Welcome back to 80s August, The Splintering’s month-long celebration of the greatest decade since

We’re marking this festive occasion with an all-new installment of Box Art Bombshells, where we reveal the completely fabricated super really-real events that inspired some of the wackiest and weirdest box art from gaming history.

This time, we’re revealing the hidden truth behind Black Belt, the martial arts action game released on the SEGA Master System in 1986.

Georgio knew that it was time to see the doctor. The burning, itching sensation had become too intense, too severe to ignore. Georgio visited his HMO, Dr. Patricia Pfeffer, in hopes of receiving a referral to a good podiatrist.

Dr. Pfeffer said that Georgio’s case of foot fungus was the worst she had ever seen, and asked Georgio to wait a moment while she left the examination room to make some calls. After twenty minutes more of Georgio enduring his perpetually itchy nightmare, a woman in a dark suit came into the examination room and identified herself as Tracy, one of Dr. Pfeffer’s medical assistants. She gave him what Tracy called an antibiotic.

Some time later, Georgio awoke in a dark room, surrounded by men in military uniforms. Georgio was strapped to a surgical table with needles and tubes sticking into his legs. The burning and itching in his feet were excruciating. A man with a star on his chest approached Georgio and told him that the power of his podiatric fungus was incredible, and that the government wanted to weaponize it to fight the evils of totalitarian Communism. (It was the 80s, after all.)

Charged with this new grand mission, the itching sensation abated, and Georgio enthusiastically accepted his fungal malady to become Georgio: The Foot Fungus Virtuoso!

*Note: The Georgio: the Foot Fungus Virtuoso game was changed to a generic karate game called Black Belt when it was localized for western audiences.

Thanks for reading!

You can check out more of our 80s August content here, and for more Box Art Bombshells, go here! Please consider following The Splintering on social media or bookmarking the site for more independent entertainment news, views, and commentary!

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