Shaq-Fu

"Finally, the truth is revealed...either that or this review is proof that I have no sense"

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SHAQ FU
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Shaq Fu. A name feared by people, shunned by critics, and found in many stores that sell coasters, or in most cases, in a garbage bin. But I own Shaq Fu, and I play it. And dammit, I'm proud of it. This is where you say, ''But it's Shaq Fu, considered the worst fighting game of all time! Right?''. That's the Sega Genesis version. God knows, there are only two reviews for this version: an 8 and a 3. But why do I like it? No taste in fighting games, perhaps? Who knows. But I will now reveal the truth about Shaq Fu!

Stories are always seemingly thrown together for small effect in fighting games (except for Rival Schools, which rivaled games like Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VI in terms of storyline), and Shaq Fu is no exception to the rule. Shaquille O'Neil (Magic Shaq, not Laker Shaq, though Laker Shaq is playable in other modes besides story. And this game came out BEFORE Laker Shaq, so this game was also a premonition of the future!) is in this small town in Asia (or something, it's never made clear) and he comes upon a dojo. The dojo owner thinks Shaq has come to save the 'little boy', and puts him in an old-fashioned phone booth and sends him to an alternate dimension. Sheesh. Dr. Who is always getting ripped off. Silly humans-I mean, er....

Well, now Shaq runs around in the small 'overworld' where he can enter an area to fight. There are four 'islands', but it's not actually a big game. Shaq can scale the first one, the largest, in several seconds. Each island has a fight on it-in the case of the first, three. You walk on the area; ex: you walk on the waterfall and the words appear: Catwalk Falls; and press A and prepare for a fight. Here's where the game gets started!

The controls are simple, yet so damn frustrating. A is strong kick, B is regular kick. Y is strong punch, X is regular punch. Up gets you high-no, wait, let me rephrase that. Up lets you jump. Down is crouch, and obviously left and right are your walk buttons. L and down does...something. I don't know. You're surrounded by a nice looking emblem and, well, that's all I can manage to find. I recently discovered that L and left and right does something pretty useful, however. When you press L and towards your enemy, you teleport to the enemy, and with L and away from you enemy, you retreat back! This helps with a gameplay flaw. R is entirely useless, though. R is the taunt button, which is basically suicidal. It's a little graphic of your character 'taunting' the enemy, and it leaves you helplessly open for attack as you're foolishly 'taunting' your opponent. So, besides that, what's so frustrating about the controls? Well, it all starts with difficulty: Easy, Normal, and Hard. The main problem is Hard mode. Hard does one thing to make the game difficult: It makes the controls unresponsive. Who in their right mind would do that? Well, it saves programming costs! Switch the mode to Hard, and your fast kick won't be very fast anymore. Easy and Normal are responsive, and pretty basic. But more problems lurk within the fighting system itself....

I'll start with what this game has in the eyes of many people: The Bad. First of all, you'll be lucky if you find a way to perform a special move. Opponents throw lightning at you, summon cheetahs, and throw swords. You kick. When you die, you're given the controls of a special move. Of course, this 'special move' usually consists of a low kick or a high kick. This isn't good at all. You may find one eventually, one day. Some special attacks are avoidable, like ones from come out of the air, because of the L left and right trick, though. Second of all, the last boss is cheap. It's fun to fight against the normal enemies, but the last boss goes straight for the jump attacks, all the time. You can only beat this guy one way: Jump attacks. But of course, he uses a jump attack, which cancels your jump attack if you run into him in mid-air. It also hurts you more than it hurts him.

Now for the good. This game is VERY entertaining, especially multiplayer. Unless you're playing with a whiny moron, multiplayer is more fun and a lot less cheap than some of the AI! YES, REALLY!!! The story mode is short and easy, but very replayable, just for the fighting engine. It's very simplistic, and it was easily summed up in the controls, and there really is no skill involved. BUT WHO CARES, IT'S FUN!!!!!

Okay, fighting engine is done. How about those versus modes? We'll start out with
Duel
Your run of the mill two player single bout mode. Player 2 can press start to join the game, and then select a character. X and Y controls the maps you can play in. When both players are ready, the bout begins. If Player 2 does not join, a CPU enemy will fight you.

Tournament
In my opinion, this is the best part of the game. Not as linear as Duel, and not nearly as stupid as Story. Of course, it's also the most confusing interface I will ever even try to use. This mode is multiplayer only: No CPU here. Select 8 characters (or multiples of one, two, how ever you want it) to play as or against. When all 8 (or 4, the minimum) are finished, you begin the tournament. Now of course, there will be no mercy, as fights are randomly and confusingly put together to make your brain explode. The only possible way to figure out this mode is to have 8 players, and if you can find 8 Shaq Fu fans, you're a lucky one. The game ranges from the first round with 4 fights, the 1/2 finals with 2 fights, and the finals with one fight. Fun!

Okay, it's time for the design! Hey, that rhymes!

Visually, this game IS impressive. The cutscenes in story mode look nice, little animation details about. Rather than looking like 2D Anime Street Fighter characters, the fighters in Shaq Fu have a 3D look to them. Their bodies have shadows on them (even if they don't really cast any), and with their non-anime look, they move and spin around in a stylish 3D manner. The battlefields have foregrounds and backgrounds. Most of the battlefields have moving backgrounds, for example, a temple area has statues that arms move and robe wearing characters nodding and shaking their heads. An impressive area that takes advantage of the foregrounds and backgrounds in a top of an ancient building, with cheering gargoyles in the back and piled together wood and broken bars in the foreground, while the fight takes place in between, which gives this 2D fighter a very 3D look.

The sound is a goofy muffled mess. There are goofy muffled cackles, goofy muffled grunts, and overall it's a...goofy muffled mess. Yeah, that's it. If you think I should be more, detailed, that is as detailed as it's going to get. Goofy muffled mess. The music is pretty good, though. The music fits each area. The temple music sounds like a normal Arabian temple style of music, and the voodoo camp is a good percussion beat tune. The introduction cutscene music has an unneeded record scratching effect to make it, shall I say, ''rappy''. Oh, well.

So, what is Shaq Fu for SNES? It has problems that any game designer could see from a mile away, but for some reason, it retains fun. It's also a visually impressive game, with good music and a goofy muffled mess to boot! Yes, I'm proud to own Shaq Fu for SNES, but now I'm probably going to go play it for Genesis and puke out a lung. But hey, I thought Hydlide had an interesting engine. Who knows the secrets of Shaq Fu....

Final Rating: 8 Great

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/12/01, Updated 05/02/02