Anyone else remember Kung Fu Theater? It was a weekly show that had some of the best (worst) Kung Fu films ever made. Every Saturday afternoon I think it was, I would plop down in front of the tube to watch Shao-lin, ninja, samurai and Wang Chun Masters do battle thinking ’Man it would be cool if I could do all of that.

And now, we can, thanks to Revenge of the Wounded Dragons downloadable Playstation 3 title developed by Wanako Games. In the game you take control of one of two brothers and use the teachings of your grandfather and his martial arts to take on a gang of thugs who have kidnapped your sister and killed him in front of your very eyes.

This will require a goodly amount of skill and perseverance on your part of course as you go through the almost 30 levels of the game and kick, punch, throw and assault waves of evil thugs in this 2D side-scrolling fighting platformer.

Along the way there are ample pick ups including health, Chi and of course a range of weapons (guns, knives, bats, rice sacks, etc). Certain elements of the environment are interactive as well and you will need to break through, climb over, roll under and jump around it from time to time to complete your task. Plus there are collectibles like statues and teeth (knocked out of your enemies’ heads) and some secret areas to find along the way. All in all it’s a fairly well-rounded for what at times becomes a simple button masher.

The combat itself is fairly simplistic. One button for kick, another for punch. There’s jump and roll and backflip but really you can run up to the majority of enemies and just start pounding away at them. Little strategy is involved in the single player except for some of the larger enemies and of course the bosses. But still, it’s fun to kick the crap out of an army of bad guys with your bare hands right?

The sound is a mixture of a 70’s soundtrack and Bruce Lee like sound effects and is extremely fitting for the title. In fact without the boo-chicka-chicka-dat-dat-dat sound track I don’t think this game would have been complete.

The graphics are the cool sort of heavily drawn lines that a lot of animators and artists favor more recently with the cut scenes coming off more like motion comics than anything else. BUt the environments are well drawn and when something is interactive it’s fairly well marked so you don’t always have to guess. There’s some great 3D-like visuals because of a lot of layers of parallax (when closer images move faster than further ones) and some really great graphics overall.

The single player mode is cool but the multiplayer is where the game really shines. There are special moves that can only be done when you have a partner like ping-ponging and enemy between you. You can even shift some of your soul power (health) over to your brother to keep him going when things get rough. You can play both co-op story mode or competitively in the minigames.

The series of minigames become available once you reach them in the story mode. These include a lantern collecting game (jump around the level to collect the lanterns), labyrinth navigating and yes, chicken catching. Because every martial arts master learns by running after chickens right?

Overall the game has its highs and lows. The combat system is far from complex and sometimes feels clunky, like trying to get all the finishing moves in a level takes some thrashing around it seems (they’re all button combinations in fact). Combos are strange and really you can simply button mash your way through just about the whole game.