Super FamiComplete #121: Hokuto no Ken 5: Tenma Ryuuseiden Ai Zesshou

 

Title: Hokuto no Ken 5: Tenma Ryuuseiden: Ai Zesshou

(Trans. Fist of the North Star 5: Legend of the Demonic Shooting Star: A Chapter Beyond Sorrow)

Developer: Shouei 

Publisher: Toei Animation

Release Date: 07/10/1992 (Japan only)

WARNING: SOME VIOLENT AND GORY IMAGES DUE TO SOURCE MATERIAL

Sometimes you just need to clear the blogging pipes to get restarted on a project. Hokuto no Ken 5 is a Japanese only turn based RPG, and honestly this is going to be more of a research dump than actually playing through the game. I played about a half hour and hit the "I get it" button, and did a further watch of a let's play on Youtube (shout out to Batista_Harpu's let's play series SNES Super Side Quest), and of course researched this pretty obscure game as thoroughly as I could. 

Background

Fist of the North Star is a particular favorite anime and manga for me. I have distinct memories of finding its ridiculous hyper violence and post-apocalyptic "Road Warrior" style setting quite enjoyable as a teenager scrolling through Showtime after dark. It was just so unlike other cartoons and anime of the early aughts, only learning that the anime was way older than I initially thought. I remember back when Netflix was first a company that would send you DVDs, and one of the first things on my queue when I signed up for the service in college was the dvd of the "first volume" of the anime; in reality it was the first main saga a chunk of the next arc with an unceremonious ending. They never did release the next part of the classic dub, which is a shame because the dub is one of those "so bad it's good" releases. 

For the uninitiated, Hokuto no Shinken or Fist of the North Star takes place in a world that has been ravaged by nuclear war, and the rulers of this world are warlords who command roving bands of mutated muscle bound biker thugs. Each warlord generally represents a different fictional martial art or fighting style, such as an army of Green Berets or a roving band of beast men led by the giant Father Fang. The protagonist, Kenshiro, is the heir to the titular Fist of the North Star, a martial art that targets the vital chakras of the body and cause the victim's body to distort, twist, and eventually explode in a shower of gore. Kenshiro is on a quest for vengeance against his former friend, Shin, who stole his beloved, Yulia, and left Kenshiro in the desert to die. The gnarly scar left on his chest from this encounter is shaped like the Big Dipper constellation, giving him the nom de guerre of the Man with the Seven Scars. After he defeats Shin and his entire army, the first major saga of the anime, Kenshiro then has to deal with the other heirs to the Fist of the North Star, who have generally all become warlords themselves. 

Kenshiro is hilariously dead pan as a protagonist, with nothing really seeming to phase him. Until about 10 volumes into the manga and about 50 episodes into the anime, no antagonist really seems to be able to threaten him. He is just too darn competent and powerful, and no one can seemingly withstand the destructive force of his body popping martial art. There are some other standout characters, such as Rei, who can  slice people into ribbons with his hands, or the giant prison warden Uighur, who shoulder rams people so hard that they pop, or the aforementioned Father Fang who famously head butts a man so hard that it causes a man's eyes to bulge out the sides of his head. All in all a lot of campy, gory fun. 

Now this game is the fifth in the series of RPGs and platformers made for the the Nintendo systems, and this itself is also an RPG. There will be two more games in this lineage for the Super Famicom, but those will both be in the far off future and also fighting games instead of JRPGS. 

This game was developed by Shouei, which mainly developed video games in the Hokuto no Shinken series with Toei Animation, the production company behind the anime, as the producers for the entirety of the series. This was a relatively short-lived development house, with only working on some Pachinko games and a Puss in Boots series of games developed handheld consoles (no relation to the character from Shrek). 

Toei Animation, the publisher in this case, is one of the most famous anime production houses, working on juggernauts such as Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and of course Fist of the North Star. They actually produced, and still produce, a great many of video game projects surrounding their many anime intellectual properties. 

In a bizarre choice, this game is more of an "alternate universe" fan-fiction than a retelling of the canon events of the story, with all the main cast of the Hokuto Shinken universe appearing as cameo party members than really acting as the...well main cast. In this version, the main events of Hokuto no Shinken have not occurred exactly, so characters who would have died by the time other characters are introduced are still alive...it is a jumbled mess honestly. 

Perhaps even stranger, Kenshiro is not the main character, but instead you play as two generations of heroes who must rally the various martial arts factions from the main story against a common foe. You play as the "Hero" who is the descendant of the Tentei Ken school of martial arts, whose beloved has been stolen by a rival gang of warlords known as the Makotei Ken. The Tentei Ken school, through ancient accords with Hokuto, Nanto (the Southern Star Fist), and other martial arts, call upon these schools to help the hero regain his lost love. Eventually, this conflict is carried on by your Hero's children, who are technically the heir of both the Tentei and the Makotei schools, and you play as these characters for the second half of the game. 

The story was written by a pretty well known anime screenwriter, Hiroshi Toda, who worked a lot in translating manga to anime in the 80s and 90s, and was overseen, as far as generic plot, by Buronson, the original author and artist behind Fist of the North Star. I imagine it is hard to write scenarios for video games due to constraints from the manga and anime publisher: you can't wildly change characters, plot beats, or otherwise, or introduce anything that would mess with the overall canon of the source material. It is games as a marketing service to promote, but not surpass, the original material. You can either just retell the story, or create something wholly new but tangential to the main plot. 

Buronson

 

Gameplay and Presentation

This game is about 25-30 hours long of good old fashioned turn based RPG goodness, with your party of adventurers traveling from town to town, righting small-scale wrongs along the way towards the overarching and climactic showdown with the main villains. The combat is traditional turn based, with you choosing between "hard strikes" to deal damage, "soft strikes" which are your debuffs, and vital point strikes to heal yourself and comrades. There are no real gimmicks beyond this which is sad to say: you have an HP and MP meter you manage, with items to buff as well, but other than the setting there is really nothing unique about this combat. 

I think the big letdown, in this case, is the presentation. While I love the tall, detailed full body battle sprites, which is reminiscent of the style of the manga and anime, the presentation of the world and combat is really bland. The world is all grays, browns, and mud colored, and the world sprites are really low detailed. As well, the animation during combat and in the world is really poor at capturing the action from the series. While the original anime could definitely be accused of some cheap and shoddy animation, it made up for it with the bombastic violence and over the top action. This on the other hand, is just poorly translated to video game form. The battle sprites do not have much animation, which makes everything look choppy and without much impact; attack animations also look really silly, especially when defeated enemies "pop" like an over inflated balloon (it looks more goofy than violent). This is made much worse on the overworld map. For example, at one point some enemies, in a cutscene, are trying to attack this grandmaster character, who sends them all "flying back" with his attacks, and instead they just screensaver slowly off the side of the screen. 

The game also seems very grindy: all the best equipment comes from enemy drops, and so much of the playthrough that I watched was just spent milling about a dungeon fighting random battles. Leveling up also seems to take quite some time. What a slog!

The music I found to be pretty annoying: it is going for a stereotypical "Chinese" sound font, and it is really tinny and obnoxious. One thing I will give it credit for is the voice samples, which is rare for a console game of this vintage; granted, you will mainly hear the same ones over and over again, so take that with a grain of salt. 

Final Verdict

What a mess! From playing this game to watching the let's play, this game just seems like a chore rather than fun. I respect myself and my time too much to fully engage with this game, and honestly, you should too. Please skip this title if you are doing a revisit of Super Famicom JRPGS. It is boring, and doesn't even come close to the fun and energy of the source material. 

The Legend of 9 Black Unicorn Sols in a UFO of Wisdom: Wukong Overlord 50 (Part 1)

Hello all and happy 2025. Let's eat our veggies first and get the blog business out of the way. For those reading I decided to start the 16 bit Chronicles up officially again with two posts that were half complete and sitting on an incredibly cold back burner. I had an absolute blast playing through Prince of Persia and even Super Bowling for its novelty, and was super stoked to continue the project...until realizing that the next four games in the project were a text heavy Japanese only RPG based on Fist of the North Star side story (you don't even play as Kenshiro initially!!!), a Japanese only quiz game, a soccer game based on Captain Tsubasa, and a racing game (you can also add the American made Clue adaptation as another possible choice) and my burgeoning fire to blog about Super Nintendo/Famicom games was back to chilled. 

One thing that I have learned from doing a blog for over ten years off and on, and starting an equally ill fated podcast that I ran for a couple years is that gaming makes a very rough translation from recreation to structured hobby (and I don't even want to imagine as a career). While this is a personal preference, feeling forced to do something, even a fun activity, really kills my motivation. I prefer to follow my fun with gaming; so that is what I am going to do with this project! I am going to follow my fun and write about what I want to write about, with updating the core project as the mood strikes me. I may also skip ahead to talk about other Super Famicom and Super Nintendo games that I have been dying to talk about for years, but were trying to work through the hordes of baseball, licensed, and American/Eurotrash games that litter the early SNES library. Who knows! The world is my video game blogging oyster. For those who keep checking here periodically; thank you so much! I can't promise frequent updates, but I can promise that blogging, writing, and video games are never far from my thoughts. 

Okay, veggies consumed...

So today's post is going to be a mix of what I've been playing recently, my thoughts on each title, but also specifically about how each game tackles the interaction between gameplay and narrative. This will probably be a multi-part post. 

A little about how I've been playing video games over the past few years. I am a person who struggles with intense choice paralysis and opportunity cost struggles with gaming. If I am playing one thing, then I can't complete the playthrough of the Mega Man X series I've been dreaming about doing, or playing weird old MAME hidden gems, or not keeping up with the new indie hit that every tuber has been on and on about (there's always one), or generally just not chipping away at my Dead God achievement in Isaac. To help cope with this anxiety, instead of playing one game, I instead chip away at about five games at a time, usually one on each of the consoles that I mainly play. If I find a game that really strikes my interests, then I focus on that instead (Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth for example, was basically my December). So far, this has worked for me, though it does bump up against my feelings of compulsory gaming, so it certainly isn't perfect. 

Recently, I have been playing The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom on the Switch, UFO 50 on my Steam Deck, Unicorn Overlord and Black Myth: Wukong on my PS5, and 9 Sols on my game pass. Each one of these games, aside from being incredibly different in genre, style, and tone, also handles the interaction of narrative and gameplay, specifically as to how integral the story is to the experience, how the game gatekeeps gameplay behind story, and how the gameplay accentuates the story and vice versa. 

It should be noted, before I begin, that I haven't finished any of these games. I'll go into more details with each game, but these are definitely ongoing impressions that will eventually be "final thoughts" style posts for each individual game when finished. Let's start with...

Black Myth: Wukong

"Monkey, Monkey, Monkey" ~ What I say every time the game is loading

Impressions

Black Myth: Wukong was quite the surprise last year; I don't think anyone after the earliest alpha demo trailer expected this game to be as polished and put together as the final product. The earliest trailer looked too good to be true. Granted, I am only on chapter 2 of 6, so this game's quality could dip in the last two thirds of the game, but I am also saying this after 18 hours with the game for a chapter and a half of progress. 

The game is an interesting beast in almost every metric: the game isn't quite a Souls game despite the heavy pre-release hype building it up as one, though it does have a focus on the large, grandiose, and difficult boss fights similar to that series. I would say that it is more a hybrid of a character action game ala Devil May Cry, mixed some environmental exploration (no real platforming though as yet) and secret hunting, and a continuing string of boss fights that almost qualify this game as a boss rush game. Each chapter of the game is set in a distinct environment pulled from the source material (more on that when we dig into the narrative), and generally sets you on a winding path with boss fights, both optional and mandatory, dotting each part of the path. 

In fact, this game has over 100 boss fights, most of which are distinct and not iterated upon, though of course there are some repeats of boss fights; they are altered in some distinct way either through lore, look, or unique wrinkle added to the fight). I have to say, compared to a similar giant like Elden Ring, which has a similar number of boss fights and enemy designs, but had to use many many repeats in order to also prioritize unique dungeons and a really vivid world, the sheer amount of quality boss fights is very impressive. You have two-phase boss fights, bosses that change form, hidden boss fights that are locked behind environmental puzzles, gimmick boss fights, duo bosses that change future boss fights if you kill one boss before the other, and a player vs. boss vs. boss fight, and this is just what I have played thus far in one and a half chapters. It makes me incredibly excited for what the later chapters will bring. 

The enemy and monster design, as well, is really quite fun and detailed. So far I've fought a giant wolf man with flowing white hair, who every time he gets a solid slash with his claws, tenderly licks your blood clean off of his paw. I've fought a really tense fight against a spear wielding demon "king" who can turn himself into black wind and zip behind you at a moments notice; even better you then fight this king again in his true form, which is a large black bear whose fur erupts into flames during his second phase. Even the normal enemies show some lovingly crafted little weirdos: living ginseng mandragoras that look so unfortunately human  that erupt from the ground and whip their roots at you, skeletonized snake humanoids that attack in small packs, and rock golems that have fleshy little Buddha heads imbedded in them that are just screaming in malice and anger. The designs are just very uniform in vision and well realized. 

The combat and difficulty also cherry picks from the Souls genre as well while eschewing some of the other conventions. First, there is no penalty for death aside from restarting at the nearest checkpoint; you lose no progression, experience, or currency from what I can tell. This means that if an area or boss is particularly challenging, you can go grind to upgrade a very robust and varied skill tree, or craft new medicinal buffs, armor, or upgrade your bo staff, which is your only weapon ala Sekiro and its protagonist, Wolf's, sword. The game balances this by making the game's bosses quite difficult. You have to analyze their fighting style and pick it apart; you are a devotee of the famous monkey king, Sun Wukong, who is an avatar of transformation, deception, and trickery. You really only, at least thus far, have two pieces of defensive tools to use: dodging and a spell that temporarily freezes the enemy that starts on a very miserly cooldown. Battles are usually tense affairs with enemies who are larger, stronger, and can shred your health bar fairly quickly, so you have to use every trick in your arsenal to survive. It also opens up those challenge runs where you can do low upgrade, no spells, dodge only boss runs, where one or two hits will put your little monkey man in the ground. 

The presentation of the game is also stellar. The graphics, developed in Unreal Engine 5, are really quite breathtaking. The style leans to a really detailed realism, which is quite striking when the subject matter is primarily Chinese mythology. Every environment is lush and detailed, though I will say the game hints at heavy exploration but has a large number of invisible walls used to guide the player down the boss rush path. There have been some really well designed areas I have encountered so far: a crumbling temple compound that snakes from a bamboo forest up a mountain path, culminating with a five tiered pagoda that has been lit ablaze by the corrupt abbot of the monastery that ruled the mountain; a really well realized desert canyon that is revealed to be a community destroyed by a perpetual sandstorm, with hints at a lost civilization peeking out from beneath the sands. The prologue of the game especially, is one of the most epic scenes I have seen in a video game, with your avatar squaring off against a god amongst the clouds while four horizon filling "heavenly kings" and their armies watch on waiting to square off themselves. Each chapter, as well, is capped with an animation that goes into the motivations of the main antagonist of each chapter, and from what I have heard the animation style is different for each of these vignettes.

 As far as music, I haven't listened to enough to speak to it as yet, though the game's second chapter features a headless musician who is quite fun, and his music is earwormy. 

The interaction of story and gameplay so far...

So let's talk about the narrative and how that meshes with the gameplay; the game, in marketing, was presented as a gritty re-telling of parts of the classic Chinese epic Journey to the West. This novel details the pilgrimage of a Buddhist monk who is on the path to become a Bodhisattva (a Buddhist sage who forsakes Nirvana to help others on their path to enlightenment). The monk travels across the "New West" provinces of China in order to reach India to meet with the Buddha, and the deities of Chinese folk religion send a few avatars/minor deities, like Sun Wukong the Monkey King, to help him reach his goal. The book, which sadly I've only read excerpts, captures the way that Buddhism didn't supplant local religions in China, Korea, and Japan, but instead fused with them to create something unique, allowing Chinese mythological figures and monsters to exist alongside (and also become part of) Buddhist belief.  

Black Myth: Wukong, though, is not a retelling of Journey to the West but instead a pseudo-sequel that takes place after the main story, and follows an unnamed monkey who is retracing the steps of the book's pilgrimage in order to gather six holy relics that will allow him to resurrect Sun Wukong from a stone prison which he has been kept in for 500 years. Now do all the antagonists in the game so far also appear in the book? Yes. Do they pull the exact same type of villainy that they did in the book almost beat for beat? Also yes. It plays more like a gritty "this is how the story really happened" kind of tale; like you are viewing the events of Journey to the West as unfiltered by time and legend. You are seeing these mythical figures as they really are, warts and all. 

What is interesting, though, is that they present this coupled with an elaborate codex filled with traditional art, poetry, and stories for each of the games enemies, bosses, and NPCS. You get the legend for each of these creatures alongside how you encounter and defeat them in the reality of the game. What I really love is that these entries aren't just summaries of whom these individuals are, but instead stories featuring these creatures where the player/reader has to discern the character of these creatures based on their actions within the tale. In a way, it feels very similar to the the Souls games' item and boss souls descriptions, where you only get hints of the motivations of the characters in those games. 

This also ties story to the exploration and development of your character. Your character's goal is to resurrect Sun Wukong from his stone prison by following his path, and by becoming more and more like Sun Wukong. Dotted around the map are places to meditate, and in doing so you get a free upgrade or "spark" of inspiration into the psyche of Sun Wukong. Each time you are leveling up, you are showing that you are just one minute step closer to becoming the Monkey god; it also helps that the prologue lets you play as a full powered Sun Wukong to create this point of comparison. In a fun twist, every NPC you encounter cannot seem to decide whether or not you are Sun Wukong, an imitator, or someone else completely, further developing this theme. A boss who kills you will say "I knew you couldn't be him," or another NPC will scramble away from you in fear screaming "I thought you were dead, it's been 500 years!" 

As well, these codeces are locked behind defeating the bosses and various enemy types, many of which only exist squirreled away in the corners of each map. The codeces for each chapter help flesh out the story of the chapter,  how it is tied to the original Journey to the West, and give the motivations for the main chapter antagonist. Much like Souls, the story is not directly given to you, but instead the onus is on the player to create their understanding of the narrative. 

Is the game successful in this style of storytelling? Overall I would say yes with an if, or no with a but. Being set after the book, the game is written and presented with not just the expectation that you are familiar with Journey to the West and its core cast, but also pretty well versed with the events from what is a very long saga. With setting most of the lore in the codeces in parables and legends, this also means that, if you are not the type of player who reads through game lore, you will really have no context for what is going on or character motivations. Honestly, even if you do know the original story, the game really doesn't explain why the characters from the original story are cyclically reliving the events from the main story. The problem is I can't see a workable middle ground to fix this without altering what is special and good about the story; the game expects you to do your homework, and there just doesn't seem to be a way around it. Having done some homework, the story is really hitting well, especially when paired with the great presentation. The first chapter tells the story of an honorable bear demon and a mountain monastery slowly falling to corruption, greed, and eventually a fiery destruction. The second chapter is all about a desert kingdom that slowly ceded power with a rat demon, venerating the demon as a Buddha until the denizens of the kingdom were turned into malformed rat demons, and the buildings all sank into the sand. It is really fun to start to piece together how the different characters, monsters, and bosses all fit into the patchwork of the setting as the lore is drip fed to you. 

This means that while decoding the narrative isn't necessary to participate in the gameplay, it does feel like a vestigial hanger-on to the main gameplay. To the uninitiated to classic Chinese literature, this game will feel like a surreal parade of fantastic creatures with strange motivations. Why are you getting this boar demon rice wine from a local village? Not sure. Why are you ringing the three bells on this mountain, which will whisk you away to fight a giant monk demon who is surrounded by zombie thralls? *shrug* Generally, I will say that some glimpse of understanding starts to emerge by the end of each chapter, as by then your codex has been mostly filled, you've seen every story scene, and you can then study. Even so, I had to check out a lore channel on youtube (shout out to BanditGames, who makes some really good explainers for each chapter) to fill in a lot of the blanks. 

In the end, while the gameplay does provide the puzzle pieces for the story, it certainly doesn't put the puzzle together for you. While I do love, to a degree, that the story is one to be deciphered and left to impression, I think the work is just a little too onerous to the point it will actively be a detractor to some players. 

I do love this game so far though, and am very hooked. I will do a follow up post probably about 2/3 of the way through, and again when finished the game, but for next time I will be talking about one of the other games that I am playing currently (probably Zelda as I have some bones to pick). Happy New Years everyone!