the game was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), known as the Famicom in Japan; it was released Spartan X in Japan, before releasing internationally as Kung Fu in North America and PAL regions. It was converted and published by Nintendo, with the port designed and directed by Shigeru Miyamoto. He led the Nintendo development team responsible for porting the Famicom port. He was interested in porting Kung-Fu Master due to its side-scrolling action gameplay, which was something he had in mind for the platformer genre, so he wanted to gain experience developing side-scrolling games with Excitebike (1984) and Kung Fu. Koji Kondo also worked on the Famicom port, designing the sound effects. In the NES version, Thomas is closely modelled after Jackie Chan, making it the first video game to feature a real-life person. The game was ported to the Atari 2600 by programmer Dan Kitchen (brother of Garry Kitchen), shortly after he had ported Ghostbusters (1984) to the Atari 2600. This port of Kung-Fu Master is considered a significant programming feat considering the technical limitations of the Atari 2600. Kung-Fu Master was also ported to the Atari 7800, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Commodore 64, MSX (Irem/ASCII version as Seiken Achō), PlayChoice-10 (arcade, nearly the same as the NES version), and ZX Spectrum. Reception Arcade In Japan, the Game Machine arcade charts listed Spartan X as the top-grossing table arcade cabinet for two months in 1984, from January 15 through February 1984. It regained popularity in Japanese arcades following the release of the Famicom port later that year. In Europe, it was a major arcade hit in 1985. In North America, it was a major hit in arcades, reaching number-one on the US arcade earnings charts upon release, and selling 5,000 arcade cabinets by April 1985. It was later the second top-grossing upright arcade cabinet on the RePlay charts in November 1985 (just below Capcom's Commando). It ended the year as America's second highest-grossing arcade game of 1985, below the Data East fighting game Karate Champ. Kung-Fu Master was later also America's eleventh highest-grossing arcade game of 1986, according to the annual RePlay chart. Claire Edgley of Computer and Video Games gave the arcade game a positive review in March 1985. She was positively surprised by the "hard-hitting" action, the "very fast" and "breath-taking" pace, and large number of enemies. She also praised the controls, referring to Thomas