Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu

"Don’t let the Jackie Chan name fool you, this game rocks."

The good guys from Hudson Soft have made more wonderful obscure classics aside from Adventure Island, they are not as well known as Adventure Island, but some of them are almost as good, like this one.

Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu is an action platformer game, you control Jackie Chan (and fortunately the character in the game doesn’t looks like him) and you have the task to save your girlfriend from the hands of a guy that looks more like a Kabuki theatre actor than the final boss of an action game but well, the thing is that he is very bad and that he has kidnapped your girlfriend, and that is unacceptable.

Gameplay 10/10:
The gameplay is simply perfect, while somehow typical, Jackie Chan’s movements respond perfectly, they are smooth, easy to perform, and very effective.

Sometimes we will see a frog jumping happily on the screen, if we hit it we will obtain items or orbs, the orbs hold special abilities (super movements), we can’t use these abilities whenever we want but only a few times, it depends on the skill. Aside from these skills we have the ability to do a “kame hame ha”, ok, they aren’t “kame hame has”, but they look like them, it is some kind of light beam that comes out of our hands, to do them we will have to collect the spheres enemies drop after being eliminated, almost every single enemy drops these spheres, so you won’t have problems to obtain them.

Graphics and Music 10/10:
Graphically this game kicks ass, the characters and enemies are very big and nicely done, the games uses soft colours and good amount of detail as well as great animations and designs, like the backgrounds, very beautifully made, I don’t know why but they remind me a lot to Dragon Ball (and not only because of the above mentioned kame hame ha). The game is pretty old but the graphics are among the nicest I have seen in the Nes, the best thing about them is that they are very big but at the same time well proportioned. The soundtrack is good and pleasant to hear, never annoying, and that is a plus, very nice music.

I don’t know if it is just me but I find this game to be very atmospheric, it has a very mystical feel, maybe it is because of the scenarios, temple, waterfalls, etc and because of the soft colours it uses, I don’t know, why but it is one of those games that make you feel like better while playing. Odd.

As a result:
This game is superb, probably one of the best action/platform games for the Nes, too bad it is so obscure, the Jackie Chan name probably worked in the opposite direction, no wonder!, anyway, this game is superb, and of course is the best thing you will ever find with the Jackie Chan name on it.

”My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry about that.”

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/04