Before the game made it to Western shores and received its usual dumbed down translation as 'Black Belt', it existed as a tie-in to the brutal anime martial arts wandering epic Hokuto no Ken, AKA Fist of the North Star. The gameplay is fairly simplistic, move from left to right kicking or punching enemies. There is a wee bit of originality when it comes to the bosses however, some requiring specific techniques to beat, such as following a pattern of attacks before landing a finishing blow.

Status: 681,600 points. All levels beaten, plus secret seventh boss rush level

This is included as an unlockable in Lost Paradise and while I really didn't plan to finish it, some dumb, stubborn part of me just decided to get through the game after trying it out once. And when I say dumb, I really do mean dumb because I truly do not enjoy 2D beat em ups, and even less so this very early form of the genre in the Kung-Fu style where enemies just rush in from both sides constantly. I will say, though, that Hokuto no Ken (localised as Black Belt on the Master System, which is a much worse version that both looks worse and has completely flat stages making some mini-bosses much harder than they should be), does look extremely good for a 1986 console game, and the boss fights are sort of puzzles in themselves that require learning how to damage each boss rather than just wailing on them and hoping for the best, and while it requires some trial and error it's usually not too hard outside of the Souther fight (and the Toki fight to a lesser extent) where I'm not sure how anyone would know how to beat him without a guide.

Where the game completely falls apart for me is in the regular stages. It's just so mindless, timing kicks and sometimes punches when you're feeling like missing an enemy and taking damage since hitboxes are so wonky in this game, and hoping that two enemy sprites don't overlap when kicking since Ken can only hit one sprite at a time and the second enemy will always get a hit in. It never feels good, it's never an ounce of fun, and even when a slightly more mechanically interesting mini-boss appears to break up the monotony, it's still not a good time and especially not on later stages when you can face two mini-bosses at once with projectile attacks and the bizarre hit boxes (programmed by notorious criminal Yuji Naka) just not working in your favor at the most random times. These stages aren't particularly difficult, but they are annoying and, most of all, really boring when just trying to get back to the boss you've finally figured out how to fight, but since there are no continues in the game, every game over means starting back at stage 1 and playing these boring stages, of which there are five in the game (Technically two, but the game is pretty good at reskinning those two), over and over again gets old fast.

Hokuto no Ken is a playable game with impressive bosses and graphics for it's time, and I did eventually finish it and even beat the secret post-game boss rush so I obviously didn't hate it, but it still just isn't a good time and I shouldn't have spent this much time with it as I did (even if it really wasn't that much when spread over several days). This is certainly not one I'll ever revisit in the future