To a discerning game consumer, Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu makes a very terrible first impression.
Its title alone would reek of an obvious licensing of Jackie Chan's fame with the intention to exploit his fame to sell the game with. The box-art has a background with silhouettes set against an abstract horizon, telling the customer little about the game beyond that it concerns kung-fu.
Jackie Chan's appearance on the box-art is also quite far removed from his actual looks at the time. An observant player would suspect that his image is actually a composite one, taken from other photos, edited and cobbled together into a manner that fans of Jackie Chan may consider far from accurate. In fact, an ardent fan of NES games at the time may suspect that the box-art might have been intended for another NES game, Yie-Ar Kung-Fu.
Running the game proper, the player will notice that the main menu emphasizes Jackie Chan's name far more than the rest of the game's title, and even included an 8-bit rendition of Jackie Chan's trademark cheeky grin.
Starting a new game, the player will notice that the protagonist, which is supposedly Jackie Chan's 8-bit rendition, doesn't resemble Jackie Chan and especially box-art Jackie Chan much at all. The most that the blue-clad hero has in common with Jackie Chan of the game's time is the shape of his hair, and even so this is brown and not black.
Any player who had approached this game in the hope of basking in the glory of a video game version of Jackie Chan would be sorely disappointed.
The disappointment would eventually bleed away though, if the player can stomach the initial dismay brought about by the less-than-awesome representation of Jackie Chan. There are many designs in the game that are quite good, though these are interspersed with minor flaws.
The next thing that the player would notice is the surprisingly well-detailed background. The intro sequence itself starts at a waterfall, which is apparently a typical place of meditation for Oriental martial arts masters-in-training like 8-bit Jackie Chan.
Bidding a nondescript bearded monk farewell, Jackie apparently leaps away to start a quest with a goal that is not explained in-game at all. (The official description, outside of the box and in marketing ads, is typically about a hero that has to save yet another damsel-in-distress and defeat an evil villain of supernatural prowess.)
The player is treated to an 8-bit rendition of a map painted on a scroll, showing the journey ahead of Jackie. For the most part, the map shows the locations that Jackie will be going to, though they do a poor job of telling the player what to expect in the levels that take place in these locations.
The first level is an introductory level of sorts, showing the player the kinds of challenges that will be ahead at their most fundamental and easiest.
There will be enemies of different movement and attack patterns to defeat, though these would be all-too-familiar to veterans of NES games, which often feature single-minded enemies. There will be platforms of both the sorts that are solidly connected to the ground and the floating/flying ones that the player character has to hop across to get from one side of the screen to the opposing one, shifting the screen closer to the end of the current level.
As is typical of NES platformers, there are environmental hazards like bottomless chasms and spike-laden pits, though there are some more sophisticated and rarer ones, like quick-sand which drags the player character downwards to a smothering doom if the player does not have him jumping regularly to counter-act the sucking. There are also hazards like flying nunchakus that could not be struck down, thus requiring the player to have Jackie duck to avoid them, and crumbling platforms that will disintegrate away the longer that Jackie stands on them.
It has to be noted here though that with the exception of bottomless chasms, Jackie can actually jump his way out of environmental hazards that would have typically slain/knocked-out protagonists of other platforming games outright. For example, Jackie can land on spikes and take damage, but will be rendered invulnerable for a short while to give the player some time to reach safety (which is a game design that veterans of NES games would be very familiar with). Another example is that bodies of water do not immediately drown Jackie; instead, he can move across them for a short while, and even jump out of the water to reach a platform floating on its surface.
This is a marked difference from the designs of environmental hazards in many other NES platforming/side-scrolling games, and one that the player may find pleasant. It also happens to help portray the dogged determination of Jackie Chan's silver-screen personae quite well.
Most levels usually allow the player to set the pace of the side-scrolling progression, but some typically force the screen to scroll anyway (either to the side or upwards), forcing the player to keep up or be pushed or boxed into environmental hazards.
Thankfully, the player has access to controls that are quite tight, though this is perhaps expected as the developer of the game is Hudson Soft, a proven designer of platforming games. The player can change Jackie's direction mid-jump, perform an attack from almost all animation frames, and his momentum upon landing from jumps can be controlled with the directional buttons, among other designs.
If there is a complaint to be had with the controls, it is that the player is unable to have Jackie drop down from one platform to another below, even though he can jump from one platform to another above.
The first level also introduces the mechanic of power-ups in this game, which involves encountering and beating up frogs, who will cough up goodies. The frogs are sprightly creatures with tiny hitboxes though, and will attempt to run away (towards the left edge of the screen) when approached.
These power-ups include bowls of noodles (which, in the typical manner of food-based power-ups at the time, heals the player character). The more interesting power-ups are orbs that alter Jackie's special attacks; there will be more on this briefly.
Jackie has the basic martial arts moves of punching and kicking, the former occurring when he is on the ground and the latter when he makes a jumping attack.
The game wouldn't be much of a kung-fu-themed game if Jackie is only limited to these, so the game includes the mechanic of special attacks. These are typically close combat moves, but they have a wide arc of collision that can hit more than one sprite, and they also happen to deal a lot of damage. Some even have him launching himself across the screen, making them a very handy escape/dodging technique as well.
To balance these powerful moves, Jackie can only perform them a number of times; the counter for these is shown in the middle tab of the rows of stats at the bottom of the screen, next to an icon of what appears to be a monk that is demonstrating the appearance of the special attack currently available to Jackie.
Jackie can replenish these special moves by collecting the aforementioned orbs from frogs, but more often than not, the special moves are altered altogether into different ones. These are usually handy for the next stretch of the current level, but being a game with a lot of platforming sequences, the player may choose to bypass them altogether and thus save up some special moves that may be more convenient for an unavoidable fight later.
As the player character defeats certain enemies, they drop green orbs (presumably baubles of jade) that can collected and added to a counter at the bottom right of the screen. Upon approaching 30 orbs, the player will be rewarded with a full recharge of Jackie's health, as well as replenishment of his super attacks.
8-bit Jackie Chan may favor close-combat moves, but being a character in a high-fantasy game also gives the game designers an excuse to give him a ranged super-attack in the form of a wave of energy that moves in a horizontal direction in front of him, dealing high damage or annihilating outright anything in the way. This special attack is very convenient in certain segments of the game where there is an incoming wave of enemies, though this is optional as the player can alternatively avoid them altogether.
The game does not use a system of lives; if Jackie loses all of his health, the player is directed to a "continue?" screen right away, with up to five credits for resumption of the game. This is another marked change from other platformers, which typically uses the "extra lives" system, but this is perhaps to balance against Jackie's health system.
Extra credits can be earned through bonus stages, which can be entered through hitting bells that sometimes appear in the regular levels. Upon hitting them, the player will be transported to special stages, each of which has limited time for the player to perform whatever is necessary to attain as high a score as possible. Once the time is up, the player can use the points earned to purchase replenishment for special attacks and extra credits.
Unfortunately, what the player should do in these stages is not clear though. These stages will not tell the player that they should be jumping across clouds or hitting statues to earn the score necessary to succeed.
Most of the enemies in the game have behaviors that would be very familiar to veterans of NES games. There are enemies that charge or pounce at the protagonist, run or fly in just one direction while making attacks of opportunity, behave like turrets, patrolling a platform while occasionally making ranged attacks, etc.
There are some interesting ones, such as a turret-like enemy that throws the nunchakus that have been mentioned earlier across an entire side-scrolling level and an enemy that can summon icicles to drop from the top of the level.
Roughly half of the enemies in this game have the usual stand-by sprites of feral animals and other beasts, while the rest have more obvious Oriental flavours, such as evil mockeries of monks and mountain bandits.
Many of the bosses have quite disappointing gameplay designs, as they are the usual sort that telegraph their attacks and resort to very predictable attack patterns that can be dodged quite easily. Any increase in difficulty from one boss to the next involves tighter timing in dodging their attacks, but otherwise it's still a waiting game to have the bosses expose themselves to counter-attacks.
They do look impressive enough to be bosses though. For example, the first is an imposing living statue that attacks with (slow-moving) extendable palms and which make amusing faces as it takes more and more damage. Another is a gigantic rogue monk that is armed with a mace.
The last few bosses are the most entertaining in the game, fittingly enough. One of them may use one of a few attacks, depending on the location of the player character in the screen, while another has Jackie fighting atop a magic cloud while he and his opponent is free-falling through the sky.
Perhaps the conclusion of the game is the segment of the game that will redeem its lousy utilization of Jackie Chan's fame. In a tribute to Jackie Chan's movies, the end credits feature sprites that had been rejected during Hudson Soft's development of the game, in an apparent spoof of the blooper reels in the movies.
As experienced with NES games as Hudson Soft was, there are some technical blemishes with the graphical designs. The most significant of these is the tearing of sprites, especially in screens where the background is animated, e.g. waterfalls, which can diminish the entertainment value of the aesthetic designs of these sprites and their animation frames.
The sound effects in the game would not be unfamiliar to players who have played plenty of side-scrolling NES platformers with elements of combat. Jackie jumps to the tune of a whimsical beep, attacks are accompanied by different variations of more beeps and boops, and successful hits on enemies also occur to yet more beeps and boops. Fortunately, much like other competently done NES games, these sound effects have different tones in order to differentiate themselves from each other.
The soundtracks are as one would expect from a Hudson Soft game. Most of them are upbeat, with laid-back levels having cheery tunes and levels with a more urgent pace having tunes of greater suspense.
In conclusion, Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu makes an off-putting first impression with its representation of Jackie Chan, but its surprisingly solid gameplay salvages the game.