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Budokan: The Martial Spirit

Electronic Arts released Budokan: The Martial Spirit for IBM PC MS-DOS 2.11 in November of 1989. Budokan: The Martial Spirit is notable for its simulation of four styles of martial art, array of moves and sprite animations. However, it is not as fun to play as International Karate of 1986.

Budokan Features

4x Tobiko-Ryu Dojo Okinawan martial arts: Karate, Kendo, Nunchaku, Bo
Free Spar: Single-player mode or 2-player versus mode
12x matches
6x Kyu ranks & 10x Dan ranks
12x martial arts styles represented
25x martial art moves per style
Regenerating Stamina Bar & Ki Bar
60-70x frames of sprite animation per martial art
Toggleable sprite drop-shadows
Toggleable digitized sound effects

Criticism of Budokan: There is no ability to save progress between long and tedious bouts or return to the main menu from within even a practice fight. When you quit out the game dumps you back to DOS and you have to go through the copy protection sequence again.

Budokan Technical

PC Budokan displays in 4-color CGA 320x200, 16-color EGA 320x200, 256-color VGA or MCGA 320x200 or Hercules monochrome. Budokan requires an IBM PC, XT, AT or Tandy 1000 and 512K of free conventional memory.

PC Budokan audio supports AdLib, Roland MT-32, Creative Music Card (CMS), Tandy 3-voice and IBM Internal Speaker.

PC Budokan was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DD diskette or 2x 5.25" 360kB floppy disks and extracts and installs to hard disk drive manually via copy a:*.* c:\Budokan. The install size is 710K and consists of 3 files.

PC Budokan: The Martial Spirit Manual: 40 pages.

PC Budokan: The Martial Spirit copy protection: Reference to game manual

PC Budokan: The Martial Spirit controls support joystick or keyboard.

Budokan: The Martial Spirit was designed by Michael Kosaka, programmed by Ray Tobey, composed by Rob Hubbard and art-directed by Nancy L. Fong. Budokan was drawn and animated by Michael Kosaka, Michael Lubuguin, Cynthia Hamilton, Connie Braat and Mike Nowak.