*China Warrior *sucks.
I only even played it because I made the promise to play whatever bad TurboGrafx game you guys voted on. Truth be told, I was kind of hoping for China Warrior because of the awesomely terrible box art, but as it turns out that box art is actually an extremely accurate representation of the entire game. If Tiger had created one of those awful LCD games out of China Warrior, it would have played exactly like China Warrior.
I played the cartridge on my TurboExpress, which I think is significantly better than playing it on the television because at least the graphical fidelity or lack thereof is closer to the gameplay. It feels like a bad Lynx version of a better game. China Warrior was developed, as near as I can figure, to have the biggest sprites of any Final Fight-style side-scrolling brawling game yet seen on a home console. It succeeded. Everything else, however, including interesting gameplay, fun, and varied goals were secondary to that single-minded pursuit of height, and all fell by the wayside.
In China Warrior, you are brutally assaulted by a straight line of monks who walk towards you. Punching them causes them to die. You can jump and duck awkwardly, which helps you avoid things like birds, which cause you to die. At the end of what I assume is every level, you fight Bald Moustache Guile (right), who pretty much destroyed me in level 2.
Yes, I assume that it's actually quite easy to play all the way through *China Warrior *once you learn even one of what must be myriad loopholes, exploits, and gaps in what passes for artificial intelligence in BMG's programming. But no way am I going to spend another moment trying to find out.
The China Warrior literature online is rich and deep with stories of disappointment. Benj Edwards' "How *China Warrior *Ruined My Childhood" is one example. 1up's Broken Pixels covered it with an MST3K-style narrated video. IGN ripped it apart when it hit on Virtual Console. If there is another game that should more rightly be held up as the poster child for dog crap titles of the 16-bit era, I would like to know about it.
Photo: Wired.com
