This game is just pure fun. Exactly what today's games aren't, unfortunately...
You start off with Jackie, meditating (I think) in a waterfall, and then he says goodbye to his Sensei or Grandfather (I don't know, it's never told in the game) and setting off in a huge adventure to save his girlfriend that was kidnapped by a dark being. Obviously, your goal is to complete all levels and defeat all bosses to save your girlfriend. The story is nothing special, but at the time, these games never really had a great story, mainly because people didn't bother, unlike people today. In order to watch the intro, you have to wait a few seconds in the title screen.
This game is a platformer where you beat the crap out of lots of bad guys, monsters, animals and bosses. You basically have a jump button and an attack button. You can perform an attack while in the air and while your crouching to defeat aerial enemies and small ones. You can also hold the B button to do a Kamehame-ha like attack, and destroy monsters from far away with a powerfull blast. You have 5 of these, and once you waist them, you can't perform that attack anymore unless you recover more of them. In every level, you get to find several things to help you on your adventure. First, you will find several green frogs that may trick to think it's an enemy, but when you attack it, the frog tosses either a soup bowl, that restores some of your life, or a special attack. Special Attacks are made by pressing B and Up at the same time. As natural, these are stronger than normal attacks, and sometimes essential to defeat a boss or to complete a level. You can also find a Bell somewhere on the level, that takes you to the special stage. In Special Stages, your goal is to gain as many points as you can, and these change depending on what level you're on. Depending on the number of points you gain, you can obtain soup bowls for life recovery, Kamehame-ha attacks in case you're out of them and Lives, which in this game is Continues for some weird reason. With all of this told, don't expect a masterpiece, but you can definitely expect a great game, that will make hold the controller for more and more!
There's really not much to say about the graphics in this game. They're not terrible, but not great either. There were NES games with much better graphics than this, as there were games with much worse graphics also. A dissapointing fact is that this was one of the last games for the NES, and we would expect much more than this. But if you are like me and don't care about graphics, then this won't make the game fall behind not even one bit.
The music in this game is absolutely wonderful, I can tell you that! It definitely entertains you throughout the game and suit perfectly the levels and bosses. It isn't hard on the ears like some other NES soundtracks, so you won't find any problems at all with this soundtrack. I'm not saying that it's better than Zelda, Mario and Final Fantasy music, but is still an awesome soundtrack in it's own right!
In other words, this is what a game should be! A character, going from point A to point B, with colorfull graphics, sweet music and fun gameplay. That's all it needs! Games today have come a long way, and they just don't have the charm that these nostalgic gems have. All you see in today's games are gadgets over here, blood over there and drugs on the other side. This is not what I used to play...this is not what I used to call a game! Definitely one of my favorite NES games, and it should be recognized by other people!!!