Budokan was one of my favourite games when I was growing up. It had a very simple graphical interface to all you to choose what you wanted to do, and then it had a more detailed set of graphics (not bad for the era) for the fighting scenes.
This is the general crux of the game: there are four different styles of fighting you can choose from, being Karate, Bo, Kendo and Nun-chucks. There are four different dojo's to learn each of the different weapons.
Budokan was one of my favourite games when I was growing up. It had a very simple graphical interface to all you to choose what you wanted to do, and then it had a more detailed set of graphics (not bad for the era) for the fighting scenes.
This is the general crux of the game: there are four different styles of fighting you can choose from, being Karate, Bo, Kendo and Nun-chucks. There are four different dojo's to learn each of the different weapons. Karate has many different moves and is a lot of fun (but is a weak style) while Kendo has very limited moves (but is very effective). Bo and nun-chucks are the best weapons as they have the most complicated attack
moves and they also inflict more strikes because the moves are several attacking strikes. What's more - the sounds your guy makes when doing these moves is a crack up.
Once you have learnt how to fight you can then test out your fighting at the mats (a practice area), or you can go to the tournament (the real aim of the game). At the tournament, you will fight several foes, each of them using different weapons (some you can not use yourself - which was a pity). While the really cool moves you can do are fun to watch, the simple most effective moves usually are the best. For Karate it is the flying kicks, for the nun-chuck and kendo, the short jabs work best and for bo - the short jabs are good, but some of the spinning moves are effective as well.
Some of the things to note about the game are: you have two bars - stamina or chi and health - stamina builds during the match, but drops each time you perform an action - the more stamina - the more damage you do. In one level - if you use your defensive stance, your opponent can hardly hit you and you build up your stamina to full strength - then you unleash your fury and smack them down.
Before each round you get a bio on your opponent which is quite cool. Each opponent has a weakness of sort and if you can pick the right weapon you should do alright. One of the most difficult characters is the ninja that can disappear and then pop up behind you. The ninja throws ninja stars and is very effective in close combat. I found using nun-chucks a good way to keep knocking the health off.
This is a classic game - one I spent many hours playing - you do have to be wise when playing tournament mode because you only have a limited number of times you can use each weapon - and your last opponent is a surprise - so work out which weapon is best for fighting against itself. Happy gaming.
