Fighting Mania

Fighting Mania is a fighting game based on the anime series Fist of the North Star. It includes seven courses which all feature a series of opponents based on a particular story arc. In most courses, the player controls Kenshiro, the protagonist of the series.

The arcade cabinet has six pads which are positioned left and right from the arcade monitor, facing each other. Each of them can extend up to 90 degrees towards the player. This means when all pads are extended, the majority of the monitor is blocked with horizontally positioned pads. The player's job is to hit the extending pads while holding the two game controllers which loosely resemble boxing gloves. However, in order to do to win a match, the timing has to be right: the hit only damages the opponent when the associated icon on the monitor lights up. Otherwise it only blocks the enemy's attack (too early) or results in lesser damage (too late). Sometimes the player has to satisfy special conditions, e.g. ignoring falsely extending pads, when performing or fending off special attacks.