Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu Reviews

Hudson Soft ported a few of its games from the 16-bit TurboGrafx-16 console to the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System...And surprisingly, they all ported over very well. One of those games is Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu, a side-scrolling, action platformer that stars the man whose name is in the title; Jackie Chan. On the TurboGrafx-16, the game was one of the better platformers on the system if you ask me...But on the platformer-heavy NES console, can Jackie Chan hold his own? Yup.

The game starts out like a typical game of its time, a girl has been kidnaped by some evil thug and it’s up to the character you control to save the day...Except, like I mentioned above, the character you control is Jackie Chan, so how can you lose? The man knows martial arts AND with all of those stunts that he does, he obviously doesn’t care about his own well being...So, he’s dangerous and crazy...I’m surprised the game doesn’t consist of Jackie Chan walking on the screen and the enemies fleeing in terror when they see him. Then again, I suppose he does look like a nice guy...Maybe the enemies aren’t aware that he can kick their bums.



So yeah, there are five levels in the game for you to progress through, but each level looks very different from the others...And each level is also split up into different areas that also look different from each other...So, eventhough the game will take most players a maximum of two hours to beat the game from beginning to end, you’ll see a large variety of scenery as you progress through the adventure. There are also fun little bonus stages hidden in the levels, that have you play a mini game for extra lives or health. While these stages kind of disrupt the flow of the game, it’s a fun distruption. Each level also contains a boss fight or, in the case of the fifth level, two boss fights. This adds a little more satisfaction to when you beat a level as it’s more than simply just reaching the end, it’s reaching the end and fighting a boss that’s usually two or three times your size.

To fight the bosses, you’ve got the ability to punch, kick, and jump...But by punching or kicking frogs, they’ll barf up a bowl of noodles to replenish your health a little or a power-up icon that allows Jackie Chan to perform a limited number of special attacks, from a spin kick to a spinning, cannonball-like attack, to defeat his enemies and get out of each stage in one piece. While the special attacks are neat, they’re rarely needed...And generally only help you out if you happen to have the specific one that may make a boss fight easier, like the cannonball attack works wonders in the first part of the fight against the mutant frog.



The game controls wonderfully. When I wanted Mr. Chan to jump, he jumped. When I wanted him to attack, he attacked. There was no awkward delay, just the correct command executed when I pressed the appropriate button. The only time I really ever had control problems were in certain areas that required me to jump from one platform to another. For some reason of another, there’d be times where I’d continue to run off the side of the platform rather than jump. At first I just assumed it was a timing issue on my part, but when after three of four times in a row of falling off the exact same platform, I started to question if it was a glitch in the game itself rather than my own abilities. However, I only remember experiencing this problem just once or twice when I played. Aside from that, I’d say that the game pretty much controls perfectly.

The graphics in Jackie Chan’s Action Kung-Fu are pretty great. That’s not too surprising since, as I stated at the beginning of the review, it was ported from a 16-bit system. It also came out near the end of the NES’s lifespan, so again, it’s not surprising that the graphics look as nifty as they do. However, there is a bit of glitchiness with the graphics as you play. It’s the normal graphical glitches that you’ll find in many NES games, and I honestly didn’t really notice them until I went to capture screenshots and found it difficult at times (mostly boss fights) to get a nice, clean screenshot without a glitch on it. But, if you didn’t grow up on NES games or you just haven’t played many, you may be more likely to spot the glitches as they pop up on screen. The audio is decent here. It’s got a few songs that may stick in your head for a while, but it doesn’t have the charm that say, a Mega Man soundtrack has. Overall, the audio is good, but not great and the graphics are great, but not perfect.



All in all, Hudson Soft made a fantastic port of a fun game, and despite the NES being a weaker system in terms of hardware, Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu lost very little in the translation from 16-bit to 8-bit. The game is pretty fun to play, controls fantastically, and won’t have you feeling bored before you defeat the final boss. However, minor issues like graphical glitches, the fact that special moves are rarely needed, if at all, and the lack of any sort of save or password system in the game may bog down the experience for some. But, overall, Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu is a great addition to the library of any NES owner...Especially since the game will provide a decent amount of entertainment since most folks won’t be able to rush through it in an hour...Get it? Rush Hour?.....Nevermind.