@@Zavitor The bar down the road from my home had this with no glove. They had this and some game that gave out tops baseball cards when you won... or something.
Usually the boxing gloves would be very worn out or totally missing so people would punch it with their bare knuckles. There were cases where people would even kick it for fun. Those wrist injuries were real though. Had a few myself.
Boxers wrap there wrist for a reason without wraps the glove is only protecting the knuckles and hands your wrist is sol especially if your not well versed in how to properly throw a punch.
One of the same style I loved was the Fist of the North Star arcade cabinet where you had to quickly react to hitting paddles to deflect moves. Then do them in sequence to hit back. Then you'd have to rapidly punch all 6 paddles as fast as you can do to the infamous "Hokuto 100 Crack Fist" move. It made your "OMAE WA MOU SHIN DE IRU" fantasies come true with the same voice actors, awesome artwork and you actually PUNCHED THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE ARCADE MACHINE to earn it that sweet dopamine rush. And did some cardio while you were at it. =P
Never seen one of these, sadly. The closest is the Crystal Maze "virtual" experience where you collect tokens in the dome by hitting lit buttons on a wall.
I worked at the Mall of America Arcade you showed briefly with the big green sign. I was constantly working on this game as the beating it took was insane
this game was AWESOME ! people were breaking their wrist and hands on it, but god damn did it gave you bragging rights when you were beating a character ;)
@@PopCultureHyperfixations in europe it was 5 characters you had to destroy, punk, robot, alien, ... there was a versus mode , and you could also take a picture of your face using a camera and have it get deformed with every hit lol
I only saw the 2nd version of the machine in arcades in Brazil. It was really popular due to the feature of taking a person's picture and punching. Hardly anyone played the regular levels.
Another dangerous game for similar reasons was the original Street Fighter. The original release didn't have the six button layout we all know today. Instead, it had a single large button for punches and kicks, and the harder you pressed the button, the more powerful the punch or kick would be. Unfortunately, people were punching the buttons so hard they began to break their hands, so Capcom re-released Street Fighter with the more familiar six button layout.
Nice to see Gamesmaster getting a shout out. This game was pretty damm popular in the UK during the 90s. There was a Arm Wrestling game about the same time but I can't remember what it was called.
I thought this game seemed familiar at the start of the video , but had no recollection of playing it- it was just as the clip started that I realised it was because I'd seen it on GamesMaster.
I remember how dangerous this game felt in the arcade. Not because of the risk of injury, but because of how it attracted the most testosterone-laden young men. It just attracted a certain type of crowd. As a chubby and horrendously unathletic boy at the start of puberty I was much too embarassed to give it a try, even though the edginess of it all fascinated me terribly.
Wow. I always had no idea why Taito would ever have released a Sonic Blast Man 2 when Sonic Blast Man 1 for the SNES was so thoroughly mid, much less where it even came from. I had no idea this wildly popular arcade game started it all, no wonder they actually made a sequel. Thanks for this, it's solved a mystery gnawing away in my mind for almost 20 years.
DUDE!!! i'm from Brazil and this game was HUGE here, i played the sequo when i was a kid, in the early 90's... and yeah, the running start was pretty much a law, but i never saw any injuries, never saw nobody throw themselves into the machine... eventualy a dude would try to use kicks but the rest of the guys on the arcade would get him out of there really fast, so he woundn't damage the machine... we take our videogames pretty seriously... don't harm the videogames
Imagine walking up to a Sonic Blast Man arcade game, putting a quarter in, punching the target, failing so spectacularly that you injure yourself, then suing the maker of said arcade game. This is the world we live in.
Imagine living in a world where someone who pretends to be a talking cat can stream all of their irrelevant thoughts and feelings for the entire world. Imagine living in a world where a bunch 20-40 year old people can pretend to be an anime avatar that looks like a child, act like they are 8 year olds with severe mental disabilities, and garner an audience of thousands to listen to their irrelevant thoughts and feelings. This is the world we live in.
As a kid at the time, I remember I couldn't beat that first level because I was never really that strong. It frustrated me to no end... But I look back now and wish I had another shot today. Would be nice if we could see this old classic remade. Of course, the cushion would need to be replaced, and it'd likely be made of memory foam instead of a cotton cushion.
@@MyPalJimbo True. As a kid I didn't have the strength to do it, but now, it'd be a piece of cake... Though honestly I'd mule kick the damned thing instead of punching or throwing my full body into it. My legs always were stronger than my arms. Though I guess I should get into training all over again and hope I can get to an arcade that still has one of these old machines.
a little fun Fact in Japan Sega couldn't call Sonic just Sonic the Hedgehog and early Merch and even the Track ball game. Japan at the time however, trademark applications could take up to three years for approval, and arcade rival Taito already had the arcade game Sonic Blast Man. Likely to avoid conflicting with Taito, Sega used "SegaSonic" for branding of its arcade games in the meantime.
I wonder why the people in the clips are grabbing their hand with the other hand and making a weird side-fist thing, it looks awkward as hell! I love Sonic Blast Man, played it around '93 here in Chile, but just normally with the boxing glove and regular punches. I got to see the machine maybe 2 more times at different locations in my country, and then never again. I played Sonic Blast Heroes in Japan, and it was cool, but I wanted to play the original one again... mostly to see how far I've come from being a pre-teen to a grown up puncher.
Games, movies, pro wrestling and anime perpetuated the myth that two-handing a punch doubles its power. Of course it doesn't, but it's still prevalent today. Also, interlocking fingers is specially dangerous, since phalanges are some of the most fragile bones in the human body.
Wow! Not only do I remember this game when I was 18, but one of the arcades I played it at was in a place called Starland in Hanover, MA (Totally fits the description with the bumper boats, go carts, and tanks)! Such a blast from the past! It was also at the Nantasket Beach, King's Castle, and Harborlight Mall arcades here in MA. I actually never knew what happened to Sonic Blast Man, but I guessed correctly...though I didn't know anyone who got injured. Thanks for this video!!!
I'm surprised it's considered so dangerous. It's not so different from those carnival attraction punching bag machines and they don't get banned. (though I guess having the target hanging instead of standing on a thick metal rod is a bit safer) Now I wonder if someone could bootleg Sonic Blast Man with a punching bag machine and some MAME magic...
SBM was badly designed. You were effectively punching a rigid metal rod with no give. Carnival punching bag games are designed obviously differently for a very good reason.
i have such a dim and dark single memory of a game called FUNKY FIGHTERS or something, it had like a huge multi pads , like maybe 9 of them on the machine that u needed to hit or punch or something but i was too small and dad didn't let me play it since he said the bigger kids are hogging it and i would just feel sad and embarrased if i played it and failed...gotta go research this game...FUNK FIGHERS, FUNKY FIGHTERS...DUNNO....
@@manduradic7902 thanks, went looking after this comment and found it, really thought the buttons were much bigger or maybe i was too small back then....anw, it was a fun game, now i remembered LAZER GHOST, that was an insane light gun game.
I fractured my wrist playing this. I kinda wish there had been some kind of compensation in the UK because it was very painful and despite going to A&E that night and getting an x-ray and cast it's never really been right.
@@PopCultureHyperfixations Yes. I didn't report it. Who would I report it too? Everybody thought it was really funny that I fractured my wrist playing an arcade game so I just started telling it as a funny story.
I mean there is a point where "don't punch something hard if you haven't practiced how to throw a punch" is kind of incumbent on a person, but man this was aimed at kids and teens. They had no hope haha
I've never heard of this game but yeah me and my friends would have absolutely torn our rotator cuffs to shreds if we'd had access to this in our teens
I never broke my hand, but I was shot in an arcade 17 times by someone who legally purchased an AR-15. Jeez louise. I'm joking of course. (I'm from England)
Played this in the early 90's at the kinda local bowling alley, boxing glove was long gone, sprained wrist, but did get to the asteroid. Biggest miss I remember was seeing a Street Fighter punch pads cab, but never got to play it.
Bro. That office dude at the beginning had a real bat on him! "You better file those reports Barry! I won't tell you again." "Y-y-y-yes boss. Sorry. It won't happen again."
The problem was, the rod only moved backwards. But people came punching in odd angles, leading them to aply force against a well constructed machine. I hurt my hand on it, 2 weeks of sore wrist. It was amazing!
I don't believe the SNES version of Sonic Blast Man was a fairly conventional side-scrolling was due to concerns of violence but practicality. How could a home version be implemented for a cost acceptable to the home video game market? This was far from the first game to use this kind of action. Such games can be dound at least as fr back as my 70s childhood. One I recall had no video at all. It was a full size portrait of an opponent dressed in a gi and ready to spar. You punched and kicked the somewhat padded surface at various locations corresponding to body blows. Later, the largely ignored Street Fighter, before Street Fighter II conquered the universe, featured big rubbery buttons the player pounded to make attacks. Likewise, the earliest arcade of Nintendo's own Punchout! had a kinetic input aspect, too. There was also a spin-off arm wrestling game that likely cause a few players to injure themselves.
Great video. I qas surprised to see you only have 609 subs. I prefict many more in your near future. My favorite arcade gimmick as a kid was Lucky & Wild.
I worked at Dynamo in Ft.Worth and we produced a few thousand of these back in the early 90s. I worked Quality Control, so I got to inspect each unit as it came off the line and made sure it looked and played perfect! We found a few ways to beat the system and win the game!
Funny thing is, just about ALL the injuries HAD to be because they didn't play the game correctly, or as you put it, felt like they had to go extra on it. So, the feeling I get is that poor Sonic Blast Man took all the blame he didn't deserve because drunk macho idiots can't follow safety instructions.
Yeah title is kinda clickbait. User error like the wiimote hitting the tv is different from mario party thumb blisters or joycon drift product failure. Though 7:00 vid explains it well.
@@MrVariant Yes. And the glove and pad were in good condition. It's a bad design: You're punching an iron bar. There's a good reason why the traditional carnival punching games have a floating bag.
I remember a Fist of the North Star game that was similar. It was more about speed than power, but God knows we wore ourselves out trying to see who had the hands to beat it.
It wasn't just the people playing the game who could get hurt. I remember dudes running across the arcade so they could do a flying kick at the pad. Surely there had to be incidents of innocent bystanders catching some damage from this thing.
I saw it at the Boomtown casino on the way to Reno when I was in... probably third grade. I was able to clear the first level now and then! I thought I was doing okay. Then some guy went after me and he would do a roundhouse kick to the pad. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen!
I remember a diverted flight lay over in gatwick air port, as a kid. Sonic Blast man.... but it would take your picture; and then simulate the black eye etc. And adult was throwing money into this machine so all the kids could have a go. Good times.
Oh my god, thank you for telling me about this. I was a 90's kid too, but never saw this at any arcade I went to. I love what an obvious disaster waiting to happen this is.
5:45 Whang isn't annoying, he's just an actual menace. In case you're not up to speed on all the stuff: Justin was involved in a plot to have venues cancel gigs Maddox had lined up. Some pretty nefarious shit. That's the 95% shorter version of the story.
I think it could be revived with modern motion controllers. They'd just be punching the air while the accelerometer in the controller measures the speed of the punch as well as the sudden deceleration after throwing the punch to calculate the total transfer of kinetic energy that would occur if the punch actually connected with a solid object.
I have a vague and unreliable memory of playing this at a theme park. Without the boxing glove, as there wasn't one attached to the machine. Though, again, vague and unreliable memory as it's several decades ago at this point.
As I've read comments, the more and more I think about it I wonder if a lot of arcades just didn't have the glove but wouldnt take the machine off the floor
I remember seeing the sequel "Real Puncher" playing an young using an skate !!!!!! each punch had high score deforming the captured player photo .. was absurd
Loved this game but managed to break a knuckle when the arm bounced back up after I hit it. The glove was knackered and offered zero protection. Didn't stop me playing it the next time I saw one. They disappeared shortly after that.
I'll be totally honest, I was there, almost from the begining of Video games. I owned a Magnavox Odyssy and remember arcades that were 90% pinball, 5% carnival type games and Pong, Space Invaders and Jaws. But I remember only 1 game like this. It's target came from the top and the arm/target, extended from the girder and formed a 90° angle. You Punched it once, or 3 times for a 1$. There were no real graphics, or gameplay. It was more of a strongman competition. So I don't recall ever seeing Sonic Blast Man. I'm in Canada, so it probably was denied certification. Good video though, If I learn, I'm happy :) Cheers from Montreal Quebec Canada
But if I was alive at the time, I would have played it safe. They put safety instructions on things for a reason. Just like how seatbelts are a requirement, not a suggestion.
I've had memories with this game because I had a cousin that was a boxer. A very good one and decided that the gloves where for sissies and then went on. He didn't break his hand though. He beat the entire game but not as the highscore which he says was unfair.
I loved Sonic Blast Man but I was lucky enough to have a Fighting Mania: Fist of the North Star in my local arcade. Where Sonic Blast Man was all about power Fighting Mania was all about speed and it was crazy fun to punch the 6 pop out targets.
I played it this summer in Santa Clara del Mar, Argentina. It was very fun :D It made a lot of noise when you hit the mitt (in fact it was the noise of it hitting the machine to measure the strength of the blow).
I looked at it in Sega World in the Troc, in London. There were a group of teenagers rushing to punch it to impress various ladies. I always thought if you mistimed your blow you could break your hand. So I never tried it. Similarly I never tried the hammer game at the circus.
I'm guessing it was the combo of, the design wasn't the best mixed with people ignoring safety regulations. I also wonder if sometimes it was because the arcades wouldn't fix/replace the boxing gloves. I've been to plenty of arcades where you gotta barehand wacky gators or whack a mole
Ironically, there was a boxing game in my old arcade that was similar, but no one ever played it. It wasn't one punch though, you had a time limit to hit them so many times. I couldn't make it past the 9th match because by then you have to have thrown hundreds of punches... I would be covered in sweat with arms like rubber.
I am today days old discovering that Sonic Blast Man was originally an arcade game and that people went this nuts for it. I consider myself somewhat of a huge fan of arcade games and history so this blows my mind.
This game needs to be remade with cameos from DBZ,One punch man,Hajome no ippo,tekken,😅😅😅😅 Arcade Cabinet ,maybe VR version ? One level where you try to stop Truck-kun from reincarnating someone😅
The first one was amazing, i remember it from my childhood and even on my teen years, trying to come up with esoteric ways to increase the punching power like running, rolling and some other stupid shit :v When i was in college i discovered there was a sonic blast man 2 arcade nearby and it was even cooler! It would allow you to take a picture of yourself, place it over the enemy model and allow you to beat the crap out of yourself, bloating the bitmap to simulate swelling! It was great, and it kind of taught me actual effective ways to increase punching power
Allegedly this videogame was also the reason why the arcade-only Sonic game (the one which plays a lot like Michael Jackson's MoonWalker) was released internationaly as SegaSonic the Hedgehog (yes, the 'SegaSonic' part is meant to be a single word there) because of how product title ame trademark laws work in the west.
I actually saw this game being played in person back in the day at the brickyard mall. The dude playing it was definitely doing the Running Start method
So sheer human arrogance and unwillingness to basically follow the video games safety recommendations, coupled with the fear of legal liability for injury to idiots willing to ignore the games due diligent safety recommendations is ultimately what killed this game?! *This* , this is how we lose our "nice things" America!!
Maybe it was also staffed by terrorists. You know, kind of like a Bond Villain Hideout. I mean if the building was full of terrorists, that’s not really collateral damage is it?
Reminds me of that hokuto no Ken machine. But that one had a timing function. Managed to play on one somewhere in 2012 I think. Then next time I wanted to, someone ripped the boxing gloves off so I used my open palms like some kind of Shaolin larp or something after being silly enough to throw one bare punch at the very unpadded pads. Keep the gloves, protect your hands!
Sonic blast man has got to be without a doubt one of the most underrated and underappreciated mascots title has ever produced the crazy part about it is is that there was actually two good games on the super Nintendo with the American version being slightly censored for the first game in the sequel was a huge improvement with a two-player mode but let's just hope that in the future Sonic black man gets a reboot the game was good though but the sad part is most people who who don't know who the character is who had a PlayStation or Nintendo 64 Sega Saturn only no Sonic blast man as that guy from bust a move 99 are puzzle level 3 if you live in Japan
It really says something about a game that has clear warnings on the front saying "Only hit with boxing gloves", and "Do not play while drunk".
And those warnings probably only encouraged people to go bare handed, just to show how tough they were.
Despite how well intended, one cannot stop human stupidity
@@Zavitor The bar down the road from my home had this with no glove.
They had this and some game that gave out tops baseball cards when you won... or something.
@@Zavitor because as young boys we read such warnings in the voice of a nagging mom or school teacher
Usually the boxing gloves would be very worn out or totally missing so people would punch it with their bare knuckles. There were cases where people would even kick it for fun. Those wrist injuries were real though. Had a few myself.
Boxers wrap there wrist for a reason without wraps the glove is only protecting the knuckles and hands your wrist is sol especially if your not well versed in how to properly throw a punch.
the wrist injuries are from a punch that wasn't straight
One of the same style I loved was the Fist of the North Star arcade cabinet where you had to quickly react to hitting paddles to deflect moves. Then do them in sequence to hit back. Then you'd have to rapidly punch all 6 paddles as fast as you can do to the infamous "Hokuto 100 Crack Fist" move. It made your "OMAE WA MOU SHIN DE IRU" fantasies come true with the same voice actors, awesome artwork and you actually PUNCHED THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE ARCADE MACHINE to earn it that sweet dopamine rush. And did some cardio while you were at it. =P
I was just about to type all of this. We had one in Gainesville, FL at an arcade. The most fun game I've ever played to this day lol.
i played that game too! it was timing more than force as i remember though
It's called Fighting Mania
Easily the best arcade game ever made.
Never seen one of these, sadly. The closest is the Crystal Maze "virtual" experience where you collect tokens in the dome by hitting lit buttons on a wall.
I worked at the Mall of America Arcade you showed briefly with the big green sign. I was constantly working on this game as the beating it took was insane
I can only imagine how beat the crap that thing was
Fwahahaha a stable repair job 🤣🤣👌
Only in the states would people sue a developer for their own stupidity...
...and WIN
Proof the us shouldn’t exist.
This hot coffee burned me!
This peanut butter nearly killed me, I have a peanut allergy!
That's why you have "the objects you see here are not real" written in every mirror, as if you're some kind of cats.
@@NateVHVT You should look closer at the whole 'hot coffee' incident at Mcdonalds. It's not as clear cut as you seem to think it is.
this game was AWESOME ! people were breaking their wrist and hands on it, but god damn did it gave you bragging rights when you were beating a character ;)
Such vivid memories of my dad locked in determined to destroy that damn asteroid
I had the second one on SNES and it was a blast. Never knew about the cool arcade until much later
Imagine a modern remake for One Punch Man 😎
@@PopCultureHyperfixations in europe it was 5 characters you had to destroy, punk, robot, alien, ... there was a versus mode , and you could also take a picture of your face using a camera and have it get deformed with every hit lol
Stop it! Get some help.
I only saw the 2nd version of the machine in arcades in Brazil. It was really popular due to the feature of taking a person's picture and punching. Hardly anyone played the regular levels.
Wow I didn't remember that feature! It was funny as hell! Also from Brazil here...
Went by fast. I vaguely remember it at the arcades
That's the version I remember from the UK
Another dangerous game for similar reasons was the original Street Fighter. The original release didn't have the six button layout we all know today. Instead, it had a single large button for punches and kicks, and the harder you pressed the button, the more powerful the punch or kick would be. Unfortunately, people were punching the buttons so hard they began to break their hands, so Capcom re-released Street Fighter with the more familiar six button layout.
America's Sonic Blast Man related fatalities are still yet to be officially tallied.
When dad comes home drunk and plays the “home port.”
Kids: 💀
"Your honor, there was a hole! My client wasn't aware of its non-glory status."
Nice to see Gamesmaster getting a shout out. This game was pretty damm popular in the UK during the 90s. There was a Arm Wrestling game about the same time but I can't remember what it was called.
The one I always remember seeing was called Arm Champs I think?
@@PopCultureHyperfixations Yeah, that was it. Good memory.
I thought this game seemed familiar at the start of the video , but had no recollection of playing it- it was just as the clip started that I realised it was because I'd seen it on GamesMaster.
I remember how dangerous this game felt in the arcade. Not because of the risk of injury, but because of how it attracted the most testosterone-laden young men. It just attracted a certain type of crowd. As a chubby and horrendously unathletic boy at the start of puberty I was much too embarassed to give it a try, even though the edginess of it all fascinated me terribly.
Wow. I always had no idea why Taito would ever have released a Sonic Blast Man 2 when Sonic Blast Man 1 for the SNES was so thoroughly mid, much less where it even came from. I had no idea this wildly popular arcade game started it all, no wonder they actually made a sequel.
Thanks for this, it's solved a mystery gnawing away in my mind for almost 20 years.
Part 2 rocks. Love having an extra attack button with an extra moveset for each character. I beat it a few years ago. It was a "blast."
The media call them violent but I call them stress relief.
By their logic then boxing bags for training is violent and must be banned
Just imagine what video games the vikings were playing 🤯
@@TaylorMade223Now I want to look up what they did for fun besides tripping on shrooms, looking for donnybrooks, and yelling 😂
DUDE!!! i'm from Brazil and this game was HUGE here, i played the sequo when i was a kid, in the early 90's... and yeah, the running start was pretty much a law, but i never saw any injuries, never saw nobody throw themselves into the machine... eventualy a dude would try to use kicks but the rest of the guys on the arcade would get him out of there really fast, so he woundn't damage the machine... we take our videogames pretty seriously... don't harm the videogames
Imagine walking up to a Sonic Blast Man arcade game, putting a quarter in, punching the target, failing so spectacularly that you injure yourself, then suing the maker of said arcade game.
This is the world we live in.
We truly live in a society
Imagine living in a world where someone who pretends to be a talking cat can stream all of their irrelevant thoughts and feelings for the entire world.
Imagine living in a world where a bunch 20-40 year old people can pretend to be an anime avatar that looks like a child, act like they are 8 year olds with severe mental disabilities, and garner an audience of thousands to listen to their irrelevant thoughts and feelings.
This is the world we live in.
The original Street Fighter had a cabinet with big pads to punch instead of buttons. It was like punching a brick wall, it hurt so much.
Remember SF EX3? PS2 launch title that lacked analog controls? The blisters I suffered playing that game stuck on pad lmao
I remember seeing blastman as a guest character in Bust-A-Move 3/99
YES!!!!
This sounds like the type of fake arcade game you'd see in an anime where a character hits it so hard in f**king disintegrates.
As a kid at the time, I remember I couldn't beat that first level because I was never really that strong. It frustrated me to no end... But I look back now and wish I had another shot today. Would be nice if we could see this old classic remade. Of course, the cushion would need to be replaced, and it'd likely be made of memory foam instead of a cotton cushion.
You'd kick this game's ass if you had a chance these days
@@MyPalJimbo True. As a kid I didn't have the strength to do it, but now, it'd be a piece of cake... Though honestly I'd mule kick the damned thing instead of punching or throwing my full body into it. My legs always were stronger than my arms. Though I guess I should get into training all over again and hope I can get to an arcade that still has one of these old machines.
The amount of old videos from my childhood on this one video is amazing. Great job i laughed my ass off
a little fun Fact in Japan Sega couldn't call Sonic just Sonic the Hedgehog and early Merch and even the Track ball game. Japan at the time however, trademark applications could take up to three years for approval, and arcade rival Taito already had the arcade game Sonic Blast Man. Likely to avoid conflicting with Taito, Sega used "SegaSonic" for branding of its arcade games in the meantime.
can still remember feeling that iron rod when I played this game at the local arcade.
I wonder why the people in the clips are grabbing their hand with the other hand and making a weird side-fist thing, it looks awkward as hell!
I love Sonic Blast Man, played it around '93 here in Chile, but just normally with the boxing glove and regular punches. I got to see the machine maybe 2 more times at different locations in my country, and then never again. I played Sonic Blast Heroes in Japan, and it was cool, but I wanted to play the original one again... mostly to see how far I've come from being a pre-teen to a grown up puncher.
Games, movies, pro wrestling and anime perpetuated the myth that two-handing a punch doubles its power. Of course it doesn't, but it's still prevalent today. Also, interlocking fingers is specially dangerous, since phalanges are some of the most fragile bones in the human body.
Wow! Not only do I remember this game when I was 18, but one of the arcades I played it at was in a place called Starland in Hanover, MA (Totally fits the description with the bumper boats, go carts, and tanks)! Such a blast from the past! It was also at the Nantasket Beach, King's Castle, and Harborlight Mall arcades here in MA. I actually never knew what happened to Sonic Blast Man, but I guessed correctly...though I didn't know anyone who got injured. Thanks for this video!!!
I'm surprised it's considered so dangerous. It's not so different from those carnival attraction punching bag machines and they don't get banned. (though I guess having the target hanging instead of standing on a thick metal rod is a bit safer) Now I wonder if someone could bootleg Sonic Blast Man with a punching bag machine and some MAME magic...
SBM was badly designed. You were effectively punching a rigid metal rod with no give. Carnival punching bag games are designed obviously differently for a very good reason.
That's one story about a video arcade game that's sure to bring back bad memories to those foolish enough to get injured on Sonic Blast Man. 😖
i have such a dim and dark single memory of a game called FUNKY FIGHTERS or something, it had like a huge multi pads , like maybe 9 of them on the machine that u needed to hit or punch or something but i was too small and dad didn't let me play it since he said the bigger kids are hogging it and i would just feel sad and embarrased if i played it and failed...gotta go research this game...FUNK FIGHERS, FUNKY FIGHTERS...DUNNO....
The game was called The First Funky Fighter. In case you're still wondering.
@@manduradic7902 thanks, went looking after this comment and found it, really thought the buttons were much bigger or maybe i was too small back then....anw, it was a fun game, now i remembered LAZER GHOST, that was an insane light gun game.
The First Funky Fighter, yeah. That's a surprisingly violent game, too, at one point you rip a shark in half with your bare hands lmao
I saw a "Sonic Blast Man" arcade in Portugal, Costa da Caparica around 2012! There was a camera above that took photos of the best players.
Bro..this game was a staple of UK arcades and seaside resorts, had no idea this awesome menace went worldwide 😂
The one "singing" line from Nick Arcade i still remeber to this day is: He's a driving homeslice!
Someone has gotta make a supercut
I fractured my wrist playing this. I kinda wish there had been some kind of compensation in the UK because it was very painful and despite going to A&E that night and getting an x-ray and cast it's never really been right.
i can only imagine how many other people had the same problem and it also never got reported
@@PopCultureHyperfixations Yes. I didn't report it. Who would I report it too? Everybody thought it was really funny that I fractured my wrist playing an arcade game so I just started telling it as a funny story.
I mean there is a point where "don't punch something hard if you haven't practiced how to throw a punch" is kind of incumbent on a person, but man this was aimed at kids and teens. They had no hope haha
I've never heard of this game but yeah me and my friends would have absolutely torn our rotator cuffs to shreds if we'd had access to this in our teens
I never broke my hand, but I was shot in an arcade 17 times by someone who legally purchased an AR-15.
Jeez louise. I'm joking of course. (I'm from England)
Played this in the early 90's at the kinda local bowling alley, boxing glove was long gone, sprained wrist, but did get to the asteroid. Biggest miss I remember was seeing a Street Fighter punch pads cab, but never got to play it.
Bro. That office dude at the beginning had a real bat on him!
"You better file those reports Barry! I won't tell you again."
"Y-y-y-yes boss. Sorry. It won't happen again."
The problem was, the rod only moved backwards. But people came punching in odd angles, leading them to aply force against a well constructed machine. I hurt my hand on it, 2 weeks of sore wrist. It was amazing!
I don't believe the SNES version of Sonic Blast Man was a fairly conventional side-scrolling was due to concerns of violence but practicality. How could a home version be implemented for a cost acceptable to the home video game market? This was far from the first game to use this kind of action. Such games can be dound at least as fr back as my 70s childhood. One I recall had no video at all. It was a full size portrait of an opponent dressed in a gi and ready to spar. You punched and kicked the somewhat padded surface at various locations corresponding to body blows. Later, the largely ignored Street Fighter, before Street Fighter II conquered the universe, featured big rubbery buttons the player pounded to make attacks. Likewise, the earliest arcade of Nintendo's own Punchout! had a kinetic input aspect, too. There was also a spin-off arm wrestling game that likely cause a few players to injure themselves.
They could have used button mashing like some Olympic sports games. But it wouldn't be a game that people would pay full price for
I was only strong enough to be able to beat the truck before it got removed. Wasn't even 10 years old.
Great video. I qas surprised to see you only have 609 subs. I prefict many more in your near future.
My favorite arcade gimmick as a kid was Lucky & Wild.
thank you!
I worked at Dynamo in Ft.Worth and we produced a few thousand of these back in the early 90s. I worked Quality Control, so I got to inspect each unit as it came off the line and made sure it looked and played perfect! We found a few ways to beat the system and win the game!
Funny thing is, just about ALL the injuries HAD to be because they didn't play the game correctly, or as you put it, felt like they had to go extra on it.
So, the feeling I get is that poor Sonic Blast Man took all the blame he didn't deserve because drunk macho idiots can't follow safety instructions.
Yeah title is kinda clickbait. User error like the wiimote hitting the tv is different from mario party thumb blisters or joycon drift product failure. Though 7:00 vid explains it well.
Wrong. I played the game entirely correctly, sober, one time, and fractured my wrist.
@@jamiemclaughlin6899 so you wore a boxing glove and still had this problem?
@@MrVariant Yes. And the glove and pad were in good condition. It's a bad design: You're punching an iron bar. There's a good reason why the traditional carnival punching games have a floating bag.
@@jamiemclaughlin6899 oh ok thanks for stating. Vid made it look like people just abused the stuff and found out lol
Nick arcade guy: "Here comes sonic, he's a hedgehog" My friends and I would sing that all the time.
I remember a Fist of the North Star game that was similar. It was more about speed than power, but God knows we wore ourselves out trying to see who had the hands to beat it.
🤚 Yup, that was me when I was about 10 years old. I can still feel the pain in my wrist.
You and thousands of others apparantly
That clip from the bootleg 3 Ninjas was a great touch! Nostalgic af!
It wasn't just the people playing the game who could get hurt. I remember dudes running across the arcade so they could do a flying kick at the pad. Surely there had to be incidents of innocent bystanders catching some damage from this thing.
Please more of Phil Moore singing along to the Nick Arcade theme. He did that CONSTANTLY
I saw it at the Boomtown casino on the way to Reno when I was in... probably third grade. I was able to clear the first level now and then! I thought I was doing okay. Then some guy went after me and he would do a roundhouse kick to the pad. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen!
I actually had no idea this arcade game existed, I was only familiar with the two games released on the SNES
I remember a diverted flight lay over in gatwick air port, as a kid. Sonic Blast man.... but it would take your picture; and then simulate the black eye etc. And adult was throwing money into this machine so all the kids could have a go. Good times.
Oh my god, thank you for telling me about this. I was a 90's kid too, but never saw this at any arcade I went to. I love what an obvious disaster waiting to happen this is.
In retrospect it does seem insane
5:45 Whang isn't annoying, he's just an actual menace. In case you're not up to speed on all the stuff: Justin was involved in a plot to have venues cancel gigs Maddox had lined up. Some pretty nefarious shit. That's the 95% shorter version of the story.
I think it could be revived with modern motion controllers. They'd just be punching the air while the accelerometer in the controller measures the speed of the punch as well as the sudden deceleration after throwing the punch to calculate the total transfer of kinetic energy that would occur if the punch actually connected with a solid object.
I have a vague and unreliable memory of playing this at a theme park. Without the boxing glove, as there wasn't one attached to the machine. Though, again, vague and unreliable memory as it's several decades ago at this point.
As I've read comments, the more and more I think about it I wonder if a lot of arcades just didn't have the glove but wouldnt take the machine off the floor
For some reason, Sonic Blast Heroes showed up at EVO Las Vegas. Same for one arcade in Florida.
I still have a receeded knuckle from barefisting this game. It wasn't that I had no glove on, but someone had ripped the stuffing out.
We had a machine in a laser tag place in Glasgow during the 90s.
That metal rod man...
So many injuries
Wow.... I don't remember ever seeing this game and I practically lived in arcades all through the 80s and 90s 😮
I remember seeing the sequel "Real Puncher" playing an young using an skate !!!!!! each punch had high score deforming the captured player photo .. was absurd
Loved this game but managed to break a knuckle when the arm bounced back up after I hit it. The glove was knackered and offered zero protection. Didn't stop me playing it the next time I saw one. They disappeared shortly after that.
I'll be totally honest, I was there, almost from the begining of Video games.
I owned a Magnavox Odyssy and remember arcades that were 90% pinball, 5% carnival type games and Pong, Space Invaders and Jaws.
But I remember only 1 game like this. It's target came from the top and the arm/target, extended from the girder and formed a 90° angle.
You Punched it once, or 3 times for a 1$. There were no real graphics, or gameplay. It was more of a strongman competition.
So I don't recall ever seeing Sonic Blast Man. I'm in Canada, so it probably was denied certification.
Good video though, If I learn, I'm happy :)
Cheers from Montreal Quebec Canada
I'm 46 so I remember this game. Everyone got injured in some way. Every single one.
Every time I’ve seen this game and Arm Champs II in public, the machine is out of order for some reason 🥊
Theres still a SBM cab in my local arcade two blocks from home... its usually ocuppied by some dude trying to impress a girl by punching stuff
Honestly, this game was before my time. See, I was born in 2001. About 11 years after the game came out and 6 years years after it was recalled.
But if I was alive at the time, I would have played it safe. They put safety instructions on things for a reason. Just like how seatbelts are a requirement, not a suggestion.
I've had memories with this game because I had a cousin that was a boxer. A very good one and decided that the gloves where for sissies and then went on. He didn't break his hand though. He beat the entire game but not as the highscore which he says was unfair.
I loved Sonic Blast Man but I was lucky enough to have a Fighting Mania: Fist of the North Star in my local arcade. Where Sonic Blast Man was all about power Fighting Mania was all about speed and it was crazy fun to punch the 6 pop out targets.
I played it this summer in Santa Clara del Mar, Argentina. It was very fun :D It made a lot of noise when you hit the mitt (in fact it was the noise of it hitting the machine to measure the strength of the blow).
as an imaginary practitioner of wingchun I can visually beat this machine with my imaginary wingchun techniques.
I looked at it in Sega World in the Troc, in London. There were a group of teenagers rushing to punch it to impress various ladies. I always thought if you mistimed your blow you could break your hand. So I never tried it. Similarly I never tried the hammer game at the circus.
It's insane that the company got fined for people being stupid.
I just played Sonic Blast Heroes in Tokyo last year. Fun game. I dunno why people gotta overdo it so much. Maybe it's all the lead in the pipes.
I'm guessing it was the combo of, the design wasn't the best mixed with people ignoring safety regulations. I also wonder if sometimes it was because the arcades wouldn't fix/replace the boxing gloves. I've been to plenty of arcades where you gotta barehand wacky gators or whack a mole
Ironically, there was a boxing game in my old arcade that was similar, but no one ever played it. It wasn't one punch though, you had a time limit to hit them so many times. I couldn't make it past the 9th match because by then you have to have thrown hundreds of punches... I would be covered in sweat with arms like rubber.
I am today days old discovering that Sonic Blast Man was originally an arcade game and that people went this nuts for it. I consider myself somewhat of a huge fan of arcade games and history so this blows my mind.
This game needs to be remade with cameos from DBZ,One punch man,Hajome no ippo,tekken,😅😅😅😅 Arcade Cabinet ,maybe VR version ? One level where you try to stop Truck-kun from reincarnating someone😅
Imagine if the system somehow detected the motion of the gloves themselves and used that to autozero any punches that had no gloves.
I didn't know it was supposed to have a glove.
The one at the bar by me didn't have one.
When the numbered punching game got popular, this game was always in my mind and no one knew any better.
The first one was amazing, i remember it from my childhood and even on my teen years, trying to come up with esoteric ways to increase the punching power like running, rolling and some other stupid shit :v
When i was in college i discovered there was a sonic blast man 2 arcade nearby and it was even cooler! It would allow you to take a picture of yourself, place it over the enemy model and allow you to beat the crap out of yourself, bloating the bitmap to simulate swelling! It was great, and it kind of taught me actual effective ways to increase punching power
Allegedly this videogame was also the reason why the arcade-only Sonic game (the one which plays a lot like Michael Jackson's MoonWalker) was released internationaly as SegaSonic the Hedgehog (yes, the 'SegaSonic' part is meant to be a single word there) because of how product title
ame trademark laws work in the west.
Ah yes, people act stupid, get hurt, then sue instead of taking responsibility, classic.
Your Dad is 100% haunted by not destroying that asteroid.
I actually saw this game being played in person back in the day at the brickyard mall. The dude playing it was definitely doing the Running Start method
So sheer human arrogance and unwillingness to basically follow the video games safety recommendations, coupled with the fear of legal liability for injury to idiots willing to ignore the games due diligent safety recommendations is ultimately what killed this game?!
*This* , this is how we lose our "nice things" America!!
i love those bars with the punch machine. i never seen that game before.
"Sonic Blast Man" sounds like a fusion of three different games.
I was in arcades a lot in those years and i don't remember ever seeing this game
Maybe it was also staffed by terrorists. You know, kind of like a Bond Villain Hideout. I mean if the building was full of terrorists, that’s not really collateral damage is it?
Ah well, at least it was a video game that encouraged you to build muscle.
I LOVED that game in the arcades back in the day!
Didn't realize when I made this just how devoted a fanbase there was
I guess the modern equivalent of this game is Thrill of the Fight in VR.
Same creators of that Dinosaur bubble game btw
it sums up to
"I did not respect the game or follow the rules so its the games fault I hurt myself"
Reminds me of that hokuto no Ken machine. But that one had a timing function.
Managed to play on one somewhere in 2012 I think.
Then next time I wanted to, someone ripped the boxing gloves off so I used my open palms like some kind of Shaolin larp or something after being silly enough to throw one bare punch at the very unpadded pads.
Keep the gloves, protect your hands!
The last and only time i saw this game was in 90's but never remember the name. Thanks for the flashback ❤
Thanks for watching!
One of my favorite arcade games growing up
Oh gee...people did dumb stuff and then sued a company.
Sonic blast man has got to be without a doubt one of the most underrated and underappreciated mascots title has ever produced the crazy part about it is is that there was actually two good games on the super Nintendo with the American version being slightly censored for the first game in the sequel was a huge improvement with a two-player mode but let's just hope that in the future Sonic black man gets a reboot the game was good though but the sad part is most people who who don't know who the character is who had a PlayStation or Nintendo 64 Sega Saturn only no Sonic blast man as that guy from bust a move 99 are puzzle level 3 if you live in Japan
Never heard of it. I felt personally attacked by the Step by Step clip though.