Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu (NES) Playthrough
596A playthrough of Hudson Soft's 1990 license-based action game for the NES, Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu.
I might as well disclose my bias upfront: Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu is one of my favorite third-party NES games. It's funny, it looks and sounds great, and the gameplay is sharp as a tack.
It's actually the second NES game to feature the likeness of Jackie Chan's action star persona. The first was Kung Fu (https://youtu.be/IQjzFt8Sqpk), Nintendo's conversion of Irem's 1984 arcade game Kung Fu Master which was originally based on the movie Wheels on Meals.
Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu is a platformer dressed up as a beat 'em up. Over the course of five stages, you wander across China in search of your kidnapped sister, punching tigers and flinging Hadoukens at demon-possessed statues all the way.
It's an absolute blast to play. It's feels distinctly late-gen for an NES game: the action is smooth, the controls feel fluid, the sprites are huge, and there are a lot of animated graphical flourishes that give it a level of polish that you didn't often see in 80s era Nintendo games. The gameplay is simple, but all the elements click together perfectly.
It reminds me a great deal of a couple other NES favorites of mine, Yo! Noid and Adventure Island II. The big character sprites, the level design, the sense of humor, and the feel of the controls are all quite similar. As a kid I picked up on the similarities, but I never had any idea that there was an actual link between the three. It turns out that all three were developed by Now Production, a Japanese development house that created several well regarded titles for Capcom, Hudson, and Namco in the 8 and 16-bit eras.
The only potential problem I could see someone having with it is that it's ridiculously easy. I remember beating it the first time I played it as a kid, and all these years later, it's still a cakewalk. That hasn't ever gotten in the way of my being able to enjoy it, though.
It also got a version released for the TurboGrafx-16. It looks and sounds far better than the NES game did, but I still prefer the NES game. I didn't like the Turbo version's revised stage designs as much.
So yeah, Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu. Two enthusiastic thumbs up!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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