Dharma Doujou is one of those SNES hidden gems that feels like a martial arts flick crammed into a cartridge. You start off picking your fighter—I always went with the monk because his kicks had this satisfying snap to them—and then it’s straight into these dojo-style battles where spacing and timing matter way more than button mashing.

The pixel art holds up surprisingly well, especially the way characters stagger when you land a heavy hit. There’s this one stage with cherry blossoms falling in the background that I’d sometimes pause just to stare at. And yeah, it’s got that classic SNES difficulty—expect to retry the third boss a few times until you figure out his tells.

What I love is how it mixes straightforward brawling with little strategic touches, like choosing when to charge your super move or baiting enemies into whiffing their attacks. It’s not the deepest fighter out there, but it’s got way more personality than most of the roster-fillers from that era. Still fires up the nostalgia every time I hear that bamboo-flute title theme.