He wields Hokuto Shinken, the "Divine Fist of the North Star", which allows him to instantly kill his foes in a spray of blood by hitting certain pressure points. A handful of masters of secret martial arts techniques protect ordinary citizens from gangs roaming the wastes. In Fist of the North Star, the world has turned into a desert wasteland following a nuclear holocaust. Fist of the North Star looks and plays like a game that didn't have the same resources as Sega's crime saga, and thus overly relies on these elements. That's a bit of a gamble, since the Yakuza studio arguably created an enjoyable game despite the often repetitive gameplay. Nightclubs double as courthouses where might is right.įist of the North Star shares a lot of Yakuza's mechanics, but none of the humour. Fist of the North Star was developed by the same studio and uses the same blueprint, so it stands to reason that Yakuza fans might enjoy it just as much. In a way, Sega's decision to release Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise in the west suggests a similar experimental approach, born from the bafflement of having struck gold with Yakuza.
Since Fist of the North Star lacks the humour of a series like Dragon Ball however, audiences didn't quite know where to go with it. Its eventual release overseas always seemed like an experiment, based on the immense success the title had in Japan and the lack of a clearly defined audience for anime and manga in the west. Initially conceived as a collaboration between writer Sho "Buronson" Fumimura and illustrator Tetsuo Hara, Fist of the North Star was definitely the kind of thing that made my parents associate anime with violence and over-sexualisation long before Ghibli's "My Neighbour Totoro" could smooth things over.
Unlike some other games based on enduring animes from the 90s, Fist of the North Star might not be immediately familiar. Sega's marriage between its best-selling series and the cult anime ends up sloppy and half-hearted.