Hokuto no Ken
Hokuto no Ken |
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Hokuto no Ken (Famicom)
-From Rage Quitter 87's Fist of the North Star site
The first Hokuto no Ken game released on Nintendo's Famicom (a.k.a. NES) hardware arrived on the 10th of August, 1986. Created by Toei (who animated the anime series), the game is a scrolling beat 'em up with the player controlling Kenshiro and fighting through many enemies and bosses. And as you might expect, the game was a disaster. Featuring bad graphics, awful music, dull gameplay and stupid glitches, Famicom Hokuto no Ken is something only die-hard fans of the series are going to want to play.
Contents
1) Gameplay
2) Cheats
Kenshiro can punch with one button and kick with the other, whilst the d-pad moves him around (press up to jump). The aim of each level is find the correct path to the boss, and defeat him. This involves going through each stage, fighting off punks and avoiding their attacks and projectiles, whilst going through doors in the background. To do this, stand in front of the doorway and hold up before pressing the punch and kick buttons together to move through. Finding which door is the correct one can be difficult, but sometimes Bat will briefly appear in a doorway -sometimes he will appear in the correct door.
However an easier way involves powering Kenshiro up. By defeating pink-colored enemies with punches, some kanji will appear out of them. Collect this and a star will appear in the top right corner of the screen. Keep doing this to get more stars, and Kenshiro will become stronger, letting him move faster and attack quicker. By collecting seven stars, Ken will rip his jacket off and become as strong as possible. It also means Lin will always appear in the correct door Ken needs to enter to progress through a stage.
The end of each level has a boss to defeat, who will be one of the major characters from the series, such as Shin, Souther and Raoh. Kenshiro can take a limited amount of hits and thanks to the game's poor collision detection, just getting to a boss can be a real challenge, never mind defeating them. And then some of the bosses can tear Kenshiro apart in seconds if you aren't careful, such as Heart's main attack where he charges into you, or Raoh's aura waves.
The two player mode lets players take turns in playing the game. To reverse player 2's controls, highlight the 2 player option at the title screen and then hold down the A and B buttons whilst also holding down left on the d-pad of the second controller. Whilst doing this, you need to start shouting into the microphone of the second controller (only available with certain versions of the Famicom, I believe) for five seconds before pressing start on the first controller. When player 2's turn starts, their controls will be reversed. Really useful that, sure beats out codes for a level select or infinite health. Or one to make the game good.
