Mitsota Reviews: The First Funky Fighter

The First Funky Fighter is a video whack-a-mole game made by East Technology and published Taito in 1993. the game has a 9 button layout with no sticks or start buttons. An 18 button simultaneous 2 player cabinet does exist, but is exceedingly rare. I'll be covering the 9 button version.

The game is pretty straightforward, pop in 1 quarter for a story game or 2 for a VS match. In the story game, the player controls Chris, a big muscly dude with blonde hair from a first person perspective. The player must progress through 4 stages to rescue Chris' girlfriend Randy from the deadly crocodiles and sharks who have kidnapped her.

How do players do this? By punching the shit out of everyone and everything that dares cross their path! The screen is separated into 9 sections of punchable space, corresponding to the 9 button grid on the machine. as enemies appear on the screen, the player hits the correct button to punch them. The more enemies you hit, the more points you get, simple stuff. At the end of a level, the player fights a boss by mashing the left and right punch buttons, and between levels 2 and 3 you play a bonus button mashing game for extra points.

And that's it! The whole game is 4 levels long, which are actually 2 levels, which loop with a different background color and enemy placement. In the multiplayer game, players take turns to see who can get a better score on one of the 3 possible stage variations for both levels, so spending 50 cents on this machine nets you less content, technically. Still, it's a decent experence and really exciting to play for the first time; and with a default credit price of 25 cents, why not try it if you see it?

5/10; Amazing the first time you play it; but gets stale fast