Hokuto no Ken 6: Gekitou Denshouken - Haou heno Michi (SNES) review "Hokuto no Ken 6 is a lousy fighting game on the SNES based on the popular Fist of the North Star series. The series was pretty popular in America and Japan a few years back but nowadays it seems that there is only a small cluster of fans of this hardcore anime left. I am proud to say that I am one of those fans and those who have not watched a Fist of the North Star episode or read any of the manga novels are seriously missing out. The series was based in a post-apocalyptic period where the worl..."

Hokuto no Ken 6 is a lousy fighting game on the SNES based on the popular Fist of the North Star series. The series was pretty popular in America and Japan a few years back but nowadays it seems that there is only a small cluster of fans of this hardcore anime left. I am proud to say that I am one of those fans and those who have not watched a Fist of the North Star episode or read any of the manga novels are seriously missing out. The series was based in a post-apocalyptic period where the world has changed into a nightmarish land ruled by violence. It followed the adventures of Kenshiro, the successor to the Hokuto Shinken martial art. He basically went around fighting his power hungry brothers and an entire gallery of heartless enemies eager for power over the new world.

So it seemed obvious that in the bowels of the games library of most retro systems that a game bearing the Hokuto name would lie decaying. After all I can't say I have found many good games based from manga and anime series and the chances were that any Hokuto game is destined to suck. If Raoh had anything to say about this it would probably be on the lines like The Gods have already condemned the Hokuto series of games (or the majority of them) to death!" and the sad thing is that he would be right. Hokuto no Ken 6 is no exception here and follows the doomed path that most of the games fall down.

This time the HnK game is a fighting game, taking a break from the usual action or RPG format that its prequels followed. The concept seemed like a brilliant idea, taking a selection of the greatest fighters in the series and putting them in a fighting game so they could kick the hell out of each other but Toei messed up here big time. The selection of fighters are adequate to say the least. You have Heart, the overweight giant with rubber like flab that is impervious to punches. You have a few less known characters like the Demon God Kaioh, Kuroyasha, a old midget with claws who uses the Hokuto Ryuuken style, Falco, a general in Raoh's army.

The other four characters are the better fighters to use and are some of the more popular characters in the series. Souther (okay, not THAT popular) is a man who gave up emotion after killing his master accidentally in a training exercise. He is a master of Nanto Seiken (Hokuto Shinken's rival school of martial art) and a deadly fighter in that art. Rei is also a master of a Nanto Seiken style and has the fighting grace of a waterbird. He is Ken's best friend and accompanied him on many adventures. Last but not least we have Raoh, the oldest of the four Hokuto brothers and a man with amazing power and strength and Kenshiro, the Hokuto master with Seven scars on his chest, a man who needs little introduction.

Hnk6 is a little off when you control your chosen character. First of every character you play moves as if they have crabs. The controls are so stiff that it's almost impossible to make any quick movements. Anywho during a fight you will notice that your character has three bars at the top of the screen (a recipe for confusion no doubt). One is your health bar which lowers down until you are defeated, the other is your speciality gauge which controls your characters Aura. If you charge your aura you will be able to pull off special attacks which range from devastating punches to minute projectiles. If you do charge up your aura an actual aura will appear around your character allowing him to perform stronger moves. It will change colour from yellow to green and this will indicate the current power that you have charged up, If you charge it to the max then you can produce more effective moves.

The reasons why Hokuto no Ken 6 is poor isn't just the confusing power gauges and iffy controls but the fact that the game picks a lot of lousy characters and leaves some of the better ones out in the cold. Kenshiro, Rei and Raoh are fighters that deserve to be in this game but the majority of the other characters are poor. The inclusion of better and more important characters like Toki, Jagi and Shin would have probably helped made this game better mainly due to those characters are more interesting than Kaioh, who is pretty much Raoh with few mutations anyway and Heart. If characters like those were included in the game and a few of lesser known ones removed it would've contributed a bit in this game's improvement.

Hokuto no Ken 6 follows in the footsteps of most of it's brothers and flops and most angles. With very stiff controls which makes the characters jerk around like robots, an average range of characters from the series which could have been edited easily enough to house more interesting and important ones and also a confusing gauge system Hokuto no Ken 6 is a poor mans Street Fighter. It will only be enjoyed by really hardcore fans and even then I still doubt that fans will find it that great.

Don't even bother, HnK6 will only disappoint you instead why not import the one on the Playstation instead. I bet that one even had blood in it!

Community review by goldenvortex (February 21, 2005) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.