Review: Budokan The Martial Spirit

Platform:  Megadrive/ PC(DOS)/ Amiga / Spectrum / PSP (EA Replay Collection)

Features:  2 players, none of the action of MMA as seen on Sky Sports.

Release Date:  1989/1990

Well. This was one of those games I always wanted as a kid, but never got around to buying because of there being other games to spend my pocket money on.  After about 2 hours of actually playing it now,  I'm glad I didn't. None of my friends owned it, the video store never had it for rental, and now I know why.

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA for short) has become ever popular in recent years,  and only in the past 2 or 3 have we started seeing lots of video games released about it. Before those though, there was Budokan;  mixing the fighting styles of Karate, Okinawan-Kobudo and Kendo in a haphazard way and hoping no one notices the inaccuracies in how its actually played.

The game is opened by a few whole screens of narrative text of how you arrived in the city and a decedent of the late Mr.Miyagi telling us why we're here.

And much like my 7 year old self would have, I skipped the intro. I came to beat people with sticks. Who needs plot in a fighting game anyway.

After the intro you find yourself at a training camp and you are able to walk around the place, check out the sights, and learn to kick some butt before heading over to the Budokan. This is actual place in Tokyo where they tend to hold alot of the major traditional martial arts tournaments, as well as host the shows of people like The Beatles and Ozzy Ozbourne. They sadly never appear in this game. Having been there myself though I can defintiely say it is an amazing sight to behold both outside and in.

The first step in this game is to NOT head straight to the Budokan. You will lose horribly.  Head for the various training areas and pick up a few moves first and work out which style better suits you. I went with Kendo for most of this review as it's the martial art I know best, what with having parents who have played for more than 25years. You can pick to either Practice (which is hideously boring), or go headlong into sparing combat with the CPU of varying grade. Just watch out if you go into solo practice mode. I havent quite worked out how to quit it without having to reset the whole machine and oing through the wall-o-text at the start.

On to combat. This is precisely where the game trips up.  Pretty essential in a fighting game if you ask me.

Some places have called the fighting in this game more "strategic", which gives me a sense that you really require a lot of timing and tact to get it to play right. Most fighting games can be played by furious button mashing, this isn't one of those games. Mostly because the controls feel underdeveloped and almost like a programmer really didn't have a controller sitting in front of him to make it user friendly. To move the characters in combat you have to hop about using up+left or up+right. I dont ever remember in all my life seeing a sensei hop around a dojo like this. Then again you dont see the SAS doing the same thing either. The reasoning behind this likely due to the limited controls, it only supports the old 3 buttons pads (the game was first and foremost designed for the Sega Megadrive,  and ported to everything else).

When playing, no matter what martial art you pick, you have two stats to watch out for- Stamina and Ki.  Stamina is essentially health (which lowers as you move and jump or attack), and Ki is what you use up when attacking, (while blocking or not attacking it increases, giving you a bit more power). As your stamina lowers, it becomes slower and harder to move...at least according to the manual...the game pretty much always feels this jerky.

Ok, so now you're a super hardcore martial arts master. Time to head to the Budokan. Like every other fighting game out there you fight a variety of opponents, mostly male- with the odd Naginata (originally considered by the Japanese a womans only sport) thrown in for good measure. None of the fights are at all memorable and again, due to the lackluster control scheme it can be pretty damned annoying to play.

And thats all there is to this game. Seriously. It has its niche charm as one of the most amusing games out there, but not for the right reasons. I would probably pick this up for the collection, but its not a game you'll break out for more than 5 minutes to show friends how absurb it is and how far along fighting games (even bad ones) have come since the early 90's.