The Amiga CD32 was a video game console released by Commodore. It essentially acted as an Amiga 1200 computer repackaged into a 32-bit system with more of a focus on gaming. With releases in Europe in 1993, Canada in 1994, and a U.S. release slated for later that year, things seemed to be going fine. Commodore’s growing debt, however, forced the CD32 to leave shelves as Commodore declared bankruptcy and officially closed its doors in 1994.
This leaves the CD32 as an obscure relic of the 90s console market, not being looked at particularly positively despite it being the first 32-bit console in Europe and Canada.
The CD32 does hold one promising quality: the Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA). This specific chipset used in the CD32, Amiga 1200, and Amiga 4000 allowed it to run its 32-bit graphical capabilities as well as convert photos to relatively realistic pixel conversions with a technique called Hold-and-Modify (HAM).
One Dutch studio called GREat Effects Development (GREED) decided to experiment with these capabilities and create a game that was a mix of the traditional 32-bit sprites and converted stock image HAM sprites. After two years of development, their finished product Kang-Fu was ready to be sold and viewed by the masses.
Trouble was found before the product was even out. GREED struggled to find a publisher because the Commodore and the CD32 had been long gone by this point, and nobody was buying new products for any of the Amiga systems. One publisher turned down the game simply because of this, even though they thought the game looked promising. GREED eventually settled on publishing the game themselves, and thus, Kang-Fu was officially released in 1996.
Upon putting the game into the system, you are greeted to perhaps the strangest intro to a game ever. It is a series of 3D GREED and Kang-Fu logos over stock photos/paintings of kangaroos, interspliced with black screens and a scoreboard. There are two songs that show up occasionally, both of which are actually not bad tracks, but this the only positive about this startup.
In order to get to the menu screen of Kang-Fu, you have to click the red button on the controller (otherwise known as the arrow pointing at a line button) a total of three times while on either the spinning logo, the stock photos of kangaroos, or the high score screens. The game doesn’t prompt you to do this, so you could be waiting two minutes or ten before you figure out how to start the game.
Once on the main menu, you can finally start the game. Upon clicking start, however, the game throws yet another stock kangaroo at you, this time with the words “out of memory”. The game will then continue to forever loop its screen cycle.
So why exactly does this happen? Kang-Fu uses 1.8 MB of the CD32’s 2MB of RAM. This causes it to overflow, triggering a memory leak. However, there is a solution.
The game’s manual provides a brief explanation of how to fix this. What you need to do is start by putting the game in the CD32 without closing the disc door, wait for the console’s startup jingle to play, then close the door. It sounds crazy, but believe it or not, it actually works.
So finally, after all of that trouble, we get to the game. Is it good? Was it worth the hoops that needed to be jumped through to get it to work?
Short answer: no. The game is a complete mess. However, this may be one of the most unique experiences one can have through digital entertainment. The game is a platformer, with the player controlling the kangaroo character Klomp throughout the level, defeating enemies and collecting keys, weapons, and joeys along the way.
The enemies are anything you could imagine: mutant guards, flying wasps, rampant umbrellas, inchworms, cartoon chickens, the possibilities are endless. There is no sense of connectivity whatsoever, and this carries over to the graphics.
As mentioned earlier, Kang-Fu was created to fully utilize the Amiga’s HAM abilities. As a result, many of the sprites in this game are rendered stock images. These include clouds, trees, stone platforms, and famous statues. This even extends into the game’s boss fights, with a realistically rendered rhino and gorilla.
The confusion for me stems from this. It’s evenly split between the HAM style and the traditional pixel sprites, so oftentimes you’ll be looking at something that doesn’t even look like something created by a human being.
Platforming is a mess. You can either use up on the d-pad or the right trigger to make Klomp jump, neither of which are ideal. It’s hard to tell what you can and can’t stand on, especially because of the split style. Combine all of this with the soundtrack that is actually really, really good, and you are left with an experience that cannot simply be defined by words.
The final blow comes when you run out of all your lives and get a game over. The game cuts from Klomp’s cartoony, traditional sprite to a photo of a fleshless kangaroo skeleton in the desert.
Is Kang-Fu a good game? Not in the slightest. But is it a memorable game? Absolutely, and not for the wrong reasons. It makes you want to try and comprehend the strange, trippy game that it is, and for that I respect it.
