Commodore 64 (1985)

BBC Micro (1985)

Amstrad CPC (1985)

Having entered a martial arts tournament of epic proportions, it's now time to show the old man who's boss.

Martial arts were still in vogue in the mid-80s, riding the wave of popularity sparked in the previous decade mainly thanks to Bruce Lee, and further bolstered by talents like Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Woody Allen, and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

For those not so die-hard Bruce Lee fans, the title appears to be a wordplay on his legendary Jeet Kune Do martial art, which translates to The Way of the Intercepting Fist. The digitised sample of Bruce's kiai from Enter The Dragon during the Commodore 64 loading screen tends to strengthen this notion, along with the broken board's Chinese script translating to Jeet Kune Do.

Each version of the game begins with a demo of two martial artists facing each other in preparation for combat. The sprites used for these characters are almost identical, however they wear a different coloured gi with a black belt. The background generally features oriental themes such as a dojo or mandarin-styled garden, plus a wise-old man overseeing all of the action. Come to think about it, he doesn't actually move. Maybe someone should check up on him. Hopefully, someone comes along to trim his moustache every few weeks.

At the top of the screen is where the points are displayed. Every time you strike an opponent you score a few hundred points to take you onto the final leaderboard. However, each strike also wins you a yin-yang symbol either as a whole or a half depending on the skill of the strike. Your goal is to attain two yin-yang symbols, or to have more symbols than your opponent before the end of a 30-second countdown, to progress onto the next round.

Each level becomes progressively harder against the computer but, of course, you can do a 'Rickman' and bring a friend along to join you in a game as an opponent. In the day, this would have been a simple task of plugging in a couple of joysticks and Bob's your uncle. Alternatively, considering the many available moves each player can make, you would have been hard-pressed using the keyboard with ten keys each.

Some of the moves are a lot of fun, such as being able to somersault over your opponent and then follow it up with a high-kick to the back of the head. Or the roundhouse kick where you swivel around on one foot and, again, bash the opponent right in the nut with your foot. And you don't need to be Paul Gascoigne to appreciate the pain as your opponent collapses into a near-foetal position from a punch to the groin.

This was an incredibly popular game upon its release that allowed for hours of bash-em-up entertainment between friends and family.

Oh, and of course, I was kidding about Woody Allen!