I don't talk about IREM enough. Like Tecmo back in the day, a lot of their success was in the native homeland. They did release some bangers here internationally and in the States, probably one of their more ubiquitous releases that probably was in every Nintendo owner's household was the grandfather of the beat'em up genre, Kung Fu.

Granted, the NES home version saw some changes with development. The great Shigeru Miyamoto served as director and designer for the Nintendo port, as he became fascinated in designing a side-scrolling action game. This was in its infancy during the era, so the building block of 2D action gaming for console platforms figuring itself out is quite amazing to research. 

Known as Kung Fu Master in the arcade, the newly (at the time) christened "Kung FU" was released in 1985 as one of the NES's black box launch titles. The innovator of one of the most successful arcade genres, it's a pretty simple title, you play as martial arts practitioner Thomas who must rescue his girlfriend Sylvia from the dreaded "Mr. X". Hehehe, I loved this period. You couldn't get more 8-16 bit era than a sinister villain who's so contemptible and heinous that citizens quake in the magnitude of mentioning their full name, like Mr. K in Renegade. Mr. X even decided to terrorize Oak Wood City in Streets of Rage.

Being one of the first of its kind on the NES, Kung Fu may be a little bit on the aged side when it comes to substance and depth, but its play style is fairly effective. With punches and kicks, clear enemies out of your way and proceed. Going back to the "building block" of 2D action game design, and one of the reasons I like games like Kung Fu, is how it presents obstacles to the player. Standard bad guys can be defeated with any one of your five attacks of various speeds and ranges (two highs, two lows, and a jump kick). Then enemies of varying heights and speeds are gradually included, first individually, and THEN at once as the difficulty escalates. By presenting several of these elements presents threats to the player, and you're also taught how to deal with it. Be it the snakes, fire-breathing dragons, and the goons throwing boomerangs, you gradually learn how to manage adversity. Easy implementation, but such a fundamental education method that permeated throughout video game design. 8-bit excelled at this, and it'll never become out of date.

There's no difference in the layout, each stage in Kung Fu is the same dojo floors. Well, they are floors of the same building, so I guess it makes sense. I wonder why Thomas doesn't just grab Sylvia when she's presented right before him by Mr. X, perhaps there's a force field in place. 

Kung Fu doesn't have to rely on unique locations, but rather the enemy variation. They're color-coded, so the moment they're on screen, you understand what to expect. I have always been a big fan of the boss characters, they give an Enter the Dragon feel. From the icky stick-wielding elf guy to the giant black dude that I started calling Deebo, these guys were fairly memorable to me during the time period. They even had signature laughs, should they defeat you.

Kung Fu is a little on the primitive side as entries in the brawler category became more prevalent, but it's one of the more inventive and important games for not just the Nintendo Entertainment System, but for gaming in general. From the ideas it implemented, series like Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man have it to thank for concepts like enemy patterns and boss design.