Kart Fighter

Kart Fighter
Publisher	Ge De Industry Co.
Developer	Hummer Team
Console	Famicom
Date	1993 (?)
Engine	SFII engine
Sound engine	Someri Sound Engine
Alternate names/hacks	AV Bishoujo Senshi Girl Fighting

Kart Fighter is a fighting game made for the Famicom/NES by Hummer Team. The game was possibly made in 1993 and likely before 1994 because AV Bishoujo Senshi Girl Fighting reuses things from the game. It's well known due to having characters from Super Mario Kart beating each other up Street Fighter II style.

Overview

There are 8 characters t

File:KFSelect.PNG

Character Select Screen

o choose from:

• Mario (Mari)
  
• Luigi
  
• Peach
  
• Yoshi (Yossy)
  
• Toad (Kinopio)
  
• DK Jr. (Donkey)
  
• Koopa (Nokonoko)
• Bowser (Koopa)
  

The game keeps the same style of gameplay as Street Fighter II. Each character has a set of moves although they are pretty similar overall. Everyone of them, except Nokonoko, is able to throw projectiles, has something like a charge attack; several have a stationary attack. Some of the background graphics have been taken from Mario & Wario and Little Nemo: The Dream Master. The music has also mostly 8-bit versions of the songs from Mario & Wario, although the music tracks for the title screen, Peach's stage and ending are from Super Mario Kart. There are five difficulty levels in the game, like in most of the games based on this engine. The AI, however, seems to have a predefined pattern on the second round no matter which difficulty level is selected (ex: Ducking will cause them to shoot a projectile if they have one, jumping leads to either a charge move or an uppercut, etc.) The game also has versus mode; in order to activate it, a button on the second player's gamepad has to be pressed.

Move Commands

File:KFgameplay.PNG

Kart Fighter's Gameplay

Mari (Mario)

• D, DF, F, a: Fireball
• B, F, a: Uppercut
• B, B, b: Flying Kick

Luigi

• D, DF, F, a: Fireball
• ?, ??, ?, ?: Uppercut
• ?, ??, ?, ?: Flying Kick

Peach

• D, DF, F, a: Fireball
• D, DB, B, b: Spin Kick
• Hold Back, b: Hair Whip

Yossy (Yoshi)

• D, DF, F, a: Fireball
• D, DB, B, b: Tounge Attack
• F, DF, D, b: Tail Dance

Kinopio (Toad)

• D, DF, F, a: Mushroom Shot
• B, B, a: Uppercut (Unlike Mario's and Luigi's, this one can only hit in the air)
• F, FU, U, b: Flying Kick

Donkey (Donkey Kong Jr.)

• D, DF, F, a: Banana Slide
• D, DB, B, b: Uppercut (acts like Toad's)
• B, DB, D, a: Spin Attack

Nokonoko (Koopa)

• D, DB, B, a: Charge
• B, F, b: Shell Spin

Koopa (Bowser)

• D, DF, F, a: Fireball
• B, DB, B, b: Charge
• D, D, a: Tail Flop

Connections

• Selecting Start or Option on the title screen plays an unused Chaos Emerald sound effect from Somari.
• The option screen uses Super Mario World's (NES) mushroom as the border and the cape spin sound when choosing the difficulty. Not only does it use the mushroom but there's other graphics (like the lava in the castle stage) that are also used in SMW.
• The music in Donkey Kong Jr.'s stage is altered slightly from a music track in Jing Ke Xin Zhuan.
  
• Some of the sound effects were reused in Harry's Legend.
  
• The ending music, based off the one from Super Mario Kart, was reused in many of Hummer Team's fighting games. As this is the only Mario themed game to use this music, it's likely that this was the first game to use it.

Unused Tiles

File:KFUnusedTiles.PNG

Unused "Game Over" tiles

Going through Kart Fighter's tiles, you can find an unused "Game Over". It was most likely planned to have a Game Over screen but it got dropped.

Reception

Due to the fact that this is an unlicensed game, it still has no feedback from the commercial gaming magazines. However, with the ROM being available to public, it got a plenty of user reviews on GameFAQs and YouTube, as well on several independent review sites.

Note that although this game has the true ending and the fighters' names are not misspellings, as it was proved, many reviews tend to keep the same mistake over and over again.

• GameFAQs has an average user rating of 7.0 by three reviews, two of which, however remain elusive. One of them noted that the only reason to play this game is 'just to see how ridiculously unlike a Mario game it is' and praised the audiovisuals with ditching the cheap gameplay and the fact that 'it's not a quality Mario game when they spell his name wrong'. Another one praised both graphics and sounds, as well as the gameplay, considering that this is an unlicensed game after all and said that 'overall this is quite possibly the best bootleg game EVER made. And it's also simply a very good 2D fighter game as well.'

GameSpot has an average user ranking of 5.5 by 11 users. One of the user reviewers considers this game to be horrible because of the 'misleading title' and 'no challenge, nothing to gain, nothing worth playing.' Moreover, he thinks that Nintendo itself actually made this game and, in addition, has no idea of Super Smash Bros.'s existence (note that the review was made in 2006):

I'm sure with Nintendo's shameless exploitation of the Super Mario series there should be another Mario fighter. That's what I'm hoping for, and maybe they'll do it right the second time.

Another reviewer on GameSpot stated that this may look as 'a poor man's Super Smash Bros.' at the first glance, but in reality, it's a fun game:

Kart Fighter is a game I thought was going to be crap. The game is actually not bad though. Now out of all the pirated games I have played, this has to be the best.

Siliconera said that this game is purely Street Fighter II-inspired and that 'as a pirate NES game Kart Fighter is fairly advanced.'

Fragmaster of Gamespy's Classic Gaming stated that 'the names of most of the characters are changed slightly to avoid copyright problems' and that 'the game isn't as shoddily programmed as say… Somari… and you probably won't notice any slowdown or visual errors.'

Chris Kohler of Insert Credit made a group review of bootleg fighting games, with giving minus ratings to all of them, possibly for 'annoyance' reasons (similar to AVGN's manner of reviewing). There, Kart Fighter got one of the highest ratings in the article, with keeping the minus ratings for graphics (-4), fun (-3) and accuracy (-5).

Atari HQ noted that this game lacks two-player mode (when it's actually in here), but said that 'this is definitely the highest-quality HK work I've seen' and that 'the game plays at a very fast clip, and flicker is almost nonexistent.'

Nick Hammer of Salamando's Stove makes the more obvious AVGN approach, swearing on every aspect of the game, even on those which are obviously decent, starting from 'is Donkey Kong always this gay?', passing through 'And each character has maybe six frames of animation total. Yay!', 'The most interesting part of the game is the way the various characters have been butchered', 'Princess Toadstool is "Peach" in this game, which I hate.', 'You may remember Toad as "The shitty guy from Mario 2 nobody used because he can jump about three vertical inches". Here he's called KINOPIO.' and ending with 'I'm sure all this information will stay with you forever, so that years from now you'll forget your husband's birthday, but remember that Toad is, somewhere, somehow, named KINOPIO. Now get outta here!'

Another mediocre 'bad game review' with several weak statements comes from Starman vs. Kin Corn Karn. For no reason explained, Starman (who gave this game 2,5 out of 5) explained that 'Cony Soft [?] tried really hard to make a decent bootleg,' while Kin (who rated it 1 out of 5) had nothing else to say than 'there is no point to this game, and was only created to punish your soul.' The "stupidity switch" gets overheated with this quote from the "Trivia", though:

Many of the bootleg fighting games for NES were based on the TMNT: Tournament Fighters engine also found on the NES.

• A lot of amateur video reviews appear on YouTube, however, as in case with written reviews the opinions about this game's playability are mixed.

Out from the most popular reviews, Aaron from ARProductions2010 gave this game a rating of 7.0 out of 10.

Trivia

• Not counting Mario, almost all the character's names are their original Japanese names. This is due to the origin of the game in the east near Japan and not in the west near the U.S. (Like almost all pirated games are)
  
• The creators have seemed to confuse Mario and Luigi. On the title screen, Mario is wearing a green hat and Luigi is wearing a red hat. Also note that their alternate palettes seem to be the other brother's palette but lighter.
  
• Speaking of Luigi, while playing as him the commands for the uppercut and the kick attack seem to be executed by a command that a human can't do but the CPU can. This leaves Luigi to be an AI-only character. Either this was done on purpose or is actually a bug in the game.
  
• Bowser is the shortest character in the game. Going through the tiles, he seems to be the last character when the game was being made. They must've been running out of room at the time.
  
• This game was probably made after Fatal Fury since DK Jr. has a ground projectile similar to Terry Bogard's.
• On the Top 8 screen the last 0 in each score on the board is clearly different to that of the other 0's.
• If in a 2-player game player 2 wins and the timer runs out on the continue screen then player 1 will be replaced with an AI controlled Nokonoko.

Gallery

KFCart.jpg

Original cart

KartFighter.jpg

Reproduction by unknown company