Some games that would otherwise be mundane, boring, and unoriginal can at times have new life brought into them when redone with the classic charm of a 1980’s arcade game. Enter Kung Fu Fight - it’s nothing that you haven’t seen before, and definitely nothing you haven’t played before either. Does that mean that it’s not worth your time? Absolutely not.

Let’s just be honest here, if it weren’t for the old school pixelated style graphics that the developers over at Nostatic Software have a tendency to use these days, I most likely would have just completely passed over Kung Fu Fight. In doing so I would have missed out on what ended up being a decently entertaining game, beginning from the title sequence all the way through to the interactive credits.

Kung Fu Fight is one of the latest entries in the constant run/jump/slide genre that has become quite popular in the day and age of the mobile platform. Added to the standard jump and slide actions, you will also find an attack option - and yes, you can attack while both jumping and sliding. After you fire up the game and take witness to the atrocity of your evil overlord, your character immediately begins off on his quest of revenge. Along the way, you will get to do all kinds of jumping and sliding over obstacles, attacking and dispatching ninjas, and not to mention running. Lots and lots of running. Did I tell you there was a significant amount of running involved?

As you make progress through the game you will pass checkpoints which will come in extremely handy whenever your one hit wonder Kung Fu boy gets killed and goes down for the count. You wouldn’t think that a simple box or vase could take out a Kung Fu student, but the game designers think otherwise. At times you will notice that a new achievement is posted at the top of the screen, these occur whenever you do something that the game feels is worthy of drawing attention to - things like jumping over ninja stars X number of times or not attacking Y enemies. You can check out what all achievements you’ve managed to unlock, though not necessarily attained, from the main menu.

Refreshingly, there are no in app purchases for Kung Fu Fight as there is no in app store at all. Graphically speaking, Kung Fu Fight has a classic look to it. As the saying goes, everything that’s old is new again, and it seems as though there has been a renaissance of games released lately that have an old school vibe with hand drawn sprites that, while small, still have enough detail in them to where it’s easy enough to figure out what’s what. Speaking of small, the on screen characters are on the small side, so make sure you’re playing this on a decently sized screen. The controls are decently effective as well, with well placed buttons along the bottom of the screen that are easy to get to. The in game audio has that wonderful old school tinny vibe to it as well, it kind of reminds one of stepping into an arcade when you were younger and listening to all the arcade cabinets.

If you’re up for the challenge of an old school run and jump platformer or just like to reminisce about the old days of gaming. you should give Kung Fu Fight a glance. Head over to the Google Play store, where you can find both a free and a paid version. The paid version is only 99 cents, which shouldn’t set you back too incredibly much and is well worth it to support excellent games on our favorite mobile platform.

Kung Fu Fight is available on the Google Play Store