Hokuto No Ken 2 (NES)

Learn About the Game Hokuto No Ken 2 (NES)

If you ever dug around in the dusty corners of the NES library, you might have stumbled upon Hokuto No Ken 2—a side-scrolling beat ’em up that somehow feels both familiar and utterly bonkers. You’re hopping into Kenshiro’s boots again, brawling through post-apocalyptic wastelands packed with would-be challengers who think they can take on the bearer of the Seven Stars of the Big Dipper. The graphics are about as chunky as you’d expect on an eight-bit system, but there’s something oddly charming about the creaky animation and the big, splashy kanji that pops up when you land a finishing move.

The controls are pretty straightforward: your run, punch, and kick buttons get you through most encounters, but where things get interesting is in unleashing your Hokuto Shinken techniques. By holding certain directions and buttons you can trigger those signature joint-cracking, pressure-point finishers that send enemies flying apart in glorious pixel gore. It isn’t always intuitive—I’ll freely admit I mashed the buttons a lot before I figured out the timing—but when it works, it feels like the closest you’re ever going to get to delivering a “You’re already dead” moment in an NES game.

One quirky thing is that you’re not stuck with just Kenshiro. There are cameo appearances and unlockable characters if you meet certain in-game criteria, so you end up replaying stages just to see what weird moveset someone else brings to the fight. Some of the boss battles even have branching paths, meaning you get a tiny bit of branching narrative if you choose to head east or west at certain junctions. It’s nimble design for a system that usually just slaps you on a conveyor belt of enemies until the credits roll.

What I love most about Hokuto No Ken 2 is how it wears its license on its sleeve but still tries to sneak in little surprises for fans and newcomers alike. The music is relentlessly thumping, your health meter is literally marked by those seven big stars, and the challenge is solid without feeling unfair. It’s definitely a niche piece of NES history—choppy, noisy, and unapologetically violent—but if you’ve ever wondered how Fist of the North Star would translate to the 8-bit era, this cart is your answer.