![]() ![]() Typing of the Dead this ain't, but it gets props for pioeering a novel application for the Hokuto Hyakuretsu-ken. Despite sporting low-budget art and animation, the first game was a surprise hit and more polished sequels quickly followed, including an subscription-based online multiplayer versus game that later spawned a mobile spinoff. While children in the western world were being tricked into learning important skills by the likes of Super Mario and Mavis Beacon, Japanese PC owners were honing their typing chops by typing out romaji words in order to pound the snot out of their favourite goons and villains. (Alternatively, you could pick up Black Belt, the heavily-edited western reskin starring Kenshiro's legally-distinct doppelganger "Riki Wong", but where's the fun in that?) Import-friendly? Definitely: the Mark III isn't region-locked, there's almost no text and none of it is essential. (There's also a Sega Ages 2500 remake but trust me, the less said about that version, the better.) Sega's side-view action game was not the first Hokuto no Ken game to hit the market - that honour goes to Enix's oddball computer adventure game, Hokuto no Ken: Violence Gekiga Adventure - but it immediately established itself as a marquee Mark III title through a combination of tight, speedy action (thanks, Yuji Naka!), flashy graphics and uncharacteristic faithfulness to the source material it's definitely a game that shows its age but compared to the licensed shovelware of the era (not least of all, the very similar but far worse Hokuto no Ken game released for Famicom just weeks after this one) it's not hard to see why this game is still fondly remembered as both a great Hokuto no Ken game and a great Mark III title. Have any favourites I've not mentioned here? Think I'm being too harsh by neglecting any or every one of the 15+ games I chose not to mention here? Feel free to explode my head in the comments. (The bulk of the Fist of the North Star videogame oeuvre was released only in Japan, hence the proclivity towards the Japanese title, Hokuto no Ken.) Seriously, for a franchise so tailor-fit for videogames, especially early videogames - burly guy wanders a post-apocalyptic wasteland, punching and kicking guys with magic kung fu until they collapse into a puddle of viscera - there's a depressing dearth of satisfying Fist of the North Star games out there, and even many of the games I've listed here come with serious caveats. or, to be blunt, I've whittled it down to the seven games that most creatively adapted the source material without tripping over their own feet. In anticipation of the game's release this October, and in consideration with those who might simply have never played a Fist of the North Star game before, I've prepared a rundown of the essential Fist of the North Star titles from across the franchise's thirty-plus years of videogame ubiquity. Sega's merger with Atlus and renewed commitment to localize everything (that isn't a Virtual On game, anyway) has resulted in a western resurgence for the Yakuza series that has now cemented it as a popular and successful series across the globe moreover, the Yakuza developers have managed the unthinkable: not only did they deliver the first respectable Fist of the North Star game in a decade, they delivered what might be the first unreservedly great 3D Fist of the North Star game ever. Just a few years ago, the very notion of SEGA localizing Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, the unlikely mashup of Tetsuo Hara's seminal Mad Max-meets-Bruce-Lee manga from the mid-'80s, Fist of the North Star, with Sega's own perennial gangster melodrama series, Yakuza, would have seemed completely ludicrous - the mainline Yakuza games were expensive, time-consuming endeavours that had repeatedly failed to find a foothold outside of Japan and the Fist of the North Star motif undoubtedly adds its own wrinkles, not least of which being the fact that the history of Fist of the North Star games is riddled with underwhelming pap. ![]()
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