The game appears to more or less take this story and run with it, but as it’s a fighting game, the story is fairly minimal, and as it’s in Japanese, it’s not readily understandable anyway. The story of Fist of the North Star, the anime/manga, more or less follows Kenshiro (Ken) around as he traverses a Mad Max-esque environment, looking for his girlfriend/revenge, depending on the part of the story arc, and the stories usually involve a decent amount of fighting.
The gameplay, on the other hand… well, let’s start from the beginning. Fist of the North Star, at its core, seems like the sort of product that would SCREAM for an awesome fighting game interesting, odd characters with weird fighting styles and battles that culminate with people exploding? That would be the most awesome thing ever if done properly, and on a presentation level, ASW certainly managed to give it a good shot. This has, interestingly enough, gained the company a few non- GG 2D fighting projects to work on one from Capcom in the form of Sengoku Basara X (a 2D fighting game based on characters from the game Devil Kings), and one from Sega in the form of Hokuto No Ken, AKA Fist of the North Star, which we’re looking at now. They’ve basically become among the most recognizable 2D fighting game makers on the market, at least in the US, due in large part to the fact that they’re among the few companies who are consistently making 2D fighters anymore, let alone ones that people care about. While the former two are really more things that only people who pay attention could really be asked to care about with any degree of significance, the last is certainly not, as Guilty Gear has managed to become one of the most popular 2D fighters in existence in the past several years, due in large part to amazing high-quality sprites and weird characters, and in small part to a fighting system that’s not too bad. Arc System Works is essentially known for three things, in reverse-order of “how interested in import gaming you’d have to be to know this”Â: publishing the more recent “ Kunio-Kun“ (AKA River City Ransom/ Dodgeball) games in Japan, Castle Shikigami, and Guilty Gear.