Shaq Fu

I had played this years ago, in light of the Angry Video Game Nerd playing it, and I remember it being really bad. To make sure that I wasn't misremembering, I replayed it recently. Shaq Fu is even worse than I recalled.

The idea of this game is to have Shaquille O'Neal in a 2D fighting game, where the story is that he rescues a young boy from the "second world" - when you boot up the game, you will find a menu with a soundtrack that's...not bad, actually. If you're playing this on certain emulators, the sound of a drum is not picked up properly, leaving in kind of a glitched noise that plays through the entire soundtrack. Don't emulate this, by the way, and definitely don't waste time trying to get this running on official hardware.

The first option in the menu is "DUEL" - just an arcade mode that seems to pick opponents randomly. This mode is the only reason I remember some of the character names. Mephis and Colonel are by far the coolest characters in the game, with the former being the guy with green skin that throws electric attacks, and the latter being a cyborg looking guy. Voodoo and Kaori are the two females in the game, and they're also far, far cooler characters than the protagonist, Shaq.

In fact, it feels like almost every single character is better than the titular Shaq, due to far superior special moves. Shaq only has a projectile that is clearly inspired by Guile's sonic boom, and an Inferno Kick which only hits opponents that are near him.

None of those fine details really matter when you get into fights, because the controls are absolutely terrible. Just moving around is awkward, and uncomfortable. You walk very slowly, and though you can do a dash with every character, that's risky. It's not like, say, King of Fighters where you just have to press forward twice, holding the forward button to keep running. Here, you press forward+"move boost" (A button by default) to run in a set distance...Just terrible.

Jumping? Good luck with that! Jumping forward has a delay, seemingly because Delphine Software felt very proud of their jump animations. Thus, the forward jump is not only delayed, but also makes you go very far. The backwards jump is short. Abysmal design with that alone.

Your attacks are a fast punch and kick, a power punch and kick, and the remaining buttons are for "move boost" and taunting. These aren't well designed strikes like in Street Fighter II, where you feel the power of the strong strikes, oh no. With Shaq, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between a power or fast punch. Generally, there are no "combos" to speak of in this game, either. There is blocking like in Street Fighter II, but I could hardly get it to work against AI opponents! Pressing down and A gets you to use the Energy Shield, which is very useful when your opponent feels like spamming projectiles. However, as the name implies, this spends energy. Below your life meter, you have a red energy bar that only fills up when you take hits. In theory, this is designed to help you come back into a battle that might seem lost. In practice, you won't be able to do much with the bar. Even if you get it to fill up, and put you in the FURY mode, the controls won't let you pull off special moves comfortably.

What is FURY mode? Just a mode where, for 5 seconds or so, your attacks will do a little more damage. Did I mention that this game has bad design? Your best hope of hurting your enemies is to forget about special moves and hope fast strikes can hit them while they are in the middle of their animations for special moves.

The real shame in all of this is that graphically, the game isn't bad at all. Having portraits of the characters' faces that change through the match is a cute little detail. Mechanically, though, this game is totally hopeless. I could go into the life regen mechanic, or how some special attacks can be cancelled into others, but it really doesn't matter.

Back to the main menu: the second option is the STORY mode, where you play as Shaq, one of the worst characters in the game. As mentioned earlier, you are sent to the second world, and you are then greeted with an honestly pointless map screen. I know that this determines the order in which you'll face the characters in each part of the map, but there's no real use for this. It's not like you (as a tiny Shaq sprite) find items, power-ups or anything interesting to help you along the way. You do see Shaq talking to characters, with some grammar errors, and really, there are many questions that could be made about the story mode.

Why does Shaq know Sett Ra from the beginning? The old man that sent him to the second world didn't actually name him. There are several more questions that you can find on Goh_Billy's gameFAQs guide for this game, and I'll spare you the rest to say this: It sure seems like the story was slapped onto this game in a rushed manner. I wonder if Delphine planned to make a totally different game until the idea of Shaq Fu came around. Fun fact, according to that guide I linked, there are character-specific bugs! Awesome.

Back to the gameplay, the AI really doesn't help matters. It seems programmed like the developers wanted to ruin your life. I played this in "Normal" difficulty and still found myself beaten up by numerous characters. I briefly tried the Easy difficulty and at least the game lives up to that one. Normal and Expert difficulty settings see the AI move like it knows that the best defense is a good offense, and thus, it may spam moves that are hard to defend yourself against. Projectiles shouldn't be so difficult to dodge via jumping, but you must remember: when you jump forward, there's a slight delay. Your best chance is to jump straight up, and even that's not a safe option when the AI is in a spammy mood.

There are cheat codes for this game. One lets you use other characters in the story mode. Another unlocks blood (don't get excited, there's barely any). There's also a tournament mode.

Ultimately, none of that matters. The mechanics of the fighting are just not good enough to even be called "mediocre" - sometimes, I criticize the Angry Video Game Nerd for not going into full detail for some games. Strangely, though, I think he gave Shaq Fu exactly the attention it deserves: a 2 and a half minute segment instead of a full video.

Some people say this isn't the worst fighting game on Sega Genesis. I struggle to think of a worse game in general, on that console. Perhaps Heavy Nova has worse controls, but the soundtrack is far superior. Either way, don't play this. It does not even fall into the "so bad, it's good" territory.