One of the original "black box" titles for the NES, Kung-Fu was based off of the Chinese cult action-comedy "Wheels on Meals", one of Jackie Chan's first roles. In the movie, he plays Thomas, who works as a food delivery guy. He meets Sylvia, falls in love, and in the end has to save her from being kidnapped from a …
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One of the original "black box" titles for the NES, Kung-Fu was based off of the Chinese cult action-comedy "Wheels on Meals", one of Jackie Chan's first roles. In the movie, he plays Thomas, who works as a food delivery guy. He meets Sylvia, falls in love, and in the end has to save her from being kidnapped from a gang. The climax of the movie is when he climbs the stairs of the building she is held hostage in, fighting hordes of enemies before proceeding to the next floor.
That is basically what this game is. You play as Thomas, and you go from right to left, defeating enemies, before taking on a boss. Beat him, you climb the stairs, and then go from left to right doing the same thing. You do this for five levels and after you beat these levels, the game loops again with harder difficulty.
This game is simple, bare bones action. It's easy plug in and play fun. The challenge level is fair and reasonable. It set the stage for the beat 'em up genre, and could be called the Grandfather for games like Double Dragon, Final Fight and Streets of Rage.
For some reason, the game hasn't been rereleased in a long time. It never released on any iteration of the Virtual Console, it was missing from the NES Classic mini and it's not a part of the Switch Online service. Maybe it has to do with licensing, although this version of the game was not technically licensed, so I'm not sure why we haven't seen it in a while.
Again, a very simple, but fun, action game. A solid 3 stars.
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