Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Yie Ar Kung-Fu for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.
A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
635: Yie Ar Kung-Fu
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JaySevenZero
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Kentish1973
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Re: 635: Yie Ar Kung-Fu
Well this is a blast from the past.
I first heard about Yie Ar Kung Fu in the pages of Your Sinclair, which in a manner of speaking is how I learned about every game during the 8 and 16-bit eras. My very dim and distant memory was that it reviewed well, though was perhaps seen as a lesser game to Way of the Exploding Fist. In gameplay terms, that might be fair enough, but its variety of foes - starting with big bald Buchu and climaxing with bad-ass doppelganger Blues - just seemed way more exciting. We bought the game for our ZK Spectrum during the first week of our summer holiday in 1985, which my two younger brothers and I always spent at our grandparents' in Essex.
And indeed, the game's cast of characters - surely the progenitors and inspiration for the Ryus and Sagats of the years to come - were thrillingly realised by the Speccy's humble chipset, and a love of the one-on-one beat em up was born within me.
Memories beyond that are fragmentary, though I do recall that once we were past Star, the shuriken flinging second character, we made rapid inroads through the rest until we reached Blues, who could pretty much only be beaten by flying kicks. A year or two later, I played it on a friend's C64 and was irritated to see that it had at least one extra character, and was generally a good deal more vibrant. No doubt I also played it a few times in the arcades of Margate, though by then I was increasingly drawn to the belt scrollers and Star Wars-themed shooters of the era.
Anyway, it clearly left a strong impression as I recall the unbridled excitement at receiving a copy of the sequel several Christmases later - the actual Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 as opposed to Shaolin Road, which was labelled a follow up in some quarters. And wow, was that game an absolute abomination. Indeed, I can recall only Chase HQ 2 coming anywhere near it for chip peeing disappointment.
Three word review: Street Fighter Genesis
I first heard about Yie Ar Kung Fu in the pages of Your Sinclair, which in a manner of speaking is how I learned about every game during the 8 and 16-bit eras. My very dim and distant memory was that it reviewed well, though was perhaps seen as a lesser game to Way of the Exploding Fist. In gameplay terms, that might be fair enough, but its variety of foes - starting with big bald Buchu and climaxing with bad-ass doppelganger Blues - just seemed way more exciting. We bought the game for our ZK Spectrum during the first week of our summer holiday in 1985, which my two younger brothers and I always spent at our grandparents' in Essex.
And indeed, the game's cast of characters - surely the progenitors and inspiration for the Ryus and Sagats of the years to come - were thrillingly realised by the Speccy's humble chipset, and a love of the one-on-one beat em up was born within me.
Memories beyond that are fragmentary, though I do recall that once we were past Star, the shuriken flinging second character, we made rapid inroads through the rest until we reached Blues, who could pretty much only be beaten by flying kicks. A year or two later, I played it on a friend's C64 and was irritated to see that it had at least one extra character, and was generally a good deal more vibrant. No doubt I also played it a few times in the arcades of Margate, though by then I was increasingly drawn to the belt scrollers and Star Wars-themed shooters of the era.
Anyway, it clearly left a strong impression as I recall the unbridled excitement at receiving a copy of the sequel several Christmases later - the actual Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 as opposed to Shaolin Road, which was labelled a follow up in some quarters. And wow, was that game an absolute abomination. Indeed, I can recall only Chase HQ 2 coming anywhere near it for chip peeing disappointment.
Three word review: Street Fighter Genesis
Re: 635: Yie Ar Kung-Fu
As a young child, before we had a computer of our own in the house, I'd eagerly lap up any gaming action I could get round friends houses. Yie Ar Kung-Fu was possibly the single game that made me badger and hound my parents in to buying us a gaming machine. I remember being so excited playing it at a friend's house. We'd play it all the time, and then one day, horror of horrors, I went round there and he told me he'd lost the cassette so we couldn't play it. I was so disappointed! We did get our own computer, an Amstrad CPC, the following Christmas and this was one of the first games I picked up, as part of a compilation with a dozen or so other games. I just thought it looked so good, and it was so much fun to play. It's one of the few games I've never really been back to from my childhood so it'll be interesting to hear if it still fights a good fight these days, although I'm not curious enough to buy it on Switch!
Re: 635: Yie Ar Kung-Fu
This is one of my earliest gaming memories from way back in the day when the 8 bit micros reigned supreme. I want to say the laundrette at the end of my street had a cabinet in, I'm fairly sure it did, but playing the Amstrad CPC version at home with a small circle of friends was so much fun it's one of those experiences I can still picture to this day. I'm not sure how good the game actually was, we all managed to beat it which was enough to make us all feel like heroes but the cast of characters you'd be asked to fight were the real stars. Even now some 35 years later I can recall the big fat bald guy who'd fly though the air at you and the girl who had an unlimited supply of shuriken to hurl at you and a bunch of other foes who were all just named after the weapon they sported until you ended up fighting a mirror version of yourself in the final battle. It probably wasn't sophisticated, I don't know how well it's aged but it sure had personality.
TWR: First Action Hero.
TWR: First Action Hero.