Kung-Fu Master, Irem's 1984 arcade game distributed in North America by Data East, has Thomas climbing the five floors of the Devil's Tower to rescue his girlfriend, taking on waves of enemies with kicks and punches in a constant sideways march that laid the visual and structural groundwork for the entire beat 'em up genre that followed. Its Atari 2600 version, programmed by Dan Kitchen and published by Activision in 1987, managed to condense much of that arcade essence into a far more limited cartridge, something critics of the time praised as a notable technical achievement. It also reached MSX, Amstrad, Commodore 64, and Atari 7800 that same year.
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