Electronic Arts was definitely working with conviction in the fall of 1994.
Weeks before taking gamers through the hair-brained plot of Michael Jordan trying to rescue kidnapped basketball players for an All-Star charity game in the Super Nintendo title Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City, it had Shaquille O'Neal involved in a zany All-Star charity game plot himself.
The storyline of Shaq-Fu, an October 1994 title, had Shaquille O'Neal wandering the streets of downtown Tokyo, checking out the sights on the day of his All-Star charity game, when he stumbles upon a kung fu dojo with an old dojo master inside. The sage man tells Shaq about a young student of his named Nezu, who has been held captive by a twisted mummy. Just like that, O'Neal finds himself zapped into a second world with the aim to rescue Nezu.
So, let's get this straight — MJ had to rescue kidnapped ball players, while Shaq was chosen to do the same for a young boy. Really, EA? Sounds like you guys simply remixed the plot back in the day, using two of the most-dominant basketball stars in video games that had nothing to do with hoops.
As the title alludes to, Shaq-Fu was strictly a fighting game with EA trying its best to make the Diesel's 7-1, 300 pounds-plus frame look fluid when going for high kicks, sweeping kicks and twisting, back-handed punches against strange enemies ... all while wearing a jersey and striped shorts from the Orlando Magic, the team O'Neal was playing for at the time.
He was just 22 years old when the game hit stores in conjunction with the start to the 1994-95 NBA season, O'Neal's third season as a pro. And what a year that turned out being for the center, as he led the Magic to the NBA Finals, where they wound up being swept by Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets.
Nevertheless, at the time Shaq-Fu came out, O'Neal already had everything from a platinum-selling rap album (Shaq Diesel), a co-starring role in the February 1994 movie Blue Chips and endorsements from companies such as Reebok and Nestle.
The Super Nintendo game, which received mixed reviews, almost instantly garnered a love-to-hate type of reaction from gamers and that was probably because whether they felt the title was closer to bad than good, they still liked Shaq.
That's probably because at the time, the NBA and sports world had never seen a player as big and dominant as O'Neal and yet with the personality of a giant loveable kid. That could explain why fans made enough noise for Shaq himself to start a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo last year for a sequel of the movie.
Off the strength of his name, stature and the fact that he still counts plenty of fans, O'Neal managed to raise $450,000 for the game. While Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is slated for a 2016 release, some critics are already bashing it, calling it "as terrible as you could imagine."
Is it because O'Neal is a Hall of Fame-bound center, doing kung fu in the game ... or that the title is just that bad?
Probably both.
