You would think that after all these years, villains would finally realize that kidnapping the girl never leads to anything but a truckload of trouble. But luckily for gamers, these sinister scoundrels have proven to be slow-learners, and a seemingly endless supply of damsel in distress games has continuously dotted the arcade landscape. Borrowing on a premise from the Bruce Lee film, Game of Death, Kung Fu Master placed our hero in a multi-leveled building, with each floor upping the adversarial ante.

Released in 1984 by Data East, the storyline began with resident martial arts aficionado Thomas taking a leisurely stroll with his lady friend Silvia. Their pleasant outing takes a turn for the worse when a gang of “several unknown guys” converges on the couple, kidnapping Silvia in the process. When malevolent martial arts master Mr. X takes responsibility for the assault, Thomas shows up at the door of his lair, the danger-filled Devil’s Temple.

Entering the five-level structure, Thomas has to successfully battle his way past groups of purple-shirted pursuers. The first level is filled with Grippers, who lower his life bar each time they grab him, as well as Knife Throwers, who do exactly what you might expect. And with each new level, new deadly challenges await. Small dwarves known as Tom Toms (which have a pesky habit of jumping on the hero’s head,) fire-breathing dragons, poisonous moths, snakes and other aggressors make Tom’s journey a daunting one. Complicating matters, each level has its own boss that must be eliminated before he can ascend to the next floor. The first two floor bosses attack with a sticks and boomerangs, while the third is a foreboding giant, the fourth a practitioner of black magic, and finally, level five, humble abode of Mr. X. Take him out of commission and you start the whole thing over, with the difficulty level raised of course. If that weren’t enough pressure, there is time level for each floor that must not be exceeded.

Players were armed with simple controls for this side scrolling adventure – two buttons, one for punching, the other for kicking, plus a joystick to move around and crouch. Punches were twice as powerful as kicks, but with their limited range, they are also more dangerous. You would need a careful combination of both to bring the lady back into your arms.

Players lined up at arcades for a chance to master this challenging and popular game, and it is indeed one of the founding fathers of the fighting genre, paving the way for such future titles as Double Dragon and Final Fight. Of course, none of these games might have emerged, had the villains ever once contemplated leaving the poor girls alone in the first place. Luckily for fighting game fans, however, they never seem to figure it out.