If you've been reading the site like a good little monkey this week, chances are you're already in Kung Fu mode. The announcement of Kung Fu 2 is a tough one to shake off, isn't it? Well here's another one to shake off. That Karate Kid looking mofo named Thomas? It's actually Jackie Chan.

Collect the pieces of your brain (which have no doubt just exploded all over the furniture) and allow me to explain.

Kung Fu for the NES was a port of the arcade title Kung Fu Master. Kung Fu Master was the western title of a Japanese arcade hit named Spartan X. Spartan X was based on the hit 1984 Hong Kong release of the same name, also known as Wheels on Meals.

The whole situation can't help but illicit something of a chuckle. Kung Fu is generally regarded as the game with the thinnest plot in history, and yet it was based on a major motion picture that was a huge success in it's native land. Don't get me wrong -- Jackie Chan films aren't exactly known for their gripping storylines, but I'd like to think that there was a little more to it than this;

Turns out there wasn't. While the film had some basic plot points that the game left out, it looks as though it's a pretty good representation of the films story. Here's the plot of Spartan X, courtesy of Wikipedia;

Thomas (Jackie Chan) and David (Yuen Biao) are cousins who run a fast food van in Barcelona. The food is delivered by Thomas, who rushes around the square on a skateboard. After fending off a biker gang, they meet the beautiful pickpocket Sylvia (Lola Forner), who asks them to hide her in their van to avoid the police. Thomas and David are enamoured by her, but after allowing her to stay in their apartment that night, they wake to find Sylvia and their money gone. The next day, they bump into Moby (Sammo Hung), a bumbling private investigator who is also tracking Sylvia. It is discovered that Sylvia is the heir to a sizeable inheritance that a criminal gang is trying to steal from her. When she is kidnapped, Thomas, David, and Moby team up to save her, infiltrating the villains' castle and defeating them in a martial arts battle.

See what I mean? There's the basic framing of the story, which leads into the real meat of it all: infiltrating the villains' castle and defeating them in a martial arts battle. Sure sounds like Kung Fu to me.

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