Kang Fu

NOTE: This page was originally moved from the Crappy Games WIki.

Kang Fu
What kind of drugs did the developers use to make this game? ALL OF THEM.
Protagonist(s): Klont Genre(s): Side-scrolling platformer Platform(s): Amiga Amiga CD32 Release: 1996 Developer(s): Great Effects Development Publisher(s): Great Effects Development Successor: Kang Two (cancelled)

The infamous game over screen, depicting a kangaroo skeleton in the desert.

"There is nothing you could ever tell me, no proof you could present that could ever prove in my mind, that the developers [of Kang Fu] were not psychopaths, huffing the gallon of paint sitting on my CD32 right now."

— The Angry Video Game Nerd

Kang Fu is a side-scrolling platformer game developed by GREED (short for Great Effects Development), also known as the creator of a computer program named Professional File System. It was released in 1996 for the Amiga CD32 and Amiga 1200 and 4000 computers.

Although the game was planned to have a sequel titled Kang Two according to the developers after the ending of the game, it was never released without information about its cancellation. As a result, Kang Fu is the only game produced by GREED.

Gameplay

The player, controlling Klont the kangaroo, has to traverse around levels rescuing baby kangaroos, gathering diamonds (which grant an extra life when a certain number of them has been collected) and killing enemies with a machine gun. After reaching the end of a level, the player must fight and defeat a boss in order to proceed further.

Why It Sucks

1. The game is just a mishmash of random stuff, most of which makes little to no sense. Levels are populated with cartoonish chickens, giant bees, slinkies, and others that you need to kill in order to proceed, all of which while controlling a kangaroo with black glasses and wielding a small assortment of weapons.
2. Misleading title: Despite being titled Kang fu, no form of kung fu ever appears to take place, despite the punny title. Instead, Klont uses a gun, a punching glove, a boomerang, and bombs to attack enemies.
3. The game was even advertised for “taking full advantage of the CD32 and Amiga lines of computers,” which is quite a stretch since none of the games on the systems even acknowledged the potential, let alone take advantage.
4. Poorly-done box art consisting of literally just a kangaroo that looks like it's been copy-and-pasted from a kid's picture book on a blue background. Worst of all, it's also used as the title screen, just with the background color changed.
5. Despite these problems, much like many unfinished games that continued to have this running theme since the 90s, this game was still allowed to be actually sold in stores at the price of $20! (£24.99 by a European release)
6. The graphics are hideous, with cartoonish levels and digitized backgrounds.
7. The boss battles are too easy.
8. The game over screen is horrifying and creepy, as it is an actual photo of a kangaroo's decayed corpse on a desert, making it almost on par with Hong Kong 97's realistic game over screen.
9. One of the worst endings period. After defeating the final boss, all the ending shows are baby kangaroos that Klont rescued while running around in Australian, following him on a dune and nothing else.
10. The controls are incredibly sluggish and tend to not respond with the CD32 controller properly, as the kangaroo is very heavy and always drops to the ground very suddenly, which results in parts of the game where you have you platform very frustrating and difficult to do, especially when you have to press Up on the D-pad to jump in order to get on the most simplest of tiny platforms to be able to progress through the level as a whole.
11. When starting the game on the Amiga CD32, you have to wait for a long loading time displaying a slideshow of kangaroo paintings cutting to black screens only for the game to run out of memory and crash. To circumvent this, as the instructions tell you, you need to open its disk door, insert the game's disc and start the console, then shut its disk door after the start-up music has played. If you miss any of these passages, the game refuses to start.
    • The fact that this game requires a very specific pattern of actually booting it up on that device only shows that these kinds of methods only artificially makes playing the game actually harder than necessary. And speaking of which, the fact that the developers told the players how to fix this bug implies that they knew about this, but they did not even bother to fix it themselves (given their company name, G.R.E.E.D., it's kind of evident).
12. During one of the parts of the game, a large red ball appears with text that says "GREED" that spins. Wait a minute, is this supposed to be a screensaver?

The Only Redeeming Quality

1. The soundtrack is decent.

Reception

"What were they thinking?" The Shit Scale Games that are debatably bad High level of shit contamination The very high category The severe zone Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Major code red 👆 This game/console belongs to the "Severe Zone" category of the AVGN's Shit Scale.

Although the game received a mostly mixed reception from critics, James Rolfe in his Angry Video Game Nerd persona reviewed Kang Fu, along with many other CD32 games. He called it the worst game on the system, criticizing the nonsensical gameplay and creepy “game over” screen.

External links

• Website

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