Blog - Famicom games

Famicom games

Last Saturday I picked up some cheap Famicom games at a flea market to play on my AdFami.

キョンシーズ2 (Kyonshis 2)

Lately I've remembered the Chinese zombies that had made it a tiny bit into my childhood, those zombies that jump around with their arms extended until some spell-like piece of paper is stuck to their forehead.
I remember seeing a movie of these, but mostly playing a NES game called "Phantom Fighter", which was literally non-stop fighting with these guys, and as your level went up you gained powerful punch, kick, jump (etc.) skills enabling you to fight stronger ones... That game was so much fun!
In Japan these Chinese zombies are referred to as "kyonshi", and they were so popular for a while that there was a so-called "kyonshi boom" around the mid-80's.

So I picked up this "Kyonshis 2" thinking it may be the same game or a follow-up, but it's rather some kind of RPG with quite boring fight scenes. Later I searched on the net and found out that the game I want is called 霊幻道士. There's also a series of Chinese films of the same name, in English titled "Mr. Vampire". I need to see some kyonshi movies soon!

It seems like the kyonshi boom may be doing a bit of a come back this November, as the 2004 film "Shaolin vs Evil Dead" (in Japanese, no surprise... 「少林キョンシー」 (Shaolin kyonshi)) will be showing at Cine Saison in Shibuya. I think I'll make a memo of checking that out!

高橋名人の冒険島Ⅱ (Takahashi Meijin no bōken-jima 2, aka Hudson's Adventure Island 2)

On the U.S. side, we knew about this series as "Adventure Island", but in Japan there was a whole legend behind it. Takahashi Meijin (a nickname meaning "master Takahashi") was probably the most famous game player in Japan, and he was a hero for the Famicom kids. His most popular asset was that he could hit a button up to 16 times per second! Actually he claims he could really do over 17 hits/sec, but being a geek he settled for the binary-friendly number 16.

I had played the first of this series as a kid but I don't think I played this one or others (there's up to #4), so I picked it up. #2 seems to be very similar to #1 except maybe for the islands organized into a map.

Battletoads

Last, an all-time favorite: Battletoads. This is a cool action game where you smack all kinds of creatures as you go through levels both vertical (going down a rope) and horizontal (on foot or in a fast jumping rocket/car). Pretty cool graphics and music, and also some of the fastest scrolling and action I remember from that time.

I played this one so much a long time ago that I still remember about everything of the levels I've went through so far, making it quite easy. :)

Posted on September 8, 2005 at 23:55 | Tweet |

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