This review initially appeared on Classic Game Room.
The Fist of the North Star anime and manga series is far from a stranger to the video game market. The series has had a release on almost every major video game console, the latest being Ken’s Rage on the PS3 and Xbox 360. But instead, let’s look way back at the first North American released title, Fist of the North Star for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Released in 1989, Fist of the North Star for the NES puts Kenshiro and his Hokuto Shinken martial arts style in the palm of your hands via the NES controller. Does Fist of the North Star deliver on putting you into Kenshiro’s boots? Or is it simply an 8-bit mess?
Fist of the North Star takes place during the later episodes, or chapters, of the series… According to Wikipedia at least. Usually 8-bit games don’t have much of a story and this one is no exception, lacking any text in the game whatsoever outside of stage names and the title screen. You are Kenshiro and you need to punch people. If you aren’t familiar with the series, no worries. All you need to know is that Kenshiro is bad ass and makes people explode using his fists. There are a few nods here and there, but otherwise most of the game is unrecognizable. But who cares, you’re here to punch people!
While letting you play as Kenshiro sounds like a formula for success, Fist of the North Star on the NES quickly turns it into a terrible idea. The game consists mainly of walking to the right and killing an infinite amount of spawning enemies with an occasional trap in the way. Kenshiro can enter a room through an open door, but most of the doors are inaccessible and there are no visual cues differentiating the two. At the middle and end of each level you encounter bosses. Most of them amount to holding down the punch button and crossing your fingers that you will kill them first.
Technically Fist of the North Star doesn’t fair much better. Attacks have terrible hit detection, so expect to miss even when you should have hit. Kenshiro can jump about fifty feet into the air, often getting you stuck in ceilings. Enemy spawns are completely random, appearing in floors, walls, between small gaps, etc. When getting hit multiple times in a row, Kenshiro will start bouncing off attacks like a pinball sliding from one side of the screen to another. Sometimes during boss fights, you or the boss will randomly die with no explanation whatsoever. In some cases, if both you and the boss die at the same time, the game will skip you to the next level. It’s just a mess.
If there’s one upside to Fist of the North Star it is that it does a pretty good job translating the series style to an 8-bit platform. Kenshiro looks like his anime and manga likeness and enemy death animations are pretty accurate to the series with exploding heads and bodies. Kenshiro’s jumping animation looks a bit awkward, but his walking animation is surprisingly fluid. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the audio side as the soundtrack consists of mostly five second loops of unrecognizable music. This is definitely a game you want to mute.
Overall Fist of the North Star is a repetitive and technical mess. Visually it holds up pretty well for a 8-bit NES title, but everything else is just sub-par or worse. Fist of the North Star fans may get a kick out of it just for the fact that it is based off of the series, but anyone else should definitely steer clear of the title.
Star title, this entry is just simply awful. It has few merits and plenty of technical issues and bad design choices. It feels like a cash-in, and it probably was.
