Master Huang and Lee (from Last Blade) were separated at birth.

I recently got my hand on a ton of old arcade games for MAME and have been trying to go through as many arcade games as possible. Now that I am not hindered by how many quarters/tokens I have or my mom trying to drag me home from the mall, and that I have nearly every single arcade game at my disposal, I can look for all the food my elf needs.

One gem that I came across that I’ve never even heard about before was Martial Masters, a high quality 2-D fighter. Martial Masters is the game of my 1994 dreams and had it come out a decade earlier I’m sure it would have become just as big as Samurai Showdown or KOF. Unfortunately it didn’t, and aside from a few hardcore fighting games, no one has even heard of it. From wikipedia:

Martial Masters (形意拳, pronounce as “Xing Yi Quan” in Chinese; シンイーケン, pronounce as “Shin Yi Ken” in Japanese) is an arcade fighting game developed by IGS and released in 2001. The game is highly reminiscent of Capcom’s fighting games of the mid to late 90’s for its impressive 2D visual and fluid animation with mechanics very similar to those of Street Fighter III. Martial Masters is IGS’s 3rd arcade 2d fighting game, with Alien Challenge being their 1st, Killing Blade their 2nd and Spectral vs Generation being their 4th, which IGS created with Idea Factory.

While the game does feel a bit “unpolished”, for the most part it is a solid fighter with a great cast of characters. You can’t help but compare the characters with others from the genre, but I do have to say that each one stands out on their own with their unique set of moves and fighting styles. I found myself being partial towards Tiger and Master Huang.

One complaint I had with the game is that the supermoves were way too powerful and are capable of completely changing how the round is going; not quite King of Fighters powerful, but definitely enough to annoy me.

Also, there is a distinct lack of projectiles, which can be a blessing or a curse. I’ve only played this in single player mode, and sometimes it would be nice to break the melee with a fireball. However too many projectiles can be a curse when you play one of those huge gaywads who do nothing but jump around and shoot fireballs at you all day long.

Overall I like this game. It might be kind of hard to find… but not really if you know where to look. Martial Masters may lack the production value of a bigger name game, but every fan of the genre should give it a shot.

Score: 8.0

Screenshots:

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