Tecmo Knight was a bizarre little game released by, you guessed it, Tecmo, in 1989. In it you played the brave Tecmo Kinght who goes off in search of the evil White Fang accompanied by this freaky little guy who rides around on your shoulders. Your special powers allow you to change into either a tiger being ridden by the freaky little guy wielding a spiked ball on a chain or something known only as Smokeman. In your regular form, you could jump on enemies' shoulders and beat on their heads.

I actually got a chance to play this game yesterday thanks to my workmate, Greg, and we were both surprised at how bloody it was for an eighties arcade game. As you beat your enemies to a pulp, blood starts to appear on their faces and eventually, their heads will fly off allowing you to collect their skulls for points. We were able to change into the tiger, which was actually not very effective, but we never got a chance to discover the joys of Smokeman. If you lose, you are greeted with a hilarious continue screen, with Tecmo Knight being slowly devoured in a giant monster mouth. All this violence, of course is prefaced by the then ubiquitous "Winners don't do drugs" messaging. Tecmo Knight would later be reinvented as White Fang, named after the final boss of the game.

I've always been a fan of this particular style of arcade flyer art. Obviously hand painted by someone who maybe didn't really have a good grasp of the proportions of the human body. Depicted here you can see the freaky little guy riding on Tecmo Knight's shoulders, along with the tiger form and one of the bulldog headed enemies you spend the better part of the game battling all being gazed upon by the eyes of the dreaded White Fang, who kind of looks like a gorilla.

If you look hard, you might still find one of these machines in a back dusty corner of your neighborhood arcade. If not it is readily available through your local emulator. Flynn De Marco