Big Trouble in Little China
Big Trouble in Little China was releasedat the movies in 1986, as a fantasy martial arts comedy, starring Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall, neither had any kung fu ability in any of their previous movies. The story involves the rescue of a green-eyed beauty from bandits (which could be seen by video game coders as the modern day game plot at the time of rescuing the damsel in distress) in San Francisco's Chinatown. The film was a commercial failure, grossing $11.1 million in North America, well below its estimated $19 to $25 million budget, but it was quite a hit in the home movie rental market on VHS and has since gone on to become a cult classic, perhaps for its bad acting? As i couldn't see why else... The 8-Bit game of the movie was released around May of 1987 to mixed reviews receiving very average to poor ratings. Crash issue 40, May 1987 gave it an overall rating of 67% for the Spectrum version. Amstrad Action (AA) issue 21, June 1987 gave it an overall rating of 64% for the Amstrad CPC version and ZZAP!64, issue 26, JUNE 1987, gave it an overall rating of 34% for the Commodore 64 rating. Perhaps the ZZAP!64 rating is more closer to the mark as AA said of the game "it's yet another martial arts bore us up" and "wandering along a street having the occasional fight can't be considered a great game". So why would they give a game like this a pass mark? That would be a whole other story though as many game reviews from the past were either way too high or way too low. The game itself looked and played very poorly for a single player beat 'em up and if it was me then this is my score for both movie and the game.
My Overall rating 4 out of 10
