» ATARI 2600 » 1987 » ACTIVISION The copy of Kung-Fu Master that I own may just be the least -ostentatious game cartridge of all time. Its white label has no illustration at all, just black text detailing basic information about the game – most of which is copyright acknowledgements. I should have recognised the Activision name from games like Pitfall! and Ice Hockey, but other than that there was nothing to suggest that the game was anything special.
Yet when I booted up Kung-Fu Master, I was blown away. It’s not that I hadn’t seen anything better – this was deep into the Mega Drive era, after all – but I certainly wasn’t expecting a game like this from the humble Atari. The stage graphics were detailed, the characters looked convincingly human, and there was even background music playing throughout the game. What’s more, the beat-’em-up action had plenty of variety, with different kinds of enemies that looked just as good as the player character and even bosses to battle. I thought I knew what my console could do, and Kung-Fu Master exceeded all of my expectations.