Shaq Fu: Enforcer of Justice. I swear I'm not making this up...

Shaq Fu is one of those games that is truly infamous among video gamers. You see, in 1994, someone thought they could cash in on Shaq's celebrity status by making a video game. Of course, this was the 90s and video games, so instead of the logical solution like, you know, a basketball game, we got Shaq Fu: Enforcer of Justice. This is literally a fighting game about Shaquille O'Neal. Oh, but don't worry, folks. It gets worse.

You play as Shaq, who is sightseeing in Tokyo before a charity game. He finds an old kung fu dojo where some weird old man tells you you have to go through a portal to save some kid named Nezu from (according to the Internet) an Egyptian mummy thing named Sett Ra and since you're reading this sentence over again to see if that made sense, let me tell you: It didn't. Sadly, I'm not making any of this up. Want proof? Have this Youtube video from the Genesis version.

In addition to showing the atrocity that is the opening, this also shows you the pre-fight and post-fight dialogue for these people. I mean... Really. To say there was no effort put into this scenario would be too kind. Additionally, what in the name of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is a BASKETBALL PLAYER doing fighting these mages, cat girls, princes with swords, and gargoyles? Why?

Now, I'll be fair to Shaq Fu. The story is laughably bad, and we'll get to the gameplay later, but the graphics and sound really aren't that bad. I mean, those backgrounds are, dare I say, good, and the animation's very nice. And the character models look decent. Also, there's a pretty good chance that, had Ben and I been willing to inflict the torture of this game on a larger screen, where we could both see and thus play tournament or duel mode, we might've found two-player mode actually fun. If nothing else, it's good for a laugh as you try to figure out why this game exists.

Now for gameplay. I happen to be bad at action games, but my brother Ben is okay. So, after failing miserably at story mode and thinking it was me, I convinced him to play so we could have a decent review.

It wasn't just me. Ben's comments, and I quote.

Ben: The game sucks. The cat lady is faster than you could ever dream to dodge or hit. The prince brings swords. And the gargoyle has magic, and can teleport. Everybody is better than you and Shaq only has his fire punch thing that you only can use at close range. The cat lady has some sort of cat tornado thing that makes her immune to be hit, the prince can throw his swords and have them magically appear back in his hands, or he can stab them into the ground with a shockwave, or he can just cut you with them and stab you, and the gargoyle dude can fire lightning from his hands. Which should actually kill Shaq. Shaq's best weapon is the fire fist. Thing. The Shaq-uriken I tried to do, but didn't work. At all. Basically the secret to winning this game is jump in, hit them really hard with a fire fist, and dodge. And blocking doesn't work. All in all, if you pay more than two bucks for this game, you're being ripped off. On a scale of one to Sonic 2006, this is a good four... teen. On a scale of one to ten, one being awesome, ten being easily the worst game I've ever played, it's easily a ten. And I've played some really bad games. To put things in perspective, it's as bad as Monster A Go Go. Without the MST3k. All in all, this game sucks. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll have to go throw up on Shaq. And the creators. And Pepsi for endorsing it. Which, by the way, you could never guess from playing the game. [/sarcasm]

 Yeah. The game's sort of like that. And really, Shaq-uriken? SHAQ-URIKEN?! Why does this game taunt me?

Now, apparently it's a better game on the Genesis. I mean, still panned, but it has some more characters to play as and stuff, so... that's something. If you have a Genesis or SNES already, I personally think this is the sort of bad game that deserves to be kept around and laughed at. Besides, you really can't understand how bad this game is without playing it first.

In conclusion, this is in fact a bad game. But it's a bad game that's rather entertaining, assuming you have a friend you can sucker into playing with or watching.

Final score:
Gameplay: The controls are basically broken, and the AI cheats.
Presentation: Well... The graphics aren't terrible. The animation's actually pretty smooth.
Story: ... *Laughs in pain*
Kid Appropriateness: Sure. Give this game to kids. They'll never play video games again. Also, I believe it made T for blood or something? Dunno. It's not worth the cost to try, so just don't give it to them.
3.0

If you want to buy this game, then here's the search page on Amazon. But really... Don't spend more than a dollar on it if you can help it.