IL RETROGAMER: KUNG-FU MASTER E BARBARIAN

KUNG FU MASTER

Kung Fu can be easily considered as the first side scrolling beat’em up in history of videogames, and it was source of inspiration for the following games such as Double dragon, Captain Commando, Streets of Rage, Final Fight etc. It was also one of the coin-ups that I played most of all when I was a kid, and, even if there where only five levels they were, for that time, quite challenging. The story was very simple, you had to rescue your girlfriend kidnapped by mysterious Mr X’ (the same name we can find in Streets of Rage…) guys. At the end of each level there was a boss, and the countdown made the situation more complicated. In that game we can find all the ingredients that made this genre so popular.

BARBARIAN

 

 

The game that introduced blood and violence into the videogames world. In 1981 and 1984 Arnold Schwarzenegger acted as Conan the Barbarian, so it’s quite a surprise it took so long to create a videogame based on such amazing movies. But the long waiting was rewarded: Barbarian can be considered as the first violent videogame in history, and one of the first with a M ESRB rating. As if it’s not enough, it was a revolution for beat’em ups. You play as a barbarian who must save a princess (nothing new); in order to complete your mission, you can perform many lethal moves by your sword, including the splatter decapitation that made this game so famous; you can block attacks (and that’s new for the genre). Graphics were very realistic for that time (consider C64 was 8 bit machine). Sounds are fit to create the fantasy atmosphere of the Hyborian era.

 

Per gentile concessione di Sisominux