Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu
System: NES
Release Date: December 1990
Developer: Now Production
Publisher: Hudson Soft
Genre: Action
Put yourself in the shoes of America’s favorite martial artist in Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu! Jackie Chan and his sister Josephine were trained from birth to be the best kung fu fighters of them all. But when Josephine was ripped away by the evil Sorcerer, Jackie sets off to show that his kung fu is the best of them all through five levels filled with several stages of fighting action.
For the most part, this is a fairly standard action platformer. Jackie jumps with the A Button and attacks with the B Button. A press of the attack button throws a punch. Pressing while ducking or jumping throws a kick. Holding up while pressing attack uses the currently equipped special attack. These are found when attacking item frogs. These give you a limited number of some special kicking attacks that I didn’t find to be especially useful. You also have a limited number of psycho waves, which is a beam attack that you activate by holding the B Button for a moment. I didn’t realize these existed for over half of the game, so didn’t get much use out of them.
As expected, enemies and obstacles come on screen at predetermined points. For the most part, if you aren’t going too quickly, you have enough time to prepare and hit them properly. It’s inevitable that you’ll get hit here and there, though. When this happens, you cut into your health meter. Fortunately, you can find health recovery food bowls from frogs. If you’re not having any luck with these, you want to collect small jade orbs that enemies drop when you kill them. When you collect 30, you replenish your health and psycho waves. Occasionally, a bell appears on screen that will take you to a bonus level where you can earn extra lives, psycho waves, or health pieces.
The levels are surprisingly varied in style and challenge. Any time you die, you get the game over screen, and are taken to the title screen where you can continue for the beginning of the stage you were on. You start with five continues and earn more in the bonus stages if you’re good enough. If you aren’t blessed with quick reflexes, this auto scrolling stage may be a problem for you (11:00) (16:15; vid 2). This stage that has you jumping on floating turtle platforms gave me a fit for a few minutes until I actually paid attention to what I was doing. Good thing you don’t die when you fall off the screen!
The end of each level has a boss fight, which weren’t really that bad. They mainly consisted of dodging projectiles and getting an attack in. This is until the penultimate boss, who was a thorn in my side for many attempts. I would have run out of lives while learning his pattern and realizing how to take it slow against him. Once I learned how to control his counter attacks, I was able to put him down and rescue my sister. But she and the Master sent me on a floating cloud with one last task of killing a giant spider! He was much easier and fell to a barrage of psycho waves and spin kicks.
Graphics: 3.0
Sprites are big and enemies are detailed. The backgrounds are mostly pleasant. I think it looks good for an NES game.
Sound: 3.0
Music and sounds are above average, as well. Some tunes are pretty catchy, while others are less so.
Gameplay: 3.0
There are enough gimmicks within the stages to keep you on your toes. Controls work well and didn’t frustrate me.
Difficulty: 3.5
Until the very end, I thought everything was exceptionally fairly paced. Even the next to last boss wouldn’t have caused me as many problems if it wasn’t 4 in the morning.
Fun Factor: 3.5
I had a lot of fun with Jackie. It felt varied enough and didn’t overstay its welcome. I’d certainly call it a quick, enjoyable playthrough.
Overall Rating: 3.2
Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu earns a B+. I think I stayed away from playing this as a kid because I didn’t trust a Jackie Chan game to be anything but a gimmick. I was wrong.