Chew Man Fu
System: TG-16
Release Date: October 1990
Developer: Now Production
Publisher: NEC
Genre: Puzzle
Push, pull, and kick colored orbs to their destinations in Chew Man Fu! The antagonist is the titular Chew Man Fu and he has taken away the two favorite foods of the people, fried rice and egg rolls. It’s up to the twins LaLa and LingLing to put the smackdown on Chew and his legion of baddies. There are five areas of ten rounds, five bonus stages, and ten games, for a total of 550 levels. Do you have what it takes to get through them all?
This game can be played with one or two players. Each level tasks you with moving four balls onto their same colored platform. You can grab them with Button II and push or pull them straight and around corners. There are four enemies on stage and they can’t walk through the balls, but they can get you if you’re in their path. Sometimes they injure you, but other times when they touch you, you’re dead.
It’s cool that you can move around corners, but sometimes you need to kick an orb through a wall. You can achieve this by pressing Button I next to a ball. Each has a different destructive power, with the black orbs breaking walls rather quickly, while the blue balls take a long time to break a wall down. There are items on some stages, with the most important being the hidden scroll that shows the orb pads.
Enemies have different abilities through the stages. In the ice levels, the giant yeti can freeze orbs so you can’t move them. The big monkey men can lift orbs and require you to attack them to force a drop. The kappas climb on an orb keeping you from a ball. Frogs will blow fire at you and more. You can kill enemies by kicking orbs at them, but this will take away from the number of diamonds you earn at the end of the stage. You’re given the opportunity to turn you diamonds in for extra lives.
There’s an edit mode that I couldn’t particularly figure out. Not as good an editor as Boxy Boy. There’s also a two player only kick ball mode that is there to help you learn the controls. I didn’t get much use out of these modes. I made it 35 stages before I got bored and gave it up.
Graphics: 2.0
Sprites are unique, but backgrounds aren’t very good.
Sound: 2.0
The music is stereotypical Chinese. It isn’t my cup of tea.
Gameplay: 2.5
It’s nice to be able to both push and pull the orbs instead of just pushing them.
Difficulty: 3.0
You have a certain amount of lives, but if you die, you have infinite continues to come back and try again, sans diamonds.
Fun Factor: 2.0
I enjoyed myself enough, but it didn’t keep me gripped to play through all 55 stages, let alone ten times through.
Overall Rating: 2.3
Chew Man Fu earns a C+. This is a play a few stages and come back later for a few more kind of game. Totally playable, but not my favorite.