Retro Friday #11: Kaiser Knuckle

Just checked the calendar and I have great news to share, it's Friday once again! I've picked out an even older game this time around – Kaiser Knuckle.

Usually I'd try to open with a pre-amble about some development details or historical background, but unfortunately, many video games around this era were barely documented. People would start and finish a project within months and then just move on. No context, no notes, no post-mortem.

That said, with Kaiser Knuckle dropping in 1994 it's not hard to guess what they were going for, even a fraction of SF2's success was extremely valuable back then, but to its credit, KK did a few cool things that truly set it apart from the title of a clone.

But most of the gameplay was still incredibly reminiscent of its peers. For one, the controls were a carbon copy of Street Fighter, with Capcom's classic 3 kicks and 3 punches of various strength. Bizarre as it is, the game actually had not just 3 but 5 different strength levels total. Outside of your typical single buttons, you could do LP+MP for Super Punch and MP+HP for Extreme Punch, same with kicks.

Other than that, nothing special really going on with the controls, just your classic quarter circles, DP, and some admittedly weird inputs for desperation moves.

Even the way characters played would remind you a lot of Street Fighter, but it's hard to blame them in that regard. Capcom essentially created the genre and made a shining example of how to do it right, so why would a fresh batch of developers try to reinvent the wheel?

Their approach to innovation was just adding something extra to the existing formula, and making it more bombastic instead of potentially screwing up something that works just fine. That's how Power meter came to be.

The Power meter in Kaiser Knuckle charges up as you deal or take damage, fill it all the way up and the next special will inflict massive damage on the stage and activate the power zones. Since they were tied to stage destruction, it typically presented as some sort of fire or electrical hazard that would enhance the special moves of characters standing within.

Said destruction was probably one of the most impressive things about the game, at least for its time. Maybe they knew they couldn't beat Street Fighter in terms of gameplay and character design, but they certainly won in terms of the presentation.

Kaiser Knuckle is a pretty great looking game, from stages to special effects and character sprite work. They might not have the greatest animations, but they were still drawn with meticulous detail, stages in particular.

Even though the major destruction was locked behind the aforementioned power meter, you could still bang up the stages quite a bit. My personal favorite is how modular the flood destruction is. It's separated into neat little chunks, so scoring a knockdown would lead to this spectacular effect of your opponent breaking said chunk and making the stage look increasingly more messed up.

It also might just be the first 2D fighting game with wall breaks that actually expand the play area. The next closest thing I could think of is from Fighting Vipers that I covered before, and there it was just an end of the round spectacle.

As you might expect from this description, Kaiser Knuckle wasn't exactly a massive success. Few people cared about this game when it came out, which wasn't helped by the updated editions never properly getting a chance to see the light of days.

However, it found itself a cozy spot within a niche of the FGC that tends to explore these older janky titles in more depth. Thunderia in particular had quite a few small tournaments for it which were fun to watch, so give them a try on YouTube if you want to see what it looks like when people actually know how to play.

Other than that, it's pretty infamous for having an "impossible" final boss in its original version. This guy isn't just eating up coins, he's melting them down and forging more and more hammers to clobber you with. You'd think that all these bosses have their own cheesy approach, and you're not wrong, but even cheesing him out is not simple, let alone beating him with characters that barely have tools for that.

If you beat the General at all, massive props to you, but if you've beaten him with Boggy on top of that? You might just be a legend.

Thank you for tuning in once again, I wish you all a fantastic weekend, and here is your music track for the week!