Kung Fu

Publisher: Nintendo
Year: 1985
Genre: Brawler - Side-Scroll

There was something of a martial arts craze in the 80's brought on by the likes of the Karate Kid, The Last Dragon and Gymkata. Ok, maybe not so much Gymkata. Point being that it is generally agreed that in the 80's, everybody was Kung Fu Fighting.

Those cats were fast as lightning.

Pictured: funky chinamen from funky chinatown.

Kung-Fu for the Nintendo is a game of kidnapped girlfriends and guys in pink and blue pastel attempting to grab you. There are evil midgets little people, dragons that come out of confetti balls, pots of snakes, a magician, a guy with a stick, a dude who throws boomerangs, hearts, stars, clovers, horseshoes and blue moons and the occasional luck-based bossfight.

As an early brawler game, the vast majority of enemies are the rank and file sort that take one hit of any sort to kill, and any sort of attack will potentially hit them if you time it right. For the most part, just kicking or punching should be the order of the day, as getting fancy is a great way to get killed. Of course, a few enemies require specific attacks to kill, but they're really more the exception than the rule.

I wish there was more to say about this game, but there isn't. Basically, you walk to the left and kill bad guys. Then you go upstairs and walk to the right and kill enemies. Lather, rinse, repeat. The main character is apparently modeled after Jackie Chan, and I guess I can kind of see the resemblance, but, to be fair, Jackie Chan looks exactly as one would expect a random kung-fu master to look.

John's Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0, for not sucking, but not exactly being awesome either. On a side note, can someone use the graphics from this to make a video game version of the fight scene from Oldboy? Because that would be awesome!