Obscure NES brawler Phantom Fighter always felt a little haunted, and not just because of the hopping vampires. The beat-’em-up started life on Famicom as Reigen Doushi, a licensed tie‑in to the 1985 Hong Kong horror‑comedy Mr. Vampire, packed with jiangshi, Taoist priests, and all the weird charm that came with that movie. By the time it hit the U.S., the license was gone, the names were scrubbed, and most players had no idea they were playing a film adaptation with the serial numbers filed off.
A new romhack sets out to fix that. Built on top of an English translation of the original Reigen Doushi, it restores the licensed seasonings that were stripped away for the Phantom Fighter release, bringing back proper references to Mr. Vampire and its hopping corpse mythology. That means accurate character names, logos, and terminology tied to the film, so you are not just some vague “phantom fighter” anymore, you are back in that specific Taoist‑vs‑kyonshi setup the developers initially aimed for.
For fans who only ever knew the NES cart, the hack is a bit of a reveal. The underlying game is the same side‑scrolling beat‑em‑up: you travel between villages, enter houses, and kick stiff‑legged jiangshi into submission while upgrading your abilities and visiting temples to heal.
What changes is the context and flavor, with restored dialogue and iconography leaning into the horror‑comedy tone of Mr. Vampire instead of the generic “spooky China” framing that localization left behind. In this case, that means Phantom Fighter finally looks and reads like the movie tie‑in it always secretly was, hopping corpses and all.
Source: Romhack Plaza
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