Kabuki Ittou Ryoudan

Play fighting

The PC Engine has plenty of cool fighting games in its library as Nick discovers

PC Engine 1995 Hudson soft/red Company

do you ever feel like you’re missing something important, but can’t quite put your finger on what it might be? I do, and I distinctly remember getting it when I was shopping for PC Engine games a while ago. It was something I dismissed at the time, because my setup for NEC’S dinky console includes most items required to open up the library – I have my CD-ROM unit and I have the Arcade Card, so what else could I possibly need?

For some reason, I ended up settling on buying fighting games. That’s not a genre the PC Engine is renowned for, remarkable Street Fighter II conversion aside, yet there’s actually some pretty good stuff that arrived late in the system’s life – you just have to be willing to dig for it. Kabuki Ittou Ryoudan is one of the gems, and is a spin-off of Tengai Makyou (an RPG series which is popular in Japan but virtually unknown here). This game uses the Arcade Card, and you can tell by some impressively detailed backgrounds and relatively large character sprites, as well as all the speech effects. It’s also one of the better console-exclusive fighting games of that era, with a functional combo system and special moves lifted straight from Capcom’s famous fighter.

Of course, being a Street Fighter II clone it requires a six-button controller, and that’s what I’d forgotten. So whenever I play this at the moment, I have to use the awkward compromise that’ll be familiar to anyone who tried to play Street Fighter II on the Mega Drive – pressing the start button to swap between punches and kicks. Curse my fallible memory!