been playing single player. There's an arcade mode, where you try and fight through ten randomly-generated opponents of increasing difficulty, and a survival mode, which takes its cues from the survival mode in home versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3, pitting you against multiple opponents at once. Most interestingly, though you'll probably only play it once per style, is the tutorial mode. In only a few short lessons, it teaches you every little detail of how each style controls, and also how each style's tools are meant to work against the opponents. Because they all play so dramatically differently, you will want to utilise the tutorials, especially for the styles whose strengths aren't immediately obvious, like Taekwondo and Krav Maga.
It's hard to be objective about Dojo Masters, since as I mentioned above, it's eerily close to being a game that somehow manifested from my thoughts. On the other hand, I guess there's also a lot of potential for disappointment when such a game appears. But of course, I love it. It's a great game, it feels good to play, it was made with a specific goal in mind, and it reached that goal. I definitely recommend etting ahold of it, and I hope that someday it gets ported to consoles. I really wish there were still mainstream handhelds for it to be ported to, too. I'd love to play it on 3DS or PS Vita, though if that were possible, it might end up being the only thing I ever did from that point on.
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