Mondu's Fight Palace
Alternative title: Tongue of the Fatman
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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An eclectic, intriguing fighting game. Choose from different alien races (including Human) with different abilities and fighting styles, purchase weapons and devices, and fight your way through multiple opponents to face the Fatman. Some of the more innovative features include being able to place wagers on the outcome of the fight, and the phenominon of a special move being less powerful the more you use it to balance gameplay.

2 player, head-to-head combat is supported.

Trivia

Tongue of the Fatman featured off disk copy protection which required looking up a statistic about one of the fighters. The statistics were listed in the form of trading cards printed throughout the manual. Mondu The Fat was the only character to have an actual color card included in the box, the picture on the front of the card taken from the MCGA version of the game.

Having written the C64 version of this game, I should point out that the game was written originally on the PC and was called "Tongue of The Fatman". The C64 version was written (not ported) at about the same time and involved me having to convert all the animation frames from huge 256-colour MCGA down to rather less-huge three colour bitmaps, which were then sliced up into sprite images. It took a very long time (I didn't have an artist on the project so I had to do all the art touch-up as well as the programming. The C64 version was called "Mondu's Fight Palace". I don't know why they changed the name. The genesis version was released some time after the PC and C64 versions hit the shelves. Although the game is rather dated, I was quite happy with it at the time. The computer opponent AI used a system much like that of a simple chess program: a prioritised set of rules that started with "If I am lying on the ground, then get up" all the way down to "Can I make any move whatsoever?". Opponents also had reaction times for each move you performed - each time you performed an attack move, the opponent would (temporarily) get slightly better at avoiding/defending against that move. So, if you just did the same move over and over, the opponent would eventually defend against it 100% of the time until you started mixing up your attacks. Well, it's trivia, so on the off-chance that you might possibly be interested... other projects I wrote include Envision for the Atari XL/XE, DES-Tracker for the Amiga, Road Raider for the C64 (my first game), Pele II for the Genesis (just the front end), Eurit for the SNES (unreleased - just wrote the front end), and NHL Powerplay 98 (wrote the rink surface rendering code). 
Contributed by Darren Schebek 

The Genesis version- as Mondu's Fight Palace- did indeed get released (see previous trivia entries.) This title was also used on some (all?) versions for other systems, such as the European C64 release.

Activision sponsored a contest which may have been the source of the flame spewing chicken mentioned before... on the back of the manual is a contest for people to send in ideas and sketches for a new character. ("Mondu Challenges You to a Draw!", ended April 30, 1990.) There is a slight hint that either a sequel or update was planned- "...we'll decide if your challenger is outrageous enough to be on the Fight Palace's next fight card." 

The title "Tongue of the Fatman" arose from the original tiles "Red Belt" and "Mondu's Fight Palace." The title was based on one of the most memorable boss fighters, a sumo-like alien who had a tongue come out of his tummy! 

 One of the original cover art comps simply showed a tipped over chinese food box with a tongue sticking out! 

 The title Red Belt represented an "illegal to-the-death" fight, which was the original concept of the game. It then took on a more wacky form when the challengers became aliens with special powers, and you could buy "bio-boosts" to increase your stats in the game. 

The Sega Genesis version of TOTF had, according to VideoGameSpot, "incredibly smooth animation, unique music engine that created different variants of the songs every time you played, and digitized voices." Clearly, the makers of TOTF had some time to improve the game before porting it to the Genesis, as these enhancements are not in the original PC version. :-)

Alternate Titles
"Slaughter Sport" -- Genesis title
"Red Belt" -- Working title
"Mondu's Fight Palace" -- C64 title
"Fatman" -- Japanese Mega Drive title

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Description from the packaging:

Welcome to the Fight Palace: Two creatures in a pit, strange moves, magical weapons, wild betting, and your host, Mondu the Fat.
"Humanoids, they come apart so easily in the fight pits. Especially when you pull on their arms." - Mondu The Fat, Champion of the Pit.
Pick your lifeform.
Control and combat a variety of aliens, each with over 18 different moves and special animations.
Load up on bio weapons.
Dr. Kadaver sells the latest: Multimax Steroids pump you up, Grasfur Slug Eggs keep your victim down.
Roast the host.
The fat man goads you onward or laughs at your corpse. Victory brings you a shot at revenge.
Put up your shut up.
Gamble your earnings and get inside info at Wagemaker's. His mouth is big but so are the stakes.
Punish or perish.
Meet harsh reality in the fight pits. The crowds are ugly, your foes uglier. An assortment of weapons help you even the odds.
Created by Brian A. Rice and Mark D. Waterman.


http://www.mobygames.com/game/tongue-of-the-fatman
