The Fist of the North Star license wouldn't have saved this one from being a tedious slog.
How moronic do you have to be to ship a worse altered beast on the same day as altered beast
(Played the Japanese version)
I'll admit I've never watched Hokuto no Ken. It's not like I don't want to it's more of just I have other anime I want to watch first. If there was one thing I knew about it for sure was it's success in the game market was almost abysmal. I can only think of like 2 maybe 3 good games based off this series. This is not one of those games oh no it's not even CLOSE!
This game reminds me a lot of Kung-fu/Spartan X and Vigilante where you go one direction and continue to fight enemies that die in one hit until you reach the end of the path. Now you may think oh that sounds like a dec-NO don't even finish that sentence. It's not fun. First off your attacks have such bad range and it feels inconsistent and I could never get a 100% feel around them. It's the worst with knocking projectiles, you may think you know how to get rid of them only for it to ignore your attack and bam you're hit.
Then you have the boss fights and these are so bad. Sometimes I can easily beat them but then it just feels like they hit me every single attempt I try. They all feel the same too outside of a special move they have. But nothing about these are enjoyable. I guess it's cool to see them die.
In fact that's one thing I'll give the game, it looks alright. I do wish it had more variety but it's not too bad. It's probably the best thing going for the game.
If the game isn't being frustrating it's being the most boring mind numbing game ever made. You try going into those building levels and see if you're having fun by the 3rd one. Seriously what were they thinking with some of the levels they just go on and on and the whole game just feels so slow. Why can Kenshiro only go fast in those building levels. It's all just so tiring after a while.
Did I forget to mention you only have one life? Because you do, kind of. Ok there is a continue cheat if you hold all the buttons at the text you see before the title logo shows up but if you didn't know about this, they expect you to do that horrible borefest in one go. Why couldn't you at least have lives or just a normal continue system? There's also just no i-frames and there's touch damage. You can get hurt by a STATIONARY ROCK!
Ok I've probably gone too long writing this but man it was frustrating and I didn't even mention the weird localization or some of the other dumb stuff like having to do levels more then once. It's just not a fun game and I feel drained of any energy after beating it.
I'll admit I've never watched Hokuto no Ken. It's not like I don't want to it's more of just I have other anime I want to watch first. If there was one thing I knew about it for sure was it's success in the game market was almost abysmal. I can only think of like 2 maybe 3 good games based off this series. This is not one of those games oh no it's not even CLOSE!
This game reminds me a lot of Kung-fu/Spartan X and Vigilante where you go one direction and continue to fight enemies that die in one hit until you reach the end of the path. Now you may think oh that sounds like a dec-NO don't even finish that sentence. It's not fun. First off your attacks have such bad range and it feels inconsistent and I could never get a 100% feel around them. It's the worst with knocking projectiles, you may think you know how to get rid of them only for it to ignore your attack and bam you're hit.
Then you have the boss fights and these are so bad. Sometimes I can easily beat them but then it just feels like they hit me every single attempt I try. They all feel the same too outside of a special move they have. But nothing about these are enjoyable. I guess it's cool to see them die.
In fact that's one thing I'll give the game, it looks alright. I do wish it had more variety but it's not too bad. It's probably the best thing going for the game.
If the game isn't being frustrating it's being the most boring mind numbing game ever made. You try going into those building levels and see if you're having fun by the 3rd one. Seriously what were they thinking with some of the levels they just go on and on and the whole game just feels so slow. Why can Kenshiro only go fast in those building levels. It's all just so tiring after a while.
Did I forget to mention you only have one life? Because you do, kind of. Ok there is a continue cheat if you hold all the buttons at the text you see before the title logo shows up but if you didn't know about this, they expect you to do that horrible borefest in one go. Why couldn't you at least have lives or just a normal continue system? There's also just no i-frames and there's touch damage. You can get hurt by a STATIONARY ROCK!
Ok I've probably gone too long writing this but man it was frustrating and I didn't even mention the weird localization or some of the other dumb stuff like having to do levels more then once. It's just not a fun game and I feel drained of any energy after beating it.
There were a couple more launch titles for the Genesis when it hit the stores in North America in August 1989. In addition to the three JP launch titles, we also got:
-Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (i think?)
-Thunder Force II
-Tommy Lasorda Baseball
-Last Battle
Now I don't really give a rat's ass about baseball video games, but I wanted to see all the launch titles nonetheless so I picked this up last night. It's some goofy localization of a Fist of the North Star game, where Ken for example is renamed "Aarzak". That kind of shit. I don't know what the deal with that type of stuff is, if I was Sega of America and I assumed kids don't know Fist of the North Star I would just not change anything and teach them what it is through the game instead of giving everyone generic fantasy nonsense names.
Yknow a game that sucks ass? This one. It plays pretty similarly to Altered Beast or Ninja Warriors, if they were crap, had annoying maze levels thrown in, gave you one life and no continues, and put a branching world map where you have to replay every level you scroll over. Replaying them is actually required sometimes to get across, it's immensely tedious and I really don't know what they were thinking there. Or with any of this, really. It's probably a worse launch title than Super Thunder Blade, which is kind of saying something. At least that one has some comedic value.
-Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle (i think?)
-Thunder Force II
-Tommy Lasorda Baseball
-Last Battle
Now I don't really give a rat's ass about baseball video games, but I wanted to see all the launch titles nonetheless so I picked this up last night. It's some goofy localization of a Fist of the North Star game, where Ken for example is renamed "Aarzak". That kind of shit. I don't know what the deal with that type of stuff is, if I was Sega of America and I assumed kids don't know Fist of the North Star I would just not change anything and teach them what it is through the game instead of giving everyone generic fantasy nonsense names.
Yknow a game that sucks ass? This one. It plays pretty similarly to Altered Beast or Ninja Warriors, if they were crap, had annoying maze levels thrown in, gave you one life and no continues, and put a branching world map where you have to replay every level you scroll over. Replaying them is actually required sometimes to get across, it's immensely tedious and I really don't know what they were thinking there. Or with any of this, really. It's probably a worse launch title than Super Thunder Blade, which is kind of saying something. At least that one has some comedic value.
Stripping the game of its Japanese license and removing the gore ensured that any and all interest in this would be reduced to near zero. It's a basic as they come Altered Beast clone with almost no redeeming qualities. Walk "Aarzak" to the right, punching or kicking goons until you reach the end of the level mere seconds later. Then once the map screen is figured out, fight a boss. You won't actually be able to beat a boss of course, because you never took the time to power up did you? Get the bar high enough to burst out of your shirt and you might have a chance of winning. Quite why you'd want to bother is anyone's guess. You are already dead.
- Jp version (Hokuto)
No exaggeration, the most annoying game I've ever played. The music, the lack of invincibility frames, the laughable hit detection, the bullshit enemy patterns and stonewall bosses are so irritating that any sane, reasonable human being would drop it before the end of the first level. I'm neither of those things, so my stupid ass sat and groaned through the entire thing. Never again.
Altered Beast without the flick charm and cool sound design.
I played the japanese version since in the NA one they cut out Hokuto no Ken stuff (this game is a sequel to the Mark III HNK game). Hoping that it'd be cooler, it's pretty much the same with the only difference being that the enemies explode in HNK style and the characters of course. This might sound cool but it's just dull, a lot of levels get reused with different color schemes and the audio is boring.
Oh and talking about Altered Beast, this game is hard as shit and not in the fun way, die once and it's back to the beginning.
Overall pretty dissapointing, nothing that stuck out other than punching axes and knifes which hey, it's kinda cool.
I played the japanese version since in the NA one they cut out Hokuto no Ken stuff (this game is a sequel to the Mark III HNK game). Hoping that it'd be cooler, it's pretty much the same with the only difference being that the enemies explode in HNK style and the characters of course. This might sound cool but it's just dull, a lot of levels get reused with different color schemes and the audio is boring.
Oh and talking about Altered Beast, this game is hard as shit and not in the fun way, die once and it's back to the beginning.
Overall pretty dissapointing, nothing that stuck out other than punching axes and knifes which hey, it's kinda cool.