Jackie Chan review - Nintendo Entertainment System

Jackie Chan is a bit nippy when it comes to the old kung-fu antics. His leapin', kickin' and general pain-causing truly knows no bounds. It should come as no surprise, then, to find that an action game has been based on the many scrapes he finds himself in during his plethora of kung-fu movies.

In this particular sojourn, his top chick Chin Re Kon has been kidnapped by an evil wizard. Said magician just happens to have an army of martial arts warriors, deadly death traps and killer fish at his disposal, not to mention a horridly hazard-ridden path to the wizard's tower.
Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu is a conversion of the immensely ace PC Engine platform beat 'em up game in which the hero races through many levels of combat action in order to reach Mr Pointy Hat and rescue his damsel.

What the Mean Machines staff thought

Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu combines challenging and highly addictive platform action, kung-fu a-plenty, a huge playing area, excellent graphics and great sound to produce a really superb game. Although Jackie's combat moves are limited, there's so much in the game that you simply never seem to get bored. The mission is a tough one and punching and kicking all the way through to the end takes a lot of practice - but the game is such fun you just keep on playing. The Nintendo certainly isn't short of platform games, but Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu has enough new features and chopsocky action to make it an utterly essential purchase.

If it were to reach the standard of the films, Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu would have a lot to live up to. When I heard it was another platform game I must admit I was fearful for it's quality. Luckily my fears were never realised and Action Kung-Fu is a fab game. The balance between fighting and platforming is set perfectly, so that both are equally challenging and varied. The difficulty level is set just right too. It's easy enough at the beginning, but it gets much tougher. True, you are given a lot of continues, but they're accessed on the title screen so a lot of the temptation is removed. Graphically Action Kung-Fu is a treat. The sprites are large and well animated with a number of humorous touches and the scrolling is smooth. Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu is definitely original enough to set it apart from all the other NES platform games, so you'd be well advised to give it a go.