Kung Fu Master

[jdanddiet]

Afternoon all,

I interviewed David Anderson a while back about his somewhat disliked conversion of Kung Fu Master.
Here's the feature on Wizwords:-

http://www.wizwords.net/arcade-conversi ... gfu-master

[Alessandro]

Thanks for the interesting read.

I sent a message to the interviewer pointing his attention to the homebrew conversion, Mr Kung Fu.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Nice read.

For me, it was a very disappointing game. The original arcade is a great classic!

Another case of bad conversion is One on One. The C64 version was superb, the Spectrum version was... *sigh*

[Van_Dammesque]

I would have sacrificed the music for more speed, whilst a beeps or crunching noises for hits.

What was the name of the song, I know it was taken from somewhere as I posted it on Youtube!?

EDIT: [media]https://youtu.be/G8IwGUR8S54?t=110[/media]

[Lee P]

I would have sacrificed the music for more speed, whilst a beeps or crunching noises for hits.

What was the name of the song, I know it was taken from somewhere as I posted it on Youtube!?

EDIT: [media]https://youtu.be/G8IwGUR8S54?t=110[/media]

I always liked the in-game KFM music even if the game itself wasn't brilliant. It sounds like a few trance tunes from much later but almost certainly a coincidence.

(Fun off-topic fact: Emmanuel Top is the son of Jannick Top, the bass player from Space - the 70s French band who did Magic Fly, not the 90s Scouse band who did Female of the Species)

[druellan]

Thanks! Interesting read, I liked the Platinum conversions back in the day, I started to recognize them by the selection menu, and looking back their games always got plenty of sound in the gameplay; the menu beeping is relatable as the Ultimate games.

[Sparky]

Very interesting read! The game... Not as much.

[SteveSmith]

All credit to him for talking about what is regarded as a poor game. It is a very interesting article, and makes me think there aren't enough interviews with programmers of not-so-good games.

[jdanddiet]

Thanks for the interesting read.

I sent a message to the interviewer pointing his attention to the homebrew conversion, Mr Kung Fu.

Thanks Alessandro, I got your message and indeed that is an example of "what could have been"

Cheers
Graeme

[jdanddiet]

All credit to him for talking about what is regarded as a poor game. It is a very interesting article, and makes me think there aren't enough interviews with programmers of not-so-good games.

Stay tuned to wizwords

[jdanddiet]

Nice read.

For me, it was a very disappointing game. The original arcade is a great classic!

Another case of bad conversion is One on One. The C64 version was superb, the Spectrum version was... *sigh*

Thanks Juan!

[Tommo]

In all fairness, the Kung Fu Master port is a lot better than its sort-of sequel Vigilante.

Though, yeah, dropping the music might have been advisable.

[jdanddiet]

In all fairness, the Kung Fu Master port is a lot better than its sort-of sequel Vigilante.

Though, yeah, dropping the music might have been advisable.

Someone on twitter was saying vigilante shows what could have been and I was like erm have you played it on the speccy

[Van_Dammesque]

The article says that the music work was loaned out I wonder if it *had* to be included no matter what?

[jdanddiet]

The article says that the music work was loaned out I wonder if it *had* to be included no matter what?

I did make that remark at the end of the article - perhaps that was the undoing of it all.

[Morkin]

Nice interview.

I actually enjoyed this game - played it quite a bit back in the day.

I wasn't that familiar with the arcade game and I guess it could've been better. But I was a sucker for beat-em-ups back then, and quite enjoyed it regardless. Would've given it a solid 70% at the time I reckon, I didn't find it as bad as a lot of other people found it.

Hey, it's better than Renegade 3

[Alessandro]

Hey, it's better than Renegade 3

Practically everything is better than Renegade III Even Vigilante, which is not terrible in my opinion, just bland, like the coin-op it is based upon, that I sometimes played in the arcades something like 32 years ago.

[Mort]

I actually like the clunkyness of it, more in a "why am I enjoying this" sort of way, its so bad its good.

Unlike Renegade 3 which was just bad ..

anyhow also it had a good loading screen

[akeley]

I love beat'em ups in general, especially 2.5D brawlers, but could never understand the popularity of the Kung Fu Master. At least, as a kid, now I know it was one of the "firsts" and thus hugely influential. Nevertheless, I still find its gameplay highly irritating, especially the hopeless sequences when you have to wiggle around. And that's talking about the arcade version, never even mind the ports Though, I guess if somebody liked the original's , the Spectrum port is not so bad.

Renegade 3 is also an interesting one, since I've always suspected its hyperbolically bad rep comes mostly from the fact that the first 2 were so great, with ZX versions being some of the best games across all the 8 (maybe even 16) bit micros. But considered on its own, this game is really not all that bad. It's got that absurd Street Hassle vibe, and the gameplay itself, while of course inferior to 1&2, is still okay (-ish, at least). I could see it being a sort of cult favourite in some parallel universe where its prequels didn't happen. So I'd definitely rather play R3 than endure the tedium of KFM's spam-the-baddies left/right "gameplay". At least you get some breathing space, can move in all directions, and get to punch T-Rexes...

[blucey]

Kung Fu Master remains the most disappointed I've been by a conversion. But Renegade 3 is the most disappointed I've been by anything that has existed.

[Jbizzel]

Really interesting read.

And also the home brew Mr Kung Fu...



I've never heard of either, but I have a soft spot for spectrum games with in game music. It might be interesting to fire both up and compare

[Van_Dammesque]

I actually like the clunkyness of it, more in a "why am I enjoying this" sort of way, its so bad its good.

I admit I did play it a lot too and HAD to complete it!

[Van_Dammesque]

The article says that the music work was loaned out I wonder if it *had* to be included no matter what?

I did make that remark at the end of the article - perhaps that was the undoing of it all.

The article says a lack of arcade assets, arcade gametime was an issue, does this explain why the knife throwers throw in a non-straight line?

Have you played the arcade a lot since then via mame for example?

Great to see replies on this site, thanks!

[stupidget]

This is another one of those games that my mate and I went halves on BITD so we played it for ages purely based on the fact that we'd spent hard earned paper round money on it. I've just had another quick go and I think it'd be much better if it was slightly faster and didn't have the annoying fact that you can't kick/punch whilst the screen scrolls. Would removing the sound actually make it play faster?

[toot_toot]

The article is a really interesting read, what's really interesting is that the author wasn't converting from the arcade machine, he was converting from the C64 version. Looking into the C64 version, it seems that was originally published by Data East in the US, so US Gold must have had a publishing deal for the UK - similar to their other early games like Datasoft, Access etc. Which explains why David Anderson got the conversion job, he was behind a number of decent conversions like Beach Head and Tapper (probably another C64 conversion as it was originally published by Sega in the US). It looks like the only other game to be converted from this Data East deal was Express Raider, a real turd on the Spectrum. Yet back "in the day" I had presumed they were converted individually from arcade machines, not from the US C64 versions!

But back to Kung Fu Master, sure it's easy to play it now and see how bad it is compared to the arcade original, but I remember getting a decent amount of time out of it on the Spectrum when it was released. It managed to make it onto "They Sold a Million 3", so I presume the sales must have been decent? Or maybe the "million" sales was just made up!