The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - Kuri Kinton
You'll love this fun but repetitive beat ‘em up that resembles Dragon Ball Z mashed up with Fist of the North Star.
RELEASE DATE: 1988
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Taito
BEST VERSIONS: Arcade
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Fairly playable
Kurikinton is a sticky golden dumpling treat made of sweet potatoes and chestnuts usually served around the New Year in Japan that symbolizes wealth and prosperity. Kuri Kinton is a goofy arcade game from Taito that features a tenacious martial artist who glows with different-colored auras. His name seems to be a pun, though I can’t quite figure out what the gag is – consulting an online Japanese dictionary, I found that another meaning for “kin” is “muscle,” and “ton” is “bonk,” so maybe it means something like “Muscle bonking nut.”
Whatever the story is there, it doesn’t really matter any more than the disposable story of the game, which involves the hero Kuri Kinton racing in on a tiny motorcycle to storm an underground supervillain complex to rescue a Chinese policeman and his daughter. Kuri looks a little bit like Son Goku from Dragon Ball Z if he wore a red martial arts uniform instead of an orange one, but he also is wearing the shoulder pads synonymous with Ken from Fist of the North Star. I suspect he’s probably parodying some other famous manga and anime fighting characters. Mechanically, the game resembles Irem’s Kung-Fu Master, which is better known in Japan as an adaptation of the Jackie Chan film Spartan X, so I’m guessing (in the absence of any actual information beyond what’s in the game’s flyer) that Taito’s developers decided to take that template and just get silly with it.
Beyond the game’s excellent graphics and music, perhaps the most interesting thing about Kuri Kinton is the aura system, which charges around your character at up to three levels of power if you just stand there and do nothing for a moment, though an arm-swirling animation has to complete without being interrupted by bad guys for you to get the charge. If you hold down the punch button, you can launch a power attack; if you hold it long enough, you can even release a fireball. You also have a jump kick that can be trigged in the air or from a crouching stance; both are tremendously useful, and jumping in general moves you through the stages more quickly and makes it easier to bypass annoying underlings.
There are five stages that each have a midboss of some sort. When you reach the end of each stage, you come into a room where two Chinese dragons appear on the back wall and a bigger villain steps out. These boss encounters are where Kuri Kinton really shines, as most of the rest of the game feels like repetitive filler. It’s pretty clear that the midbosses and stage bosses are parodies of established personalities; one named “Dragon Achyo” is clearly modeled after Bruce Lee, “Windy Winny” looks a lot like famed black karateka Willie Williams, and a later foe named “Moai the Junior” seems like he’s modeled after pro wrestler Andre the Giant. The stage bosses, however, look like the caped, armored sorts of characters you’d see in Fist of the North Star and each have their own distinctive power, like shooting slices of air at you, launching a shadow clone or dodging your attacks with an invincible flying crane retreat.
Fortunately, the game’s pretty easy; Kuri Kinton offers a continue system that doesn’t set you back too far, and most of the brawls are just slugfests where you’re trying to dish out more damage than you’re receiving. Using the auras to power up your offense and defense is smart, jumping to put some distance between you and your foes can be essential and remembering to back off and throw a fireball here and there can help you chip away at tougher opponents who like to hang back or who move slowly. The game’s ending is definitely not worth the effort since it just shows the three characters staring off into the sunset, but as with so many Taito arcade games, storytelling has never been the reason for playing.
Kuri Kinton did have a global release as an arcade game (and can now be played on modern hardware as part of HAMSTER Corp.’s Arcade Archives series), but it was never translated into English, which limits the effectiveness of its humor since the bosses all start off with jokey monologues. It was eventually released as part of the Taito Legends 2 and Taito Legends Power-Up compilations, but reviewers covering those compilations tended to dismiss it as a mediocre game. I can understand that sentiment given the lack of context and the desire of a reviewer to just blow through everything in the collection and praise the obvious stand-outs. But I think reviewers did Kuri Kinton wrong by failing to recognize what the game’s trying to do. In 1988, Kung-Fu Master was still a popular enough game that you’d see it in arcades and the beat ‘em up genre standards established by Technōs’s Renegade and Double Dragon were just starting to catch on among other developers. Kuri Kinton is in the same vein as Data East’s wildly popular Bad Dudes Vs. Dragon Ninja, which is just as repetitive and janky in its combat, but more inventive in its level design and broader in its storytelling.
I won’t champion Kuri Kinton as a must-play game, but it is a lot of fun to blast through; it’s short enough to be beatable in 10-15 minutes and it has a lot of charisma despite its flaws.
As Our Series Continues…
It’s time to move on to console and arcade gaming in the 1970s and 80s, and we’re going to cover it all with an exploration into hundreds more games you’ve probably never played but definitely ought to check out. Come for amazingly great early 1980s games like Warlords, Super Locomotive, Shark! Shark!, Acrobatic Dog-Fight, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John’s Adventure and Intrepid and stick around for mid-to-late 1980s greats like Peter Pack-Rat, Penguin-kun Wars, Momoko 120%, UFO Robot Dangar, Wonder Momo, Raimais, Last Alert, The Legend of Valkyrie and the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack with wonderfully inscrutable lyrics.
If you’ve never heard of any of those games, you’re in for a treat as we explore them one by one. And If those games are all old hat to you, don’t worry; they’re just the tip of the iceberg for what we’ll be discussing!
If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!
Brought to mind River City Rampage. Will you be covering that one? Or was it too popular?