Black Panther

Black Panther is an arcade machine Konami built in 1987, and next to what the company was sending into arcades elsewhere at the time it is a very modest piece of work. You play a black panther that fights its way forward through a landscape of robots, swiping at them with a paw. No story is ever explained and the game does not really need one.

The controls are plain: run, jump, claw. You can also land on enemies from above. A ranged attack turns up later, but for most of the game you work with a reach so short that you have to let an enemy come almost to your face and time the swipe precisely. Instead of lives there is a health bar that can be grown to twice its starting size by collecting orbs; other orbs briefly strengthen your attack. None of it is deep, but it does give the fighting a rhythm.

The structure is the real weakness. There are four stages and all of them follow one template: a flat stretch with scattered enemies, a platform section with pickups, a chase in which a flying machine drops more enemies in front of you, and a boss — always a cube-shaped robot head with a glowing weak point. Clear one stage and you have effectively seen the whole game.

Visually it is a muddle, the colours fight each other and enemies are sometimes hard to pick out from the background; the panther itself is nicely animated and its run looks good. For a few minutes it holds up as a curiosity from an era when even the big names threw quick B-grade cabinets into arcades. As an evening of play it cannot be recommended: it is short, repetitive and has no idea worth coming back for.

On oldgame.cz you can try it directly in the browser, with no installation.