Game Info

Developer: Hudson Soft
Publisher: Hudson Soft
Year of Release: 1987

Game Review & Impressions

What happens when you fuse Kung Fu Master and Bruce Lee? You get something like China Warrior. This is an unashamed ripoff of Irem's arcade classic, albeit one with improved graphics, some parallax background layers, and some surprisingly catchy music. Your sprite autowalks to the right, and you simply have to punch, kick and avoid anything and everything which appears. The regular enemies offer zero opposition, so the challenge is trying to memorise the patterns of projectiles the game hurls at you at regular intervals.

Each level culminates with a boss fight, which requires you to whittle down their health bar while avoiding taking too many hits in return. Pressing button 1 or 2 just as the enemy attacks will initiate a guard move to block the incoming attack, although this takes splitsecond timing to work correctly. The opponent can also block attacks, and doing so will leave you open to a counterattack, something the enemy doesn't suffer from. It's all rather fiddly and annoying, and simply serves to rub salt in the wound.

No, China Warrior is NOT a good game. Kung Fu Master had it's fair share of problems on release in 1984, and this repeats all the same mistakes 3 years later. There's a certain novelty factor due to the game's obscurity, but don't expect to have a good time playing this.

Chapters

TBC