Abraham Lincoln's Kung Fu Pagoda (2007)

Screen shot of “Abraham Lincoln’s Kung Fu Pagoda,” a sprite-hacked NES ROM.

Abraham Lincoln’s Kung Fu Pagoda is a fully playable game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The player controls Abraham Lincoln, who must use his Kung Fu skills to rescue his kidnapped wife, Mary Todd Lincoln.

It’s really a simple hack of another NES ROM, “Kung Fu,” with the sprites removed so that the character of the original series is replaced with a badass 8-bit Abe Lincoln. It was an experiment in ROM hacking, along with a sister hack, “War Street Kid,” which allowed players to make bets on the stock market based on news items about wars in the middle east. While that game is slightly more interesting conceptually, it’s less interesting to play, and maybe that’s why I can’t find it in my archives.

The idea of Abe Lincoln’s Kung Fu Pagoda was, basically, just silly, highlighting the “Americanization” of Japanese video games, and how characters and plots are re-written for American audiences. The game ran in the New Media Lab Gallery at the University of Maine with an adapted NES controller; the one piece I wish I could have fixed is the title screen. You can download the adapted ROM file here.

Install

Requirements:

A computer capable of running an NES emulator; my suggestion is Nestopia, as it’s the only emulator that was capable of reproducing the game’s sound properly.

A keyboard or other input device.

The screen can be dragged to fit the screen, but ideal resolution is a 4:3 aspect ratio, running at 640 x 320.

A black "desktop" is recommended, with the game image centered to the screen.

Instructions:

Unzip the Nestopia Emulator software in the zip folder, Nestopia136bin.zip.

Execute the program.

Go to "File" in the Nestopia Window. Open the ROM file (.nes)

Game Play:

You can select the buttons that correspond with movement.

Defaults:

Arrow keys: Directional, with up to jump and down to squat.

< is to kick, > is to punch.