What Fist of the North Star video games are there?

More than twenty console and arcade games across four decades, and the West met most of them in disguise.

The games begin in 1986, while the manga still ran: Enix’s graphic adventure Hokuto no Ken: Violence Gekiga Adventure for Japanese home computers, then Sega’s Mark III action game and Toei Animation’s Famicom series. The 1980s alone produced eleven console titles, four Famicom, three Super Famicom, a Game Boy game and Sega’s pair, and they set the pattern of the whole history: Japan got nearly everything, and the West got a strange selection, twice with the license stripped out entirely.

The modern era is smaller but louder: Konami’s punch-pad arcade game Fighting Mania (2000), Arc System Works’ 2D fighter (2005), Koei’s Ken’s Rage Musou games (2010 and 2012), Sega’s Lost Paradise from the Yakuza studio (2018), the mobile LEGENDS ReVIVE (2019), and a Fitness Boxing crossover for Switch (2022). Sammy’s pachislot empire, a parallel industry of its own, stands outside this count.

Box art of the first Hokuto no Ken video game, for Famicom, 1986 — **1986: THE FIRST GAME**It starts here — Toei's 1986 Famicom game, the first of dozens of Hokuto no Ken titles across four decades of hardware.

THE EIGHTIES

The Toei and Sega years

Violence Gekiga Adventure · 1986

Enix’s graphic adventure for the PC-88, PC-98 and FM-7, adapting the Southern Cross arc. The first Hokuto game of any kind.

Sega’s two · 1986 and 1989

Mark III and Mega Drive action games, both exported with the license removed, as Black Belt and Last Battle. Their own page in this archive tells that story.

Toei’s Nintendo run · 1986–93

Four Famicom games, the Game Boy’s 10 Big Brawls, and three Super Famicom entries, action first, then RPGs. One of them, the second Famicom game, became the NES’s Fist of the North Star in 1989.

THE MODERN ERA

Arcade, Musou, and the Yakuza detour

Fighting Mania · 2000

Konami’s arcade cabinet with pads you actually punch, the successor’s fist as a control scheme. Released in Japan as Punch Mania.

The Arc System Works fighter · 2005

A competitive 2D fighter on Sega’s Atomiswave, ported to PlayStation 2 in Japan in 2007, and a cult object in the fighting game community ever since.

Ken’s Rage · 2010 and 2012

Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors formula applied to the manga, the first game covering its first half, the second completing it.

Lost Paradise · 2018

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio rebuilt its Yakuza engine around an original Hokuto story, city, cabaret clubs and all.

LEGENDS ReVIVE · 2019

Sega’s mobile RPG, launched worldwide on September 5, 2019, with new art supervised by Tetsuo Hara himself.

THE COUNTING RULE

What this census includes

Counted

Console, computer, arcade and mobile games published under the Hokuto no Ken license, including the two Sega games the West knew under other names.

Not counted

Pachinko and pachislot machines and their home simulations, typing tutors, and crossover appearances such as Famicom Jump: Hero Retsuden (1989) and Jump Ultimate Stars (2006), where Kenshiro is a guest in someone else’s game.

What Fist of the North Star video games are there?

THE EIGHTIES

THE MODERN ERA

THE COUNTING RULE

THE FIRST WORD