1985 · Famicom · Game story
Yie Ar Kung-Fu (Famicom, 1985): Sixteen Answers in a Narrow Room
Lee enters Menma Tower to stop the Chow Mein family, but the Japanese Famicom Yie Ar Kung-Fu is really about a smaller question: which of sixteen answers fits the distance between two fighters right now?
In this story
The tower has one door at a time
The Japanese Famicom Yie Ar Kung-Fu begins with an admirably direct mission. Nintendo says the Chow Mein family has accumulated evil deeds, and that Lee enters Menma Tower to defeat them and return peace. The tower is a succession of meetings, and each asks the same basic question with a different face: can Lee make the opponent’s energy reach zero before his own does? The story is grand enough to justify the climb, then compact enough to leave the screen to the fight. 1 7
Nintendo’s rule guide says that defeating an enemy advances Lee to the next stage; losing all of Lee’s energy repeats the fight and costs one remaining life. The next door is never abstract. It is guarded by the present opponent’s energy bar, their chosen distance and the player’s ability to stay composed in a narrow room long enough to find the useful reply. Menma Tower feels large because each room must be understood before another room can exist. That is a useful kind of scale for an early action game: not a long walk between events, but a sequence of close encounters in which attention is the price of seeing the next view. 3
Trivia Nintendo’s Japanese copy gives the villains the food-like family name Chow Mein and gives their fortress the name Menma Tower. Those names make the rescue of peace feel oddly cheerful rather than solemn. The tower can still be dangerous, but it is dangerous in the cartoon logic of a game willing to make a kung-fu legend climb a building named after a noodle topping. 1 7
See it in action
Sixteen is not too many
Konami’s corporate history records a precise fact about the Famicom version: lever, punch and kick combinations produce sixteen techniques. Nintendo’s history names the ingredients in player language—jumps, punches, flying kicks and low kicks—and the control guide adds high kicks. Sixteen does not turn the fight into homework. It gives the player several ways to say the same urgent sentence: I am close, I am low, I am above you, or I need you to stop coming toward me. 8 6 4
Nintendo says Lee moves left and right, crouches with down, jumps with up and can jump diagonally. Punch includes a crouching low punch, while kick has four varieties. A technique is therefore not a flourish selected from a menu. It comes from a body’s relationship to the floor and the opponent. The player chooses a direction, chooses punch or kick, and discovers whether the resulting posture is the one the current distance has been asking for. 4
Trivia Sixteen techniques are built from a lever and two attack buttons, according to Konami. That is the game’s neatest magic trick. It does not hand the player a huge controller and claim complexity; it asks a few inputs to become expressive because the opponent, distance and timing give them different meanings. 8
Distance is a fighter
Nintendo’s advice makes the real opponent visible: distance. All enemies except Wang attack from afar when the gap opens, by breathing fire or throwing shuriken, while Lee has no long-range attack. The consequence is not simply “always rush.” Distance must be chosen rather than inherited. Too far away, and the other fighter writes the exchange with a projectile. Close enough, and Lee can finally use the actions that belong to his body. The arena becomes a negotiation over who sets the language of the next second. 5
Jumping is how Lee revises that negotiation. Nintendo says a jump can clear an enemy when Lee is pressed to the wall, avoid attacks, adjust distance, and even create a triangle jump when aimed at a wall. The move is not merely vertical escape. It redraws the side of the opponent on which the next action will occur. Surviving a projectile is useful; landing where the other fighter must now turn around is better. 5 4
Trivia Wang is singled out by Nintendo as the one opponent excluded from the distant-attack rule. That small exception gives a basic lesson in enemy identity. “Keep close” is a useful answer to a pattern, not a religious commandment. When an opponent changes the pattern, the player has to start reading again. 5
Five names, five problems
Nintendo identifies Lee’s first set of five opponents as Wang, Tao, Chen, Lan and Wu. It says their specialities differ—one may use staff technique, another breathe fire—and that the player should discover weaknesses and effective approaches through repeated fighting. The game does not ask for one universal strongest move. It asks for five small studies in how a fighter behaves when the same compact control vocabulary is placed in front of a different threat. 2
The opponent names turn progression into recognition. After one fight, the player does not simply receive a new colour of energy bar. They meet another person whose specialty changes the meaning of crouch, jump, punch and kick. Nintendo’s catalogue says a victory comes when the opponent’s energy reaches zero; the overview supplies the richer context that the route to zero is not identical. Forward movement is earned by noticing where a tactic has stopped being a solution. 1 2
Trivia Nintendo’s Famicom history compresses the enemy parade into a vivid list: staff, fire, chain, shuriken and flying body attack. It reads like carnival signs, but it also explains the rhythm. Each new object or movement asks Lee to become less attached to the last successful answer, because the next opponent has brought a different question into the room. 6
The fifth victory is not the end
A run through five opponents does not settle Menma Tower. Nintendo’s rule guide says every five defeated enemies make the future opponents stronger. This is a compact way to let familiarity become dangerous. The player may know the names and broad attacks, yet the game refuses to let that knowledge become a permanent exemption from attention. Victory teaches a pattern; the next cycle asks whether the player can still perform it when the other side has become less forgiving. 3
When Lee’s energy reaches zero, a remaining life decreases and the battle begins again; when no lives remain, the game returns to the title screen. The tower is not a set of disposable demonstrations. A player can practise an enemy, but every failed practice has a cost that makes the next attempt alert. The game is generous enough to repeat the encounter and stern enough to make repetition feel like learning rather than free sightseeing. 3
Trivia Nintendo says “after every five enemies, they become stronger,” not “a second story begins.” The game keeps the same basic tower and turns the screw on the player instead. No new mythology is required. Familiar fighters simply ask whether the person holding the controller has grown as much as Lee’s next opponents have. 3
The kick that breaks a weapon
Lee’s best defensive move can look like an insult. Nintendo’s overview says he can high-kick a thrown weapon out of the air. The action does more than avoid damage; it changes the emotional hierarchy of a projectile. A fan or sword arrives as proof that the opponent controls space from afar. A well-timed kick returns the proof as confidence. The player has not waited for danger to pass; they have made danger look fragile in the instant it could be treated that way. 2
Nintendo says the stage breaks include a bonus game for destroying flying fans and swords. In the fight, an incoming object is a pressure test. Between stages, similar objects become a target-rich celebration of the same awareness. The bonus stage does not abandon the game’s timing lesson; it lets the player enjoy the answer without an enemy energy bar turning every mistake into a tactical setback. 1
Trivia Destroy every fan and sword in the bonus stage, or defeat an opponent without taking a hit, and Nintendo awards a 5,000-point Perfect. The two conditions rhyme. One is a clean fight, the other a clean breakage performance. Both reward the player for turning a hectic screen into small, precisely judged moments. 5
A score can buy a second chance
Perfect is not only bragging rights. Nintendo says reaching a prescribed score increases Lee’s remaining lives, and explicitly invites players to pursue Perfects for that reason. Score is connected to survival rather than pasted above the fight as decoration. A clean response to an enemy or a complete bonus-stage performance can become another chance to learn a later opponent. The game rewards style in the old arcade-minded way that matters most: it can keep the adventure alive. 5
The Level selection at the title screen gives the climb another quiet decision before the first punch. Nintendo says the player chooses LEVEL and then enters the match. It is not necessary to invent exact difficulty values to appreciate the gesture. The game lets a player decide what kind of test to request, then makes every later life, distance adjustment and Perfect sit inside that request. 3
Trivia Nintendo connects Perfect to 5,000 points and connects sufficient score to an extra life. The chain is visible: play with care, receive a named accolade, watch a number grow, earn another chance. For all the kung-fu drama, its mercy is a small accounting system that notices when the player has made a difficult sequence look effortless. It is also an invitation to replay a favourite enemy with one cleaner, calmer plan in mind. 5
A title with several lives
Yie Ar Kung-Fu invites version mistakes because its official history contains more than one record. Konami’s corporate history says the 1985 Famicom game converted an arcade game and specifies the Famicom’s sixteen techniques. Yet Konami’s official Arcade Archives page tells a different arcade story: its hero is Oolong, avenging his late father through a championship cup. The contrast is not a contradiction to smooth away. It gives the Famicom record for Lee, Menma Tower and the Chow Mein family its own sharp outline. 8 9 7
Nintendo’s Wii list gives Yie Ar Kung-Fu 2 its own entry, while the regional NES Classics materials describe a service collection that carries older games into a newer setting. The Japanese Famicom record keeps the focus on a brisk, self-contained action lesson: Lee, five named foes, sixteen actions, energy bars, bonus weapons and a tower that asks for better timing every time it repeats. Those elements create a memorable rhythm of their own. Each new fight adjusts the pressure, and each return to the same small arena makes room for a more exact response to distance, timing and the opponent’s chosen trick. The rhythm rewards a watchful, flexible fighter. 10 11 1
Trivia Konami calls the Famicom game one of the origins of fighting games, while Nintendo calls it a work that can be called the origin of the genre. The useful point is not to crown one version as the only ancestor. This Japanese Famicom program contributes two buttons, a direction, a narrow room, and enough possible answers to make the next distance feel newly dangerous. 7 2
Sources & image credits
Facts were checked against the links below. Official media remains the property of Nintendo and the relevant rights holders.
- イー・アル・カンフー — Nintendo Classics Nintendo ↗
- VC イー・アル・カンフー — overview Nintendo ↗
- VC イー・アル・カンフー — rules Nintendo ↗
- VC イー・アル・カンフー — controls Nintendo ↗
- VC イー・アル・カンフー — advice Nintendo ↗
- ファミコン年表 — イー・アル・カンフー Nintendo ↗
- イー・アル・カンフー — KONAMI Wii Virtual Console Konami ↗
- Konami product history — Yie Ar Kung-Fu (FC) Konami Group ↗
- イー・アル・カンフー — Arcade Archives Konami ↗
- Wii Virtual Console software list Nintendo ↗
- Nintendo Entertainment System — Nintendo Classics Nintendo of Europe ↗
- Yie Ar Kung-Fu (1985) MobyGames ↗
