Budokan: The Martial Spirit

Budokan - The Martial Spirit is a fighting game from Electronic Arts, which was released in 1989 for various platforms, initially for the Amiga, the Atari ST and DOS. This was followed by conversions for the Sega Mega Drive ( 1990), the Amstrad CPC, the Commodore C64, MSX and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It was published in 1993 by Soft Price again for the Amiga. The name of the game is borrowed, built by Mamoru Yamada for the Summer Olympic Games in 1964 Tokyo Nippon Budokan martial arts hall.

Action

The game environment consists of six buildings. In four of the dōjō can between Jiyu - Renshu ( Lab without enemies ) and Kumite be selected. In the latter mode, there are three sparring partner for practicing the Far Eastern martial arts Karate, Kendo ( sword fighting ), Bo ( stick fighting ) and nunchaku (Combat woods) are available. A special feature of the game is the assessment of combat style after each training session by Tobiko -Sensei, the coach.

As a single player, you can play in Budokan against twelve opponents of increasing difficulty. It can be selected from the four types of combat, where the enemy (in addition to the players available ) still dominate other forms of fighting and beatings. Another building is reserved for the two-player mode.

In the game screen in addition to the usual energy bar ( " Stamina " ) is also a rather unusual display for the energy of the universe ( "Ki" ) is displayed. In principle, by the passivity of a fighter is rewarded.

Reviews

The trade press Budokan rated good, but not excellent ( 70 to 80% in the relevant magazines ). There was praise the outstanding graphics in the first place. The high number of available stroke variations was basically highlighted as a positive, but considered to be too difficult for beginners. Has been criticized on the one hand, the late but good implementation on obsolescent systems like the Commodore 64 and on the other hand, that the graphical capabilities of the then advanced systems ( Sega Mega Drive about ) have not been fully exploited.

Trivia

• The instructions of the game contained a fable as an introduction. This describes a cereal selling monk who must price their goods continues to increase, because an excessive amount of grain is stolen. This refers to the increase in the cost of software by black copies.
• The manual contains the description of the game, a detailed description of the philosophy of martial arts contained in the game.