Ken the warrior (Hokuto no Ken in the native language) is the best-known work of the duo Buronson and Tetsuo Hara, which also became very famous in Italy in the 80s/90s, initially thanks to the translation ofsouls in our language (the manga also arrived later). Who after seeing it hasn't tried to make some acquaintance explode by touching a tsubo?
Given the success, many dedicated video games have been published over the years, including Hokuto no Ken: Shin Seikimatsu Kyūseishu Densetsu of 1989 for Sega Mega Drive, which we translated as Last Battle, which had a certain resonance and which did not fail to attract a lot of criticism for some enormous gameplay problems. Exploding heads was fun (even in the censored Western version where the blood was green), but certain bosses seemed like they came out of hell, they were so resistant and could kill good Ken in a matter of moments. Furthermore, the successor to the Hokuto school was a bit slow and had quite repetitive adventures.
It's no surprise that it was massacred by critics (not in Italy, where it received overall high ratings from the magazines of the time), with for example the English magazine Mega declaring it the second worst game ever among those for the Mega Drive, giving it a humiliating 32%.
Ernani, it's you, fantastic warrior
Fortunately, Ernani S. Costa, a fan of the series and the game, took care of fixing Hokuto no Ken: Shin Seikimatsu Kyūseishu Densetsu, launching a patches which improves many aspects of the original version, adding a more sensible English translation compared to that of Last Battle, which did not do justice to the events of the anime.
The innovations introduced by Costa are, however, much more profound than just the revision of the translation: levels have been rearranged to correspond to the events of the original series, some bugs related to character portraits during dialogues have been fixed; the values of some bosses have been changed to make them more accessible and in line with the characters of the anime; the behaviors of some enemies have been changed; Ken's speed has been increased; the ricochet distances of hit enemies have been revised; Some sound effects have been changed and various bugs have been fixed.
After trying it for a few minutes we can assure you that it is a better game this way. So we invite you to update it and play with it. We can't tell you how, but if you look up Google “Hokuto no Ken: Shin Seikimatsu Kyuuseishu Densetsu (English Patched) SEGA Genesis” you will surely find something practical to start from.
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