In the summer of 1985 a ZZAP!64 writer visiting Melbourne House heard “unearthly screams” and found the staff crowded round a computer. They were playing The Way of the Exploding Fist, a karate game based, he was told, on the arcade game Karate Champ. After a trip to the local arcade to compare the two, he decided the home version was even better.
Plenty of people agreed. Fist was number one in the Commodore 64 charts that September, scored over 90% in ZZAP!64 and CRASH, and was voted Game of the Year at the 1985 Golden Joysticks. It was written a long way from its British fans, in Melbourne, Australia, by Beam Software, and CRASH later said it “founded the entire beat ’em up genre”.
Fast facts
- Developer: Beam Software, Melbourne.
- Publisher: Melbourne House.
- Released: 1985, on the Commodore 64 first (£9.95), then the Spectrum (£8.95).
- Platforms: Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron.
- Credits (CRASH): Greg (later Gregg) Barnett, Greg Holland, Stephan Taylor, Damian Watharow and William Teng. Barnett designed it.
- Reviews: ZZAP!64 93%; CRASH 92%.
- Award: Game of the Year, C&VG Golden Joystick Awards for 1985.
- Sequels: Fist II: The Legend Continues (1986) and Exploding Fist + (1988).
The fight
One player, or two, fight a karate contest in front of oriental backdrops, watched by a judge whom CRASH described as “the little bald headed bloke with the Mexican moustache”. Blows that impress him earn half a point, shown as a yin or a yang symbol, and a really well executed move earns a full yin-yang. Beat an opponent twice and you move up a rank. Against the computer you start by fighting a much-battered Novice and climb through eleven levels to the “exalted rank of 10th Dan”; lose a bout and you are sent back to the start.
The controls packed the moves onto a joystick. With the fire button up, the eight directions walk, jump, crouch, block, punch and somersault; with it held down, they become kicks, from the flying kick to the sweep and the roundhouse. Melbourne House advertised “18 different manoeuvres”. CRASH advised learning the few that worked against low-ranked opponents first, because some were fast and safe and others, like the slow roundhouse, left you open. The graphics were large: Melbourne House told ZZAP!64 that over 600 sprite images went into the animation. There were digitised grunts and cracks, and a thud when a fighter hit the floor.
Reviews and charts
ZZAP!64 reviewed the Commodore 64 version in August 1985 and gave it 93%. “As a Karate Champ fanatic I’ve been waiting for a decent 64 version for a long time,” one reviewer wrote, and this one had “state-of-the-art animation and brilliant gameplay”. It went to number one in both Commodore User’s general chart and its Commodore 64 chart in September.
The Spectrum version, at £8.95, arrived in October, and CRASH gave it 92%. It lacked the colour of the Commodore and Amstrad versions, but the reviewers found the speed and gameplay “nearly identical”, thought the monochrome fighters as effective as “the Commodore’s blocky sprites”, and noticed that the computer opponent was more vicious. “It’s here at last!” one began. “This is by far and away the best sports combat simulation available yet.” CRASH also heard at a trade show that autumn that the Spectrum version had actually been finished first, although the Commodore 64 version came out first. On the Spectrum, too, Your Sinclair counted it among that winter’s number ones on the Gallup chart. The game also came out for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, and Acorn User printed high scores for both in 1987.
At the Golden Joystick Awards for 1985, held on a Thames riverboat in 1986, C&VG’s readers made Fist Game of the Year and Melbourne House Software House of the Year, ending two years in which Ultimate had taken the top award. Alfred Milgrom, who owned both Beam and Melbourne House, later told Edge that Fist sold 500,000 copies across Europe.
Rivals
Fist started a rush of karate games. System 3’s International Karate followed at the end of 1985, and reviewers judged it almost entirely against Fist. CRASH still preferred Fist; Sinclair User found “so little to choose between the two programs” that it came down to style, and the Commodore 64 version of International Karate was, in ZZAP!64’s view, “a damn sight better”. Greg Barnett was not impressed by the rival’s soundtrack, telling ZZAP!64 in October 1986 that its music sounded like Rob Hubbard’s Thing on a Spring “slowed down”.
The sequels
Fist II: The Legend Continues (1986) was a different kind of game: an arcade adventure in which the hero crosses the scrolling lands of an evil warlord, fighting his soldiers and searching for eight scrolls. CRASH gave it 58% in March 1987, while noting that the original had “founded the entire beat ’em up genre, and imitations have poured forth ever since”.
Exploding Fist + came out in late 1988 on the Firebird label. It went back to straight fighting: Your Sinclair’s preview described opponents coming at the player in pairs, and a friend could join in to even the odds. ZZAP!64 gave it 68%.
Amstrad Action was still saying in 1994 that “every one-on-one beat-em-up ever follows a direct lineage from” the original.
Sources
- ZZAP!64 issue 3, July 1985: preview from a visit to Melbourne House (the “unearthly screams”; “based, so I’m told, on the highly popular arcade game Karate Champ”).
- ZZAP!64 issue 4, August 1985, pp. 30–31: Way of the Exploding Fist review (93%; £9.95; “over 600 sprite images”; the moves). The same issue: Melbourne House advertisement (“18 different manoeuvres”).
- CRASH issue 21, October 1985, pp. 12–13: The Way of the Exploding Fist review and credits (92%; £8.95; the judge, the yin-yang points, the eleven levels). The same issue: PCW Show report (the Spectrum version “finished first”).
- Commodore User, September 1985, p. 35: general and Commodore 64 charts.
- Your Sinclair issue 4, April 1986: the Spectrum number ones of the previous four months.
- Computer & Video Games issue 55, May 1986, pp. 90–91: Golden Joystick Awards for 1985.
- Acorn User issue 55, February 1987: high score table (Exploding Fist on the BBC Micro and the Electron).
- Sinclair User issue 46, January 1986, pp. 20–21: International Karate review, comparing it with Fist. ZZAP!64 issue 14, June 1986, pp. 20–21: International Karate review.
- ZZAP!64 issue 18, October 1986, pp. 47–48: interview with Greg Barnett.
- ZZAP!64 issue 20, December 1986, p. 155: Fist II: The Legend Continues review (the scrolls and the Warlord).
- CRASH issue 38, March 1987, p. 100: Fist II review (58%; “founded the entire beat ’em up genre”).
- Your Sinclair issue 35, November 1988: Exploding Fist + preview (Firebird). ZZAP!64 issue 49, May 1989: review index (Exploding Fist +, 68%, issue 46).
- Edge issue 46, June 1997: Beam Software profile (Fist’s sales). Edge issue 102, October 2001: “The making of… Shadowrun” (Gregg Barnett as the designer of Exploding Fist).
- Amstrad Action issue 109, October 1994: “a direct lineage”.