And who’s the man? Jackie Chan! Yeah that’s right. We all know the Chuck Norris list jokes, but really that’s all they are, jokes; Jackie Chan could kick his Texas Walker ass. Jackie Chan could take care of a room full of people with automatic weapons with coat rack, a woman’s shoe and a regular table, all while looking like he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. He’s a man who insists on doing most of his own stunts, even in the awesome animated series, I’m sure he found a way to the stunts himself. So of course, hearing he’s the Karate Kid’s mentor on in the new movie instantly interested me and made me forgive him for “The Spy Next Door” (haha, no I haven’t seen it). That being said, I need to honor this with a game that’s as awesome as he is, and the only way I can do that is with a game with him in it. Here’s Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu for the Nintendo Entertainment system.
The story of the game is impossible to figure out without the game manual or this thing called the internet that I have never heard of. This is mostly contributed to two things: one, the game has no text or dialog in it, so you never know what’s going on, and two, it’s not based off of anything Jackie Chan has ever done really (though he could go out and do everything in this game in real life, just saying). The manual explains that Jackie Chan and his twin sister Josephine (which from my research, he doesn’t have) are China’s greatest Kung Fu warriors together, under the guide of their master (and though it doesn’t say it in the instruction manual, it seems implied that this happens a long long time ago). Believing they aren’t as strong if separated, their master’s rival, known only as Sorcerer, casts a spell to make Josephine disappear, then uses his magical ability to set up a series of monsters and trials to stand in Jackie’s way. But Jackie is stronger than the Sorcerer knew, and together with his Master, Jackie sets off to save his sister. Though this has nothing to do with Jackie Chan in real life or any of his movies and that its little more than a Kung Fu twist of the “Save the girl” story, I really like it. It tells the tale of an underdog, courage, determination and would be a great plot to any Kung-Fu movie.
This is a platforming game, and like Donkey Kong Country, it’s not so much what it does, but how well it does it. I am serious, this is such a smooth game, and that means a lot since it was on a system known for its blockiness and hit or miss performance. The basic controls are that you can jump with the A button and attack with the B button, and as I’ve said, both respond really well and exactly like you want them to. Also the levels are really well designed, adding to fun of the excellent controls. There are also special attacks you get by collecting certain orbs with arrows on them. You activate these by pressing up and attack. Doing this can guarantee a kill for most enemies, but I found most leave you vulnerable for a short period afterwards. Also, you have a limited amount, so you might want to think about saving them. You also have psycho waves you can use by holding down attack, but you only have a maximum of 5 and they aren’t that useful. One thing I have to mention though is that your recovery time in this game is ridiculously fast, once causing me to die cause I didn’t notice I had just gotten hit 6 times in a row. At first I though it was a mistake, but then I realized: IT’S JACKIE CHAN! He’s DOESN’T stay hurt for long!
This game is awesome, and once again, I say it’s all cause of the Chan man. This game just shows you how awesome he is: if he kicks you, you will crystalize into an orb. Sticks in the water don’t flow unless Jackie Chan wants them too. If Jackie doesn’t like the weather, he can just kick the clouds in the eye until it goes away. He can hit a phoenix so hard, it doesn’t want to rise from the ashes in fear it’ll get hit again. He is the J.C. that I worship. You just gotta respect Hudson soft for being able to not only make a game that honors his greatness, but also contain all of it in one cartage, though this might be why its so disappointingly short. Also for being short, it can be easy at time, but you know what that is? YOU’RE PLAYING AS JACKIE CHAN! It WOULD be this easy for him. Last thing I want to mention; there’s a code to get 99 continues and its available in the instruction manual. I think that’s cause Jackie has 99 lives. I give Jackie Chan’s Action Kung-Fu 9.5 levels out of 10.
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