Report: [Nes] Kung-Fu - 50 Wins or Bust [Debunking a Myth]
by Mr. Kelly R. Flewin
Written September 22nd, 2004

Alright, let's mix this up a little bit. :) Now there's no submission at the moment that would cover this void, and I wish the next article to be significant.. and it will be, trust me. But, back to the point at hand for this article, ne report, and that's in regards to something I read in someones guide for Kung-Fu for Nes. I think you can quite obviously guess that this has something to do with the title and 50 wins, and if you say that, you're correct.

Now a bit of a background here... how does a Myth come up? Well usually via rumours.. it all depends really on who starts them and the context they're meant in. I mean some of these start up because people get bored and decide to just start it up for a lark. Some rumours/myths get started purely by accident or misinformation. Some are done on purpose to completely make someones life hell. But let us agree with this, no matter the reasoning, a Rumour is a Rumour and a Myth usually is a Myth, until someone can come along and disprove it positively and with no uncertainty.

The Myth? That if you beat/win Kung-Fu 50 times, you will fight Sylvia! [Yes, that's right, fight the very girl you are out to save.]

Is it true?: Nope.

Reasons/Proof?: At the moment, I've finished beating the game for a 53rd consecutive time, without losing a single life. Now the Myth doesn't indicate whether it must be done on Game A or B, not that this should really matter, since every other like trick can be done on either/or.

The only thing that comes close to something of interest though, from doing this, and possibly why this rumour got started, is a palette swap. Oh, not one that happened naturally... but one you would EXPECT! When you start a 2 Player game, you will notice that both Thomas's are the same color.. no differential colors or anything. Now, this is where the palette swap comes into play. There's a WHITE FACED version of Thomas who's garbed in a Red Gi with a Black shirt. Now it takes a little while for you to be able to safely come to this conclusion, heck I had figured it was perhaps Mr. X's own Gi at one point until I probed further on. It's the 49th time around that these pieces all begin to fall into place and you suddenly realize this.

What makes me wonder is why Nintendo didn't use this simple swap for the 2nd Player? I mean not only would it have been a logical move, but it'd be easier then to tell which player is up during the middle of levels. You play long enough and the lines get blurred from the patterns.

Why did I do this?: Plain curiousity really, because I figured if it WAS true, it'd make a cool snapshot for the database and would make an EXTREMELY hefty bounty to aim for. [I was going to put up $500 for this one if it was legit] Also, it was kind of curiousity to how high a score someone could manage to rack up by the 50th run as well... and the last reason was I was wondering if this occured due to the game crashing. I will keep plugging away once in a blue moon, but I do wonder if this game CAN be crashed. Thank goodness attempts only take 5-8 minutes a piece. So far I'm up to about 5-6 million points.. and for the first 10-12 times, I was merely experimenting around with different methods, so I didn't catch on to how to do some massive scoring till about then. The uncertainty of the score is due to honestly losing track of the rollovers. ^^;; Someday soon I will make an honest attempt without the endless pauses and hours of gaps between plays due to work. I'm not sure if I can come close to even a Million when I give it a real shot, but one never knows.

I also am going to be writing a guide for Kung-Fu sometime soon as well, which will further give proof of this accomplishment of beating the game 53+ times by doing a level by level breakdown of what symbols and such are displayed beside the dragon,  thus allowing other people to verify my own work, if they're so inclined. Please don't feel that this article is in any manner an attempt to slam the other writers who have included this myth in their guides, as it's not. This is more or less just showing that even the best of us can be duped if we don't examine things a bit closer. This trick was mentioned on the site that the guide resides on and a few other places as well, and as such, people took it in as true. I think though, the unrealistic # of wins required to do so would have been a dead giveaway, but who knows what Nintendo were thinking in those days in regards to secrets.

Mr. Kelly R. Flewin

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