Phantom Fighter ・ 霊幻道士
Developed by: Marionette
Published by: Pony Canyon (JP) | FCI (NA)
Release date: September 16, 1988 (JP) | April 1990 (NA)
Today’s game is about some of the most iconic monsters to emerge from the Eastern horror scene: kyonshi, AKA jiangshi, AKA Chinese hopping vampires! Even if the way they awkwardly hop to get around can look sorta dorky, the idea that they move that way because of intense rigor mortis is some freaky stuff.
Though they’re well known in the horror stratosphere today, kyonshi were obscure outside of their native China until 80’s comedy/horror/action flick Mr. Vampire kicked off a hopping vampire mania throughout Asia…but especially Japan. There were TV shows, video games, board games, and toys aplenty. Because damn, it was the 80’s and anything can be a media blitz if you try hard enough!
Phantom Fighter was a product of this kyonshi gold rush. Directly based off of Mr. Vampire, Phantom Fighter has players taking up the role of unibrow rocking kung-fu master Kenchi. You can tell he’s a master by the way his robes never stop flowing, even when he’s standing stone still. As Kenchi, you must kung fu fight your way through eight villages being terrorized by the kyonshi, defeating the monsters and upgrading your abilities along the way.
The format of the game goes like this: the overworld is a simple side scrolling town filled with houses. Entering a house means fighting a kyonshi. You’ll often have to fight more than one in quick succession, but it’s always a one-on-one battle. Beat up that undead nuisance and earn yourself a useful item. Earn three jade orbs to fight the level’s boss, and move onto the next one. There are eight levels, or “towns” of this, so it’s a lengthy case of rinsing and repeating until the game wraps up.
Phantom Fighter is sort of like a fighting game before “fighting games” were even a thing. Prepare to punch, kick, and uh… punch and kick some more. If you’re expecting flashy moves or a plethora of combos, you’re gonna be disappointed. Street Fighter II was a loooong ways away in ’88. Anyways, you can upgrade Kenchi’s punches and kicks as you progress, meaning they’ll become stronger, flashier, and marginally more interesting…but at its core, the combat is extremely simple.
The kyonshi themselves are dead boring to battle. The only variations between them are the speed and distance at which they hop towards you. Once you figure out the right distance to keep yourself at to hit them before they can hit you, combat becomes so simple it may as well not even be happening. While we’re on the subject of how easy fighting is, the overall difficulty of Phantom Fighter is low. There are passwords for each level, and continues are endless (and take away your items, but not your abilities or progress through the level). As long as you have the time to trudge through eight levels, you will make it out on the other side as a vampire slaying master.
Defeating a kyonshi means you’ll be rewarded with an item. There are items meant to help you in battle, like the movement halting talisman and magic mirror, but I had no use for these by the second level thanks to how hench the levelled up kick is. Speaking of, the most important of all the items is the ancient scroll, which are currency to upgrade Kenchi’s abilities. You can endlessly re-enter houses that yields ancient scrolls to grind them out by fighting the same kyonshi over and over again, adding a light RPG element to the game. A tedious element, yes, but an element all the same.
Visually, Phantom Fighter‘s got a moody atmosphere that uses pops of colour to make the characters stand out against the dark, detailed backgrounds. The sprite work during battles is lovely and fluid, and does a great job of giving a pop of personality to the otherwise personality-less characters. It’s so good that the Famicom version namedrops the dude in charge of overseeing sprite animations on the back of the box: Yuji Moriyama. Moriyama is a hotshot animator who worked on big anime titles of the time, like Urusei Yatsura and Zeta Gundam. And boy, can he make those pixels dance. Music-wise, it’s not quite as impressive. I’ve already forgotten every song in the game, and I only finished it last night. The compositions are competent, but lack any oomph to leave a lasting impression.
I don’t think Phantom Fighter is a good game, but there’s something strangely compelling about it. It’s eight long levels of brainless battling, the kyonshi fights are all the exact same as one another, and you’re expected to further that tedium by grinding out scrolls to make your character suck less. Despite all that…I liked it? I found myself getting engrossed in the game’s gloomy atmosphere and kyonshi ass whoopin’, and before I knew it, time zipped right on by me. Maybe the joy of repeatedly roundhouse kicking vampires in the face scratched an itch I didn’t know I had. Or maybe I’m just insane. Who knows?
Objectively, I’d rate Phantom Fighter a 5 out of 10, but subjectively, it gets a solid 7 from me. Let’s meet in the middle and call it a 6, shall we? Unless you have an undying love for kyonshi or a fetish for action game grinding, you’ll likely want to hop far away from this one…but I still can’t deny the strange hold it had on me. The best way I could describe it is that it’s got an unquantifiable charm that only a NES game developed in 1988 Japan could have. If you actually pick up what I’m throwing down with that vague and confusing statement, you just might like Phantom Fighter, too.
NESJunk 