It openly mirrored Lee’s posthumously released 1978 film Game of Death in the way it forced players to ascend a gloomy tower and fight through floor after floor of snarling bosses.
The accepted father of beat ’em ups is the 1984 arcade classic Kung-Fu Master. You know, I’m not sure the gaming industry wants to fully admit to the levels it has ripped off Bruce Lee.” So when gaming really took off in the 1980s, he was an obvious reference point. When the developers at the big Japanese and American gaming studios were growing up, they were all studying these Bruce Lee movies. “Even Batman started to fight like Bruce Lee. “Before Bruce Lee, you only saw lumbering punches in on-screen fights, but after him all the movies were filled with kicks and holds,” he says. “So many of the big gaming studios owe the Bruce Lee estate a ton of money,” Polly half jokes. However, one area of Lee’s legacy barely gets a mention in Polly’s biography: namely, his enormous impact on the world of gaming. Photograph: Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images
Bruce Lee on the poster for Fist of Fury (1972).
