The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - Cloud Master (a.k.a. Chuka Taisen and Monkey King: Master of the Clouds)
Check out this amusing sidescrolling shoot ‘em up where you ride a cloud and fight goofy enemies.
RELEASE DATE: 1989
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Hot-B / Taito
BEST VERSIONS: Arcade (original), PC Engine (adaptation)
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Somewhat playable
I first came across Cloud Master as a Sega Master System game, and with good reason – it’s the only version of the game that ever made it to North America. But it’s also a scaled down port of a more graphically impressive arcade game known as Chuka Taisen, a sidescrolling shoot ‘em up where you play as a sage named Michael Chen who’s trying to power himself up to become a superhuman by battling all sorts of strange characters from Asian mythology and culture – bowls of noodles, cat heads, tiger heads, panda heads, Chinese dragons, birds with men’s heads, mahjong tiles, little boys riding clouds and shooting lightning, gyozas and monkeys that jump around the screen and shoot bullets at you.
It's a strange shooter that feels like a mixture of Journey to the West and Parodius. It’s not quite bonkers enough to be a true bakage (“stupid game”), nor is it anything near a kusoge (“crappy game”). And while I won’t defend it as a great shoot ‘em up – it’s actually quite mediocre, with a few annoyances I’ll cover in a moment – the painted backgrounds, wonderful character sprites and weird concept definitely help to enhance an experience that would feel quite “meh” if this were just another Gradius clone.
Mechanically, Cloud Master is similar to Namco’s Ordyne or Sega’s Fantasy Zone in that you purchase upgrades as you play by entering shops that will appear as doorways on the screen from time to time. But whereas these other games only allow you to purchase some upgrades permanently and limit the others to a certain amount of time or number of shots, Cloud Master allows you to keep your upgrades for as long as you can stay alive and also provides you with jars you can pick up that boost your power and speed or provide other benefits like giving you auto-fire or providing you with an extra life. You earn these by shooting down strings of gyoza or shumai, and if you can manage to increase your shot power while you equip one of the many special weapons you can purchase, you can turn Michael Chen from a relatively weak fighter into a true cloud master who annihilates nearly everything on the screen.
I say “nearly” because the catch is that there are indestructible enemies and also occasional pillars of rock on the ground which bring us to one of the first annoying aspects of the game: its tendency to place ground enemies in places where they are protected by rocks and can’t be easily killed. The problem is that enemies that get behind you tend to create shot vectors you’re not used to dodging and can make it very easy to steer Michael Chen into a stray bullet without realizing it. Since ground enemies only ever appear along the bottom of the screen and rocks are the only obstacle you have to deal with, the design choice feels both lazy and repetitive.
Fortunately, Michael Chen has a second attack that allows him to drop bombs from up high, and if you can get up and around the rocks, you can usually hit the foes on the other side. Bombs are among the most powerful weapons in the game and can also be upgraded to change their behavior, including bouncing bombs, homing bombs, scatter bombs and super bombs that can destroy obstacles.
Michael’s can also replace his bombs with a secondary weapon such as a rotating fire shield, a set of guard fireballs that can shoot up, down and behind him, arching crescents that come up above or below Michael and then shoot across the screen, a spell that sends little images of Michael in diagonal directions or the ultra-powerful dragon flame that circles Michael before shooting off ahead of him.
Cloud Master is a tough game due to the frequency of shots you have to dodge, some unkillable enemies and rock obstacles, a lack of in-flight continues and frustrating one-hit kills. Fortunately, the game is short, with just five levels that take about 4-5 minutes each to play through. Aside from the graphics, the levels don’t feel too different, and even the wild-looking enemies have similar patterns much of the time. Each stage contains a mid-boss who rides around on a cloud and shoots spread-shot lightning bolts at you and a larger main boss such as a phoenix, a kappa (turtle spirit), a giant buddha, a shogun or a huge Chinese dragon. Defeating the mid-boss allows you to enter the doorway to select a power-up from a group of four. Once you defeat the main bosses, you visit your master in the sky to receive your next mission as well as some praise.
While Cloud Master includes a two-player mode, it involves taking turns rather than fighting with a friend. The checkpoint system when you die is also quite annoying since it can be hard to known how far back you’ve been set and many of the enemy waves feel repetitive. The game’s at its best when it gives you a chance to power up and blast out huge waves of attacks, but getting to that point either requires a lot of practice or an emulator with saved state capabilities.
While the arcade and Sega Master System are functionally the same, the PC Engine version, titled Gokuraku Chuka Taisen, seems to be about the Monkey King rather than Michael Chen. The biggest difference in this game is that it actually has halfway decent level design due to some more imaginative sequences that utilize the backgrounds effectively (like armored knights walking along the ramparts of a castle as they also threaten you from the ground) and more varied sequences where you fly in other directions. The story and progression feel completely different, and the boss battles are a lot more impressive and interesting, often requiring you to actually think about what you’re doing instead of just dodging the same patterns over and over.
(I also absolutely adore the boss battle at the end of round 4 where you’re fighting a golden buddha who’s wearing sunglasses and taking puffs of his cigarette with a bored expression on his face as he mercilessly attacks you – that sort of personality really makes the game memorable!)
If I were to recommend just one of the two games, I’d say Gokuraku Chuka Taisen is the better of the two, but it’s also not translated into English at all while Cloud Master is. My advice, then, is to cut your teeth on Cloud Master and then grit your way through the Japanese in Gokuraku Chuka Taisen. For both, you’re probably going to need to track down a game ROM for an emulator since Cloud Master’s North American release can be an extremely expensive Sega Master System cartridge to find on the secondhand market and the arcade version is better anyway. Since you’ll be able to save your state and avoid some frustrating repetition, you’ll come out ahead.
There are also a couple of more modern choices. A company called Starfish SD made up of some developers from Hot-B re-released the game in 2018 for the Switch, PlayStation 4 and Steam as Monkey King: Master of the Clouds, including HD graphics and a co-op mode. It’s easy to find for about 5 bucks, but, to be honest, it’s not a strong port of the game and I don’t really recommend it unless you want to support the developer.
Starfish SD also released a 2008 Wii follow-up called Shin Chuuka Taisen: Michael to Meimei no Bouken (released in North America as The Monkey King: The Legend Begins). It’s telling that few of the reviewers even realized it’s a remake-style sequel to the original arcade game. Part of that might be because the box art, which in Japan featured the colorful cartoon characters from the game, was replaced with a movie poster-style depiction of an armored Monkey King standing and looking wistfully at a landscape. It looks like a completely different sort of game than what’s actually on the disc, and I can understand the cognitive dissonance there for someone unfamiliar with the original.
The game is changed a little bit by giving you the choice of playing as Wukong Chen (the Monkey King) or his female friend Mei Mei, and there’s a lot more text to read as the characters interact with one another. It’s also very easy and sort of slow-paced, though the climactic battle with the Great Dragon in round 5 does result in a new sixth level where you get sent to Hell to fight The Great Demon. Unfortunately, the levels lack the variety of the PC Engine edition.
While I don’t think Shin Chuuka Taisen is a great follow-up due to its budgetware feel and far easier level of difficulty, it does have cute graphics, an amusing story and similar gameplay to the arcade version of the game. It’s definitely an overlooked shooter that’s not quite a hidden gem, but certainly better than the 4.5 out of 10 that IGN’s clueless reviewer awarded it. If you want to play Cloud Master and have a Wii, check it out by all means; it’s pretty easy to find and doesn’t cost too much.
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.
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