I wonder why Shaq doesn't have a free throw special move

Shaq Fu is one of North America’s legendary kusoge. Shaqfu.com is actually a site dedicated to acquiring all copies of the game to keep out of the public’s hands, and there’s a counter site for saving copies of it. It was made fun of on the i?nternet before people making ridiculing bad games was common practice.

It’s one of those fighting games that came out in the wake of Street Fighter II to cash in on the genre’s popularity. It wasn’t particularly egregious, if we’re being honest. Certainly not worth playing, but very few of them were. Violence Fight, Cosmic Carnage, Rise of the Robots; not necessarily unplayable or horrible games, but what’s the point of even trying them when Street Fighter II is right there.

?Iâ€?™m not sure what I can contribute to the discussion at this point. Hold on, maybe a few things.

If it isn’t obvious, Shaq Fu is a game about NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal fighting bad guys in another dimension. If your initial reaction is “that’s stupid,�I can only assume you weren’t here for the �0s, because this was rather normal. Michael Jordan had a game of his own the same year, Chaos in the Windy City but no one wants to blow copies of that up at the firing range.

The main mode of the story has you going up against a variety of enemies as Shaq. There’s a voodoo lady, a cat lady, then a couple of dudes, and a bunch of monsters. The cast is actually pretty lame and I’m pretty sure my brain is just blurring a bunch of them together. It’s generally a bad sign when I play through a game and my mind immediately starts discarding information because ??it’s useless.

The graphics are surprisingly appealing. The game was developed by Delphine Software International, best known for Out of this World and Flashback: The Quest for Identity. The animation is reasonably smooth, using the technique of rotoscoping t??o make the fighters move realistically. The character sprites are rather small, but not so much that you can’t tell what’s going on.

If you were around in the �0s, I probably only have to say “bad fightin??g game,??�and you have an idea of what you’re in for. Controls are floaty, the AI is dumb, and you can win by mashing buttons. Or not even that; a lot of the enemies later in the game can be thwarted by crouching and mashing the kick button until they kill themselves against Shaq’s size 14 shoes.

There are special attacks that�work, I guess. I never used them much because enemies rarely needed more than jump-kick, sweep-kick, sweep-kick on the defa?ult difficulty. I don’t think I’ve ever had such an easy time completing a fighting game’s story mode. Us?ually, the later enemies are just B.S., but they never get much smarter or more aggressive here. You only have three continues, though, so it’s nice that the Delphine found some way to cheapen the difficulty.

Strange??ly, the SNES ve?rsion seems incomplete next to the Genesis. The Genny gives us a full five more characters, which just makes the SNES version’s world map seem empty in certain places. Graphically, the titles are similar, and I didn’t notice any big differences in AI. So I guess if you wanted to fight with your schoolyard chums, the Genesis version is plainly better in this situation. Congratulations.

The only downside is that it was made with the six-button Genesis controller in mind. You can play with the three-button, but you have to hit sta?rt each time you want to swap from punches to kicks. That also means there’s no pause. If you wanted to subject a friend to multiplayer, make sure you have a pair of six-buttons. Otherwise, someone’s getting a huge disadvantage.

Did you know there was a Game Boy version? Did you know it goes for upwards of $80 on the collector’s market? It’s not worth it. There are only six enemies and you can defeat them all by crouching and kicking. I finished it in less than 20 minutes, which frees up a lot of my day fo??r�uh�Napping, I guess.

It doesn’t look bad for a Game Boy game and it animates well. It still contains all the floaty jumps and accidental special move activations of the console versions. Still, I can’t get over how little ??content is here. This is ??the amount of gameplay you’d set aside for a demo. There isn’t even two-player link play.

There’s a Game Gear version, as well, but it’s not nearly as expensive. Probably because most of the world’s Game Gears died of exploding capacitors and are now outnumbered by copies of Shaq Fu.

There isn’t really much reason to play any of the Shaq Fu ports unless you want in on an internet joke that is so far past its expiry that it’s hard as a brick and covered in mold. Speaking of which, a 2018 sequel was crowdfunded: Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn. I haven’t played it for the same reason I haven’t played the new Bubsy games. What value is there in bringing back a maligned game series aside from cashing in on what a joke it’s become? It might as well be called, Shaq Fu: Heeeey, �0s Kids!

I guess that’s one reason to play it: experience some of the worst of the �0s. Corporations really wanted to cash in on sports celebrities. In film alone, you got Hulk Hogan in Suburban Commando and Shaq in Kazaam and both of which bombed legendarily. Space Jam did a lot better, but then look at what comes back decades later. It’s like ??we’re nostalgic about a point in time that we were directly insul?ted through the medium of film.

For previous Weekly Kusoge, check this link!

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Celebrity brawler now pocket-sized

Saber Interactive's not-just-ironically-bad-but-actually-bad throwback brawler Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn has m?ade its way to the mobile market, downloadable now for iOS and Android.

The tepid scrolling beat-'em-up sees basketball gia??nt Shaquille O'Neal track down and take out a group of celebrities, after discovering that they are actually demons plotting to keep the globe in hypnotic submission. Playe?rs guide Shaq through a series of globe-trotting stages, fighting the same few villains over and over and over again.

If you want to check it out, then the first level is available to play for free, with the full game costing just under five bucks, which is a far more palat??able price than the console editions.

Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Ni?ntendo Switch, iOS and Android.

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'Dirty Barry' is out for blood

If you own a physical copy of dull beat-em-up Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn on PS4, Xbox One ?or Nintendo Switch, then you might find new content waiting for you when you next decide to play.

Barack Fu: The Adventures of Dirty Barry, continues in the vein of the standard Shaq Fu narrative by taking topics that were hot for satire a decade ago and making them the basis of 2018 comedy. He??re we have former President Barack Obama as a badass, a throwback "exploitation film" aesthetic, and even the line "Smell what Barack is cooking?" which the ex-prez himself once said. In 2008.

In the new adventure, Obama tools up and hits the streets to investigate a wave of celebrity murders, (the very same killings perpetrated by Shaq himself in the main plotline). It also looks like Kanye West is gonna show up a??s a villain, because he's a person that exists on television. The DLC will feature new stages, attacks and special moves, with ??Obama being able to power up into his alter-ego, Dirty Barry.

Currently free for Shaq Fu physical edition owners, there is currently no word on a separate release for those who picked up the game digitally. Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn, is available now on PS4, Xb??ox One, PC an?d Nintendo Switch.

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Shaq is back, but kinda wack

1994's Shaq Fu isn't the Worst Game Ever, as hyperbolists like to trot out, but it was pretty damn bad. Sure, it was a bizarre one-on-one fighter which featured then-Orlando Magic NBA superstar Shaquille O'Ne??al and a bunch of aliens and monsters, but still, it had nice animation, a catgirl, and a crew member was called "Chris Moyne" which is a bit like my name, so there's that.

But now, in an era of Night Trap re-releases and ironic, but still shit sequels, The Shaq Attack has returned, nearly 25 years later, with Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn. Developed by Big Deez Productions and crowdfunded via Indiegogo, this tongue-in-cheek title sees the big man taping his fists for some si??de-scrolling bea??t-'em-up action.

The question is, who is the audience? More importantly, who is the joke on here? Is Shaq Fu a silly-but-fun satire of its own ridiculousness, or is the pu??nchline on ?the well-meaning folks who put down their cash to see it get made? Strap on your size 22s and let's find out.

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn (PS4 [reviewed], Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch)
Developer: Big Deez Productions
Publisher: Wired Productions
Released: June 5, 2018
MSRP: $19.99

The plot of Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is, as Shaq says himself, "convolu??ted and full of holes." A poor Chinese orphan, Shaq Fei Hung, is forced to face?? up to his destiny when it becomes apparent that some of the world's biggest celebrities are actually demons plotting to keep the people in a state of moronic subservience. As dictated by The Prophecy, Shaq must use the skills taught to him by his kung-fu master, Ye-Ye, to travel the globe, take down the celebrities and save the universe.

The game itself is a simplistic scrolling brawler. As Shaq, players take on wave after wave of drone-like enemies. Mashing attack builds up a combo, before ending it with Bayonetta-style giant boot finisher, Shaq also has a shoulder charge, a ground pound, and a fairly useless jump-kick. Various weapons can be gathered from the streets or dropped by oppo?nents. Once you reach the end of a stage, you face a celebrity boss, who must be defeated to progress.

The problem is, the game is just so numbingly repetitive. Despite the fact it is a mere six stages long, and can be completed in about three hours, it becomes so drawn out, due to the endless waves of villains -- none of whom put up a decent fight -- and tiresome sequences designed for variety, but are just tedious. For example, one stage has you push boulders down a hill onto enemies for what seems like an eternity, before you move to another hill and do the exact same thing again. Occasionally a stage will lock you into an area, power you up (such as with the "Big D" Mech suit) then force you to defeat, literally, 200 baddies before you can move on. Even though you can mow through them with ease, it's just really boring to do so.

Players could be convinced to stick with the tedium if the writing was sharp, but Shaq Fu basically thinks it's South Park, without being close to the same level of wit. The game takes a dubiously proud "non-politically correct" stance, but doesn't seem to understand that even offensive satire still has to be satirical. The China level is filled with washing machines, because there are a lot of Chinese laundries. That's the joke. If you think South Park's "Shitty?? Wok" guy is side-splitting comedy, brother, you'll think this is the funniest game ever.

The this level of trope comedy permeates Shaq Fu. The writers think they're pushing the envelope with a "everyone's fair game for ridicule" stance, ala Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but it's just schoolyard idiocy. You fight Jersey Shore-types and lederhosen-wearing Nazis. Shaq meets a camp, leather-clad gay biker, a knock-off Benny Hill Theme plays, one guy shout??s "LEEROY JENKINS!" Jesus wept.

The bosses are satires of celebrity figures, but the battles are awkward on a technical level, while being painfully dated conceptually. We get Donald Trump (of course), but we also get Paris Hilton (who I haven't heard mention of in forever), a drunken Aussie racist in a kilt, who I guess is supposed to be Mel Gibson, and a teeny-bopper popstar, who's Justin Beiber, I suppose. There's also a sexy instagram-loving woman who turns into a giant ass that eats tacos, who's that? Kim Kardashian? J-Lo? Probably fucking both. Even pseudo-Lindsay Lohan puts in an appearance. Hell, let's make a Keyboard Cat refe??rence while we're hitting these jokes at the heig?ht of the zeitgeist.

There is some talent on display here, fortunately. The game's lighting and effects are very good, especially during explosions and special attacks. The cutscene art is also neat, particularly the boss portraits. There's even some cool attention to detail, such as how the banshee souls leave their bodies when defeated, satisfying sound effects as you land big strikes and weapon shots, even the way you can smash enemies into the fourth wall, Turtles in Time style. Occasio?nally, a couple of the one-liners genuinely hit their mark, raising a legitimate smile, but the bad stuff slam dunks so hard on the good.

Six stages of bland, repetitive brawling later, you're done. There are no extra modes and the game is sorely, sorely missing a co-op option (which the game actually notes itself in one of many self-referential jokes). The enemies only vary for the about four of the six stages, with the other two just being crammed with enemies from all the stages. You can 100% the game in ?less than three hours, and ther??e is zero reason to replay it, no alternate paths, modes, characters, nothing. Twenty bucks.

Well, I say twenty bucks, but I don't know the price it cost Shaq Fu's backers on Indiegogo, who raised almost half a million dollars for their bland, swift gameplay experience. The original crowdfunding page even lists a ton of ?features that make no appearance in the finished product. That's the problem with pushing ironic humour hard, it can be ?pretty funny on paper but, ultimately, the joke may be on you.

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn, like Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back, is a nostalgic joke taken too far. Though there are postivies in the presentation, the gameplay is laborious, even draining. Shaq Fu outstays its welcome, despite its meagre run-time, which is far more offensive than its juvenile attempts at "edgy" comedy. Shaq should've known better than to put his name to this, and everyone should've known better than to put ??????????????????????????money into its ?creation.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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Sometime in spring and that's all we know

Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn, a second crack at what's infamously considered on?e of the worst games ever, is probably going to be better than its predecessor. It's not a high bar to clear, and it'd take a staggering lack of self-awareness to revive something this reviled only to somehow make it worse. That suspicion should be confirmed soon enough.

Shaq's video game redemption tour starts sometime in the spring. But, like many of the big man's free throws, it bricked the execution. Despite spring being right around the corner, we don't actually know when Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn will launch. Sometime before June, I guess.

Accompanying the time frame announcement is today's reveal that Wired Productions has signed on as a publisher -- likely to help with the physical version. As of right now, that edition is going for $35 on Wired's store. Of course, a bunch of NBA Playgrounds Switch players won't have to worry about that. Anyone who owned the Switch version of NBA Playgrounds before June 10, 2017 is getting a free copy of Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn as a make-good for the f??rustratingly-slow implementation of online multiplayer.

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Limited time deal

Somehow, someway, Shaq Fu got a sequel kickstarted a few years back. Whi?le that should have been the sign of the apocalypse, the Earth is still spinning and everyone is still living their lives...somehow. That hasn't stopped Saber Interactive from actually finishing their game, even if we haven't heard much in the years since they gained funding. Hopefully it doesn't suck like the original.

One thing that has sucked is that NBA Playgrounds on Switch has had broken netplay since launch. As a way to apologize for the delay in getting fixes out, Saber is offering Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn free to Switch owners of Playgrounds for a limited time. Along with that news comes a trailer for Shaq Fu and a tentative release date of "Coming Soon".

Saber CEO Matthew Karch issued this statement:

We had every intention of launching online play for NBA Playgrounds on Nintendo Switch within days of release, but, despite our best efforts, it didn’t play out that way. We sincerely apologize for the delay and want to let everyone know the fix will be coming very soon. But words are cheap, and games are not. So we’re giving everyone that bought NBA Playgrounds on Nintendo Switch before the online play patch hits a free copy of Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn on Switch when it is ava??il??able this fall to express our gratitude.

Whatever is causing these issues, its nice t??o see Saber making a gesture to give back to their fans. We need more of this in the industry and less of games launching with lacking features and no updates.

NBA Playgrounds Switch Early Adopters to Get Free Copy of Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn [Nintendo Life]

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F U!

Its been so long since we've heard anything about Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn that I honestly forgot it was in development. The game barely squeaked by on its Indiegogo campaign in 2014 and was officially announced at The Game Awards in 2015 for PS4, Xbox One, PC and Wii U. While there isn't an outright confirmation that the Wii U port has been cancelled (although, let's ?face it), the game will be making its way to Switch.

Saber Interactive (the dev?eloper behind the game) CEO Matthew Karch confirmed this news to Nintendo Everything along with telling them that the Switch will be receiving, "a new motocross title". They also are working on some cooperative shooter that is claimed to b??e, "perfect for the platform." Nothing further was mentioned, although Nintendo Everything will be posting their full interview with the studio sometime in the near future. Maybe we'll actually get to see some new gameplay.

Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn lives, coming to Switch along with other Saber Inte??ractive games [Nintendo Everything]

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Yes that says 'Sizzurp'

Shaq made good on his word and debuted the Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn trailer last night at The Game Awards, and it's...something. While the developers have maintained that it will feature one-on-one fighting, it seems to also be a beat-'em-up now, based on the footage nea?r the end of the video. Also, there's absurd elongated giant appendage attacks, and nazis. This game has the potential to be really awesome or really bad -- not a whole lot of room in-between.

The craziest part of this trailer is the clearly ?unstable dude who has a giant vat of sizzurp attached to his back.

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Is the joke worth $450,000?

Back in January, Shaquille O'Neal revealed that work was in progress on a sequel to the 1994 game which painted the basketball legend as a kung-fu superhero, Shaq Fu. If you thought he was crazy, well, you may still be right about that one. But there is a game in the works, and an Indiegogo campaign has launched today to fund the completion of the proj??ect.

The original Shaq Fu is an extremely poor game, easily dismissed as a cash-in on O'Neal's name and likeness. If it weren't so damned silly on top of that, pitting Shaq against a mummy in an?????????????????????????? alternate dimension, it would have wound up in the dustbin, totally forgotten. It was just weird -- and bad -- enough that we've not managed to forget it. 

The new game, Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn, is described as a beat-em-up where players will be able to customize their character with a wide range of abilities and create their own fighting style, applying it in destructible environments against dozens of enemy types, alone or with a co-op partner. All of which sounds far superior to the ??flat, dull game which came before.

To Shaq's credit, he knows that Shaq-Fu is a terrible game and admits as such early in his appeal video on the campaign page. The text of the project equally eager to distance itself from the original product in every a??spect (excepting the name and main character), while touting the experience of the development team and the level of involvement O'Neal will have in the project. 

The developer, Big Deez Productions, is a team of video game industry professionals that we're told Shaq has assembled, with experience working on, "HALO, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Alan Wake, Spec Ops: The Line, Battlefield, Killzone, Max Payne, Duke Nukem, and many other huge franchises??." And? that sounds impressive, but that's what it's supposed to do.

We do get a slice?? of the team? in the form of this video. Big Deez is led by Saber Interactive's co-founder and President, Matthew Karch, which explains the connections to Halo by way of the Anniversary Edition. Matt seems to have brought along Rick Raymo, a producer credited on the PlayStation port of Duke Nukem 3D and a number of other Duke products published by GT Interactive long ago, who has served since 2007 as Saber's Director of Game Content. And then there's Oliver Hollis-Leick, who has a decade of experience in motion capture yet is listed ?as a "Writer/Designer" at Big Deez. That probably has to do with his recent two years of experience working as a writer at -- you guessed it -- Saber Interactive.

Also appearing are producer Matt McKnight -- who served as a producer for Electronic Arts, with Ty: The Tasmanian Tiger and a string of other, so-so games under his belt -- and Fran?çois Masciopinto, a business development consultant who seems to have no apparent connection to Big Deez other than a working relationship with Saber Interactive.

None of this is saying to me that Shaq-Fu: The Legend Reborn has a shot at being anything more than mediocre. It hasn't impressed me. Maybe they're funnier than they seem, the game will be zany and ridiculous in the way that Double Dragon: Neon recently demonstrated was possible, truly embracing the absurdity of Shaquille O'Neal doing kung-fu into something magically strange. There's still hope. I'm just not sure how much hope when most of the team we know of worked together on Timeshift and Inversion.

Maybe it will get by on a combination of cult appeal and backer rewards. O'Neal is offering his time on several of the upper funding tiers, including a visit to his home, the TNT set, and other meal situations. For just a grand he'll follow you on Twitter for a year, but Instagram exists for the more bu??dget-minded at half that.

But then there's more in there which makes me uneasy too, like the two spots to work as a Concept Artist for Big Deez. The tier, which costs $6,500, states that the backer would work both remotely and at the Big Deez offices, collaborating with their artists and receiving a "Concept Artist" credit. I can't imagine that this comes with any of the other things which having a job does, such as money or benefits, tho?ugh there is the suggestion that it could lead to a real position in the company written into the tier description. That makes my skin crawl, the implication that it's a real job you could be getting for your money, because even if it isn't misleading, it's tantamount to paying for a job interview or, at best, unpaid internship.

Maybe none of this needed to be said. If your expectation is that a sequel to one of the worst games ever released is a stellar investment of your money, you probably deserve what happens next. If it gets funded and released, it will be better than Shaq Fu was, of that I'm certain. I just question whether or not it's worth the effort to demonstrate that you can make a better Shaq Fu at all.

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