Developer: Joy Van
Publisher: Color Dreams
Release Date: 1989
("10 World of Adventure" is only accurate if you consider taking a nap an adventure)
If you know anything about Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu, it's probably from the Angry Video Game Nerd. He covered the game in one of his earliest videos, and it was strange going back and watching it after so many years. For one thing it's only around four minutes long. That was fairly normal for early YouTube, and remembering the earlier short form days makes me feel a little old. Hey kids, did you know back in the day YouTube videos could only be ten minutes long? I used to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes cut up into 10 parts with sneaky titles so they wouldn't get flagged. Anyway, it was one of his shortest reviews, and one of the most obscure titles he covered back then. There were so many iconic bad games out there yet to be reviewed that Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu just felt out of place. Why did he pick it over every other game? It had to be that title, right? Nothing else on NES has a title even close to being that strange. I remember seeing this game at my local video store for years but always being afraid to actually rent it. Would my parents get mad at me if I rented a game about a drunkard? It's only the first paragraph and already I'm rambling. You know a game is boring when I start talking about the good old days. I didn't even like the good old days that much. Okay let's get on with it.
There's not much you can say outside of "it has a funny name and it's bad." That's about all AVGN had to say. It's not even bad in a very interesting way. Many of the Color Dreams games were developed in house, and those are fun to talk about. They get increasingly strange and amateurish as the company got more and more desperate. Their strategy of quickly releasing game after game backfired spectacularly, and it's the stuff of bad video game legend. Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu was made by Taiwanese company Joy Van who would later merge with the slightly more familiar Sachen. They specialized in cheap, tiny games usually made to be in multi-carts. If you've played many unlicensed games than you've probably seen their name. They were very prolific and ended up on just about every cartridge-based system in the 90s. Sometimes their games were properly licensed, but usually they went the bootleg route. Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu certainly feels like a game meant for a multi-cart. It's simple, repetitive, and extremely short. It looks more like a real game than a typical Color Dreams release, but it's not going to fool anyone.
Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu is a side-scroller that requires you to find eight yin-yang symbols and then fight a boss. Sometimes the symbols are out in the open, but more often they are hidden in completely random places and have to be shot to be revealed. Once you collect all eight of them you are whisked away to a boss fight. I do like how you are instantly flown to the exit even if the last symbol you collect is on the other side of the level. Why drag this out any longer than it has to be? It's mostly unremarkable outside of a couple of annoying quirks. For some reason they mapped the A button as a projectile shot and the B button as a fan wave which I think is supposed to be a melee attack. It makes me think that they had originally planned for projectile ammo to be limited and then changed their minds because there is no reason to ever melee attack. Most of the enemies start from far away and shoot things at you. Waiting for a close-up attack would be suicide. This also means that jumping uses the up button. It's not the worst "up for jump" game I have ever played, possibly because it never gets all that intense. I never got confused by it. Sadly, this means that it's not all that interesting. Almost interesting, but not quite.
After the collect-a-thon part of the level you are then taken to a boss fight. This too is very boring as they are all basically the same. They usually move back-and-forth while shooting forward. You just have to hang out on a platform until they turn and then shoot them in the back. Sometimes the platforms above you will have fire, but oddly you can shoot the fire to put it out. Still not very interesting. You repeat this formula five or six times and then fight an uninspired final boss that was just as easy and boring as the rest of the game. At least the game has an actual end screen instead of just text on a field of black. There were plenty of professionally made games that can't say that.
I always feel weird ranking a game below Rocky and Bullwinkle. I was always under the impression that it was the worst game of all time. Now it's not even in the bottom ten, and Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu slots in just below it. It all comes down to being interesting. Rocky and Bullwinkle is bad, but it's bad in an unusual and unforgettable way. All the levels put in a new type of badness that I had never dreamed of before. Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu is just plain ol' boring. Once you've played it for five minutes you've seen everything. It's still better than Wayne Gretzky Hockey because there's more to look at than fields of blue ice. So, for now Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu is in my NES top 50 at a nice round 50/51. I plan on doing some more unlicensed games in the near future, so maybe it won't get knocked out as quickly as I expect. It's also 171 out of 181 on my overall list only saved from oblivion by a bunch of HyperScan and boring casino games. Nothing dooms a game more than being boring, and Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu should be put in the boring game hall of fame.
NES Quality Percentage: 25/51 or 49.01%
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G01RKJ7-caaal5lgFfGgPfZRGcqWlv4E3E2E615UYKg/edit?usp=sharing
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