Commodore 64 (C64) Retro View: FIST II: The Legend Continues
Continuing my semi-nostalgic and semi-informative series of posts looking at the game games that informed my childhood, today I’m going to take a look at another (not very well known) martial arts game that caught my eye. Like one of the other games I looked at earlier in the same vein, this one did not really make all that much of an impression on me and I barely remember it.
Fighting Your Way Across the World
Or, at least, that’s what the various websites say when I looked them up to remind myself of the game. Looking at the various screenshots, I only remember one or two of them–and I think that’s because they are early in the game. In researching the game for this retroview, I discovered a possible reason for me not getting very far–it seems there was a random bug that would respawn enemies every time you defeated an enemy, making progression difficult. I honestly cannot remember if that’s what happened in my case, but I do remember not getting very far on the game.
A Martial Arts Dark Souls Game
Okay, not really. Probably not even close. However, I roll my eyes with today’s gamers who look to the Dark Souls games as the epitome of “hard” games. They have no conception of buying a game for either Christmas or your Birthday and then not being able to get through it due to byzantine game design or (if the above is true) a bug in the code, and then having to struggle through because that was the only new game you were likely to get for months. Games like Fist 2 were those type of games.
Honestly, I only remember the very first area and the ground level of the dojo. I think that’s as far as I every made it.
Karateka and World Karate Championship
The more I’m watching the YouTube video, the more I think that I had the bug that kept respawning enemies. I say this because I remember buying it because it mixed the adventure and exploration of Karateka (by Jordan Mechner or Prince of Persia fame) with the overall combat style of World Karate Championship, which were, at the time, two my favorite games. However, I remember a lot more fights in the first area than just the one that occurred on the video.
I also do remember the distinctive walking style of the hero along with the music, which has a lot in common with music from westerns, but also does have an eastern flavor to it as well.
This game had a lot of potential, but it wasn’t realized due to poor programming (we make fun of glitches and such now, but older games became downright unplayable in certain situations and that I think that’s this is why this is a forgotten game for me–it was one that I have almost no recollection of having played even though it would have been a sizable investment with my limited money. Such a shame as the game seemed like it had potential.
Sidney
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