Arcade Memories Game Of The Week - Kung Fu Master

[Bods]

I do like the Fighting games from when I got a C64 and International Karate

Kung Fu Master was another I enjoyed along with Yie Ar Kung-Fu Renegade, Barbarian, Exploding Fist and Last Ninja

Still have memories of my mate playing arcade machine in Thomas's Arcade Leicester, he was quite good on it and I found it quite hard one, never played it enough really and one I need to play more, can be frustrating though or is it just me, how many others think it's tuff game?

I was close to buying Original Machine once, I was waiting for pics for one offered for sale along with Commando I think but by time I got pics I'd already bought more machines from ebay as they were coming along fast at that point, so I dropped out of buying with some regret later on, the cab was in pretty poor condition but they then ended up on ebay and sold, a year or 2 later the same cab was back for sale so I bid and won it this time as I had space again, trip to london again literally day's after I'd been down to Bristol to drop off Sega Turbo, then drove over to south london to pick up sofa and chairs for my loft and the machine was 5 mins up road from there, I wouldn't have got both in anyway but, the sofa set was bargain £120 BIN with bit of damage from cat claws, yellow leather and just the reclining chairs with foot stools would sell for £200+ each. Guy that had the machine was in a flat, machine was in his hall, so we had to get it down 2 flights of concrete stairs back out but pleased I finally ended up with one, not that we had dedicated cabs here but it's nice artwork

last week was looking at something unrelated to this game and came across an old French Movie called Kung Fu Master about boy playing the game which is cool in it's self with plenty of game footage
Some classic sounds in the game for sure and music is ace

Anyone still Play Kung Fu Master regular or just a quick blast on it now and again? favourite in the arcades?

 

[Chihiro]

I play it but suck at it way to hard for modern gamer

 

[69er]

Good game and very popular in the seaside arcade shortly after its release
We had three or four Kung fu master but don’t recall any being in dedicated cabs , I recall maybe two in electrocoin goliaths and one in a midi blue taitel compact cabinet as boards and 80s conversion pcbs were plentiful as were universal generic cabinets , very much the pre-jamma age of “pick n mix” or as in Lyon’s holiday park “mix and match” as we had about a dozen goliaths along one side , corner and front wall one side of the doorway

They looked such a power show all same size in a row tho front colour and screen surrounds differed slightly as they were bought at different times from a couple of suppliers, Electrocoin & Avante sales were reputable suppliers of licenced boards and often the flexi marquee inserts were also included for the electrocoin tops, so most games looked like they belonged in the swap over style cabs

Not sure but I may still have an odd KFM board stashed in a box somewhere.

Also I am quite surprised it didn’t feature on some of the I-Cade arcade classics 48. & 60 in one boards but maybe the later Shao Lin’s Road was considered a better game? Not sure which I preferred at the time.
I never really got into the early karate games (maybe I found them a bit harder to master) there was so much to choose from and preferred the games like dig dug and Pac-Man style maze stuff like lady bug and amidar too for some reason?

Other games competing in the arcade would have been jailbreak robocop and sunset riders, many of which took more coins from holidaymaker younger players.
Even snapjack kong jnr and burger time all took more coins if I recall over the two or three summers they all featured in our stock. All these games also did better in single sites , chippies and pubs etc. too!

The other thing in my opinion is the speed of technical advances in graphics the game soon looked dated when double dragon , & vigilante etc came out soon after,

 

[Body pop]

Great game Kung fu master ,I remember liking the spectrum version as I had nothing else ,think the colours were a bit messy
Played it on the nes ,was actually really good ,sound wise and play wise it was great .graphics far better than spectrum but a bit blocky ,it was a lot easier than the arcade version
I played the arcade in many Jamma cabs and had the board a few times,I remember the dedicated cabs ,there were two of them knocking about in mr bs Blackpool a long time after most cabs had moved on .There was a dedicated track and field there too
I still play it on mame and on my playchoice 10
The arcade has a really nice balance of skill and reflexes required and pattern memorisation but it’s fair .the follow up vigilante wasn’t fair and was a coin muncher

 

[cyberbear]

Remember playing this a lot in the arcades against my friend in Glasgow in the 80s. Loved it.

 

[Adamski]

Remember playing it in a newsagents on Uxbridge road when it came out and I was a bit crap at it.Cue holiday to Corfu in 89 and the local bar had one.I had 2 weeks of practice then literally on my last night I beat it! Remember splitting a finger nail bashing the buttons with such vigor.A class game and one of the very few arcade games I've beat! 😎

Remember playing this a lot in the arcades against my friend in Glasgow in the 80s. Loved it.

 

[patloz]

Only game I can honestly say I am any good at, as a kid I could complete the levels twice before getting battered now I can still do all 5 floors without too much bother but haven't done the double for ages, I blame my crappy joystick in my JAMMA cab but I have played it with certain joysticks and its near impossible to play properly.

I spent two weeks in Spain in the mid 80's and the hotel had a KFM in the game's room and I figured out if you turned it off and back on again it gave you two credits so I got a lot of practice in for free and kept my daily allowance of of a few 25 potato coins and obviously bought a flick knife which was immediately confiscated when my mum saw it.
Was the first personal machine I bought circa 1990 and its still the first game I turn to in a JAMMA cab.(probably because I am so terrible at everything else)

Once you know how to batter the end of level bosses and you get a nice run of the moths its simple enough, it goes wrong if you stop moving forwards.

 

[69er]

Only game I can honestly say I am any good at, as a kid I could complete the levels twice before getting battered now I can still do all 5 floors without too much bother but haven't done the double for ages, I blame my crappy joystick in my JAMMA cab but I have played it with certain joysticks and its near impossible to play properly.

I spent two weeks in Spain in the mid 80's and the hotel had a KFM in the game's room and I figured out if you turned it off and back on again it gave you two credits so I got a lot of practice in for free and kept my daily allowance of of a few 25 potato coins and obviously bought a flick knife which was immediately confiscated when my mum saw it.
Was the first personal machine I bought circa 1990 and its still the first game I turn to in a JAMMA cab.(probably because I am so terrible at everything else)

Once you know how to batter the end of level bosses and you get a nice run of the moths its simple enough, it goes wrong if you stop moving forwards.

Loved the accidental predicted text 25 potato coins (for peseta-peso?)
It reminded me of a day when our arcade pool table had been busy all day on 2x big 10p coins in the 80s….. only about 10 coins in a very damp coin box that night

It turned out a couple of kids had been making ice frozen 10p discs and had a little brother running in and out to their caravan freezer to keep them supplied as while super cold they went through the slide coin mech to get the balls out

More inventive than underpants tee shirts crisp bags and coffee cups blocking the pockets to keep the balls from being lost I suppose ? 😂

If there’s a scam to cheat coin credits you can bet kids find it first and the word spread like a virus even before mobile phones …. The arcade whispers and the only clue was the sudden mass interest in one particular machine or game !!

 

[Vamino]

Kung Fu Master is one of my favourite games.

Another game that was at Dayvilles Bham, and it was also sited in a cafe near to where I lived.
Most people liked the game, but the Goblin boss on the 4th level is usually a complete arsehole and would end runs, especially on later loops.

Still, it's still a great game which I haven't played for a bit, I may pull it out and have a go when I'm up for a session on the cab.

Loved the accidental predicted text 25 potato coins (for peseta-peso?)
It reminded me of a day when our arcade pool table had been busy all day on 2x big 10p coins in the 80s….. only about 10 coins in a very damp coin box that night

It turned out a couple of kids had been making ice frozen 10p discs and had a little brother running in and out to their caravan freezer to keep them supplied as while super cold they went through the slide coin mech to get the balls out

More inventive than underpants tee shirts crisp bags and coffee cups blocking the pockets to keep the balls from being lost I suppose ? 😂

If there’s a scam to cheat coin credits you can bet kids find it first and the word spread like a virus even before mobile phones …. The arcade whispers and the only clue was the sudden mass interest in one particular machine or game !!

I remember there being a trick to get extra credits on a game called '99 The Last War'. All you'd need to do is to hold all buttons and rotate the joystick in a circular motion clockwise, either during the game or whilst it was in attract mode, credits would magically appear with every rotation.

There must have been some sort of a wiring issue in the cab that caused the credit switch to trigger. That's a game I still want to own, I have great memories playing that back in the day.

 

[Shoryu-stu]

Good game,hard for me,can only get to second stage,should of seen me raging at my local swimming baths back in the day,lol.

 

[Bods]

@Chihiro Glad I'm not the only one that's poor on it

@patloz I'd be glad to make it to end of 5 level once lol, some joysticks don't help though but I just blame my bad game playing ability

 

[Bods]

Remember playing it in a newsagents on Uxbridge road when it came out and I was a bit crap at it.Cue holiday to Corfu in 89 and the local bar had one.I had 2 weeks of practice then literally on my last night I beat it! Remember splitting a finger nail bashing the buttons with such vigor.A class game and one of the very few arcade games I've beat! 😎

That must of been a great end to the Holiday, I've haven't completed many games at all but great feeling when you do

 

[Bods]

Just need this one in Mame now

 

[Del Griffith]

Love this game. KFM along with SW & Matt mania are some of my earliest arcade memories as a kid. KFM still has a great feel to it. The boss laughs still rattle through my mind quite often

 

[Vamino]

Live stream of me playing KFM a few years back, my high score on that session was 610500.

That bloody Goblin!

 

[Bods]

Didn't notice the Japan board has Paragon Films Ltd before, I have SpartanX pcb as well and Wheels on Meals DVD, need to get the Bluray of it now, under 600 dvd's left now to replace with bluray, though I keep dvds too

 

[patloz]

Loved the accidental predicted text 25 potato coins (for peseta-peso?)
It reminded me of a day when our arcade pool table had been busy all day on 2x big 10p coins in the 80s….. only about 10 coins in a very damp coin box that night

It turned out a couple of kids had been making ice frozen 10p discs and had a little brother running in and out to their caravan freezer to keep them supplied as while super cold they went through the slide coin mech to get the balls out

More inventive than underpants tee shirts crisp bags and coffee cups blocking the pockets to keep the balls from being lost I suppose ? 😂

If there’s a scam to cheat coin credits you can bet kids find it first and the word spread like a virus even before mobile phones …. The arcade whispers and the only clue was the sudden mass interest in one particular machine or game !!

As kids we always called them Potatoes for Pesetas, no predictive text here, I am old skool I have to use a laptop to post here, cant cope with a phones tiddly screen.

 

[Shoryu-stu]

Just need this one in Mame now

Someone needs to dump this!

 

[patloz]

Just need this one in Mame now

Who ever is playing is obviously cheating as they never die which suggests its been dumped and the roms poked about with as I doubt this is an option in the PCB settings?

Would love to give it a go.

 

[Bods]

Who ever is playing is obviously cheating as they never die which suggests its been dumped and the roms poked about with as I doubt this is an option in the PCB settings?

Would love to give it a go.

from comments etc it seems it was added to mame but MCU protection not released

https://mame.spludlow.co.uk/Machine.aspx?name=bkungfu

Beyond Kung Fu is IREM’s unreleased follow-up to their classic Kung Fu Master, and is often just referred to as Kung Fu Master 2. Unfortunately it’s heavily protected, using some kind of MCU acting as an encrypted tile blitter, with the CPU sending commands, and the MCU, which clearly has an undumped internal ROM directly copying and decrypting data from a dedicated external data ROM into the tilemap RAM directly. This is more complex than any other IREM protection that has been seen to date so at the time of writing this game still doesn’t work properly.

Background gfx not yet emulated due to undumped MCU