Jackie Chan Adventures: Legend of the Dark Hand is a single player beat-'em up released for the Game Boy Advance in November 2001. The game is based on the popular animated show Jackie Chan Adventures, which ran for five season from September 2000 to July 2005. As a fan of the cartoon and seeking an influx of nostalgia, I wanted to give this game a chance. Unfortunately, Legend of the Dark Hand is a poor adaptation of the source material and a bad game in general.
The player takes control of the titular Jackie Chan on his quest to recover 8 stolen scrolls and stop the evil Dark Hand from unleashing the powers sealed within. To do this, the player must button mash their way through hordes of goons and eventually defeat a boss character to recover the stolen scroll. While this sounds simple, and even somewhat enjoyable, the implementation of Jackie Chan's signature fighting style and the beat-'em up game formula is incredibly flawed. Instead of fluid and fast paced attacks, Jackie is slow, cumbersome, and hard to control. His attacks are boring and uninspired, even after gaining new attacks in the later levels, and enemies barely react to being punched or kicked. The art style of the game, uninspired poorly done pixel art, is unoriginal and doesn't represent the art style of the cartoon at all. Overall, it is painfully obvious that this is just a bad beat-'em up with a Jackie Chan skin and is really not worth your time.
The player takes control of the titular Jackie Chan on his quest to recover 8 stolen scrolls and stop the evil Dark Hand from unleashing the powers sealed within. To do this, the player must button mash their way through hordes of goons and eventually defeat a boss character to recover the stolen scroll. While this sounds simple, and even somewhat enjoyable, the implementation of Jackie Chan's signature fighting style and the beat-'em up game formula is incredibly flawed. Instead of fluid and fast paced attacks, Jackie is slow, cumbersome, and hard to control. His attacks are boring and uninspired, even after gaining new attacks in the later levels, and enemies barely react to being punched or kicked. The art style of the game, uninspired poorly done pixel art, is unoriginal and doesn't represent the art style of the cartoon at all. Overall, it is painfully obvious that this is just a bad beat-'em up with a Jackie Chan skin and is really not worth your time.