Can you achieve the victory in the Kaiser Knuckle tournament?
Global Champion, known as Kaiser Knuckle in Japan, is a 1994 Fighting Game by Taito. It was released during the fighting game trend of the 1990s that began with Capcom's Street Fighter II. Despite the arcade game showing highly-detailed and unique content, it didn't catch enough attention to become successful and until 2022, when it (specifically the Dan-Ku-Ga version) was included on the Taito Egret II mini console.
These days, it's known for its legendarily difficult Final Boss. It has absolutely no connection to the weapon named "Kaiser Knuckle" from Chrono Trigger.
Has a character sheet in the works.
This game features examples of:
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
- Variant. There are six buttons involving a three-punch, three-kick basis. If you press two punch or kick buttons, you'll find extra basic attacks. But, there's one thing that plays straight to this trope: If you go to the dip switches, you can set the number of buttons from 6 to 5, causing the weak attack buttons to become block buttons.
- In Dan-Ku-Ga, most basic attacks performed with two buttons are now performed with a joystick direction plus one button.
- Desperation Attack: Every character has one, except for the almighty General.
- Playing with Fire/Shock and Awe:
- Most stages feature "power zones" where your character can enhance one of his or her special moves with a certain element.
- Gekkou's Desperation Move also plays with fire while Boggy's shocks.
- Running Gag: The staff roll shows off three random scenes every time it is played, such as Gekkou rehearsing his acting, Wulong beating up criminals, Lihua posing as a mundane cook, etc.
- Shows Damage: The backgrounds do this, thanks to a successful hit of a special move whilst having a full power gauge.note
- SNK Boss: The General, not known to be beaten officially until 2009. He hangs outside the range of most attacks while having enough speed and reach to hit you before you can react, has an all-directional fireball attack, will go absolutely ballistic if you try to defend to the point of using a fireball to put you into blockstun and then slide-kicking before you can recover, and can use Teleport Spam to dodge any attack he desires. He can even teleport into a grab or teleport behind the player and hit them before they're allowed to react. Every single possible advantage he can have, right down to Perfect Play A.I., he has.
- Spectacular Spinning: Gekkou, Liza, Boggy, and Azteca.
- Stripperific: Liza's outfit, which is quite literally a Fur Bikini. While Lihua dresses more modestly, the cover art still has the skirt short enough to give her thighs a nice view.
- Updated Re-release: Dan-Ku-Ga, which would have turned much of the two-button basic attacks into "one button and a direction" moves, would have given the characters a third color set along with modified movesets, nerfed the General's AI and made the first two boss characters Gonzales and Azteca playable. However,
it was discontinued before release. The prototype was dumped onto the internet as a ROM however. It would finally see an official release as part of the Taito Egret II miniconsole.
