It's once again time for "NovemberJoy reviews a random ancient and/or bootleg game you've never heard of"! I weirdly enjoy doing these, since they often give more to talk about than you'd expect, and it's kind of enjoyable to just tear into a game without mercy and without having to worry about nuance nor hurting feelings. Anyway, as for an introduction to this game, it was made in 1996 according to the title screen, and...well, originally, I was just going to leave it at that, but I did a little research. It was actually based on a 1993 Chinese TV show and developed by a group of people who used to work at Sachen, a company that put out a ton of unlicensed games of wildly varying quality. That...was a bit more interesting than I was expecting!

Anyway, starting with the presentation, it doesn't look particularly great. It is nice to see animated backgrounds and some sprites actually aren't too bad, but the color palette is just displeasing to look at. The developers seem to have some aversion to the color black, preferring to use a middling gray instead in almost every case where you'd expect the color black to appear. This gives the whole game a washed-out look, like you turned your TV brightness way up. There are at least a variety of environments, ranging from wooden docks to purple dungeons (?) and Canadian-looking forests. The music and sound effects aren't too great either, with the music involving a lot of high-pitched beeping (though there are some melodies here that are begging to be used properly?) and the sound effects being few in number and similarly basic. The best part of the game's presentation is the hilarious cutscenes, where you see Judge Bao's (?) incredibly cartoony and exaggerated expressions.

Anyway, we finally have to talk about the game itself now, and it's extremely messy. Walking around works fine, but the moment you jump everything flies off the handle. The moment your feet leave the ground, you move at least twice as fast as normal, and momentum just doesn't exist. This not only means the fastest way to get through the game is to hop around everywhere like an idiot, but that placing jumps is by far the hardest thing in the entire game. Attacking isn't great either - basic standing attacks have a long windup animation, making them difficult to use and incentivizing you to crouch and kick everything instead. (Speaking of which, I'm like 99% sure all the sprites of the main character are based on Mortal Kombat sprites, complete with the "ball form" jump and roundhouse kicks while crouching.)

The game has a fairly simple structure, going from left to right in sidescrolling levels and beating up bosses on single screens. The best thing to do with most enemies you encounter is to just jump past them - they won't catch up to you, your jumps are way faster than they are! The only times you ever need to fight are when enemies are at the end of the level, since the level won't let you clear it until there are no enemies on-screen. As mentioned before, the hardest thing is platforming - in fact, the game's second level might be the hardest in the game! It's full of gaps where you're expected to jump on hanging barrels about as wide as the character you're playing as, jumping off of them quickly so they don't fall. This would be tricky if the controls actually worked properly, but with jumping controls like this you have to figure out a perfect strategy and timing to your jump presses for each individual gap while accounting for enemies - did I mention taking damage cancels any momentum you have? Well, now you know. You also have limited continues, so let's hope you don't struggle with this too much or you'll be repeating the entire game, either now or later once they fully run out.

The boss fights aren't anything too special either. They each have one pattern and one gimmick, get invincibility frames after you hit them, and feel like they all take too long to die. The first one is one of the better ones - he walks forward, stops to throw three projectiles, walks to the end of the screen, throws three more, and then makes part of the bridge in the middle fall. Rinse, repeat, while you stab him like 10-15 times to take him down. It's mostly the same with the others - a jumping guy who can only be hit while he's winding up to attack, a fat guy who takes like 30 hits despite having the simplest attack pattern in the game, and a teleporting dude? The final boss (who looks Canadian to me, for some reason) takes the cake, though, since you can literally beat him without ever moving. Just jump the projectiles when he fires them from his side, wait for him to jump over to your side, and hit him then. He won't get to hit you once. Hilariously, he also has a second form: one where he does exactly the same thing as before, just that he has blue skin now. That changes things up a lot. (Also, if you're crouching at the end of the first phase, the game will softlock. I learned this the hard way.)

So, as a game, it's not anything too special. I sadly can't review the storyline too much, since I don't speak the language nor know much about the original series - all I know for sure is that you're hunting down criminals to be judged and executed by Judge Bao? I dunno what the Canada detour is for, in that case, but hey. I can say this probably won't be a game you want to go back to much, given how short it is and all of the problems listed above. If only they took more inspiration from Mortal Kombat than just the sprites and let you execute the criminals yourself...well, I don't think it would've improved much, but I would've been tempted to give an extra tenth of a point, alright? I feel like it would've at least been a little more passable if they polished the movement a little more, but as it is now it's not something that's really that worth playing even as a curiosity. I judge this game guilty of wasting my time - the punishment? Execution.