Download Bruce Lee

I’m convinced that everybody who’s reading this review has already heard of Bruce Lee. It is a name that is commonly connected with martial arts movies or simple martial arts themselves. It is no wonder that the gaming industry wanted to profit from this well know name. It was Datasoft that got the idea to make a game entitled Bruce Lee. And the game was a big hit! The name helped a lot. Just imagine how it sounded when you said to your friends at school, you’re playing a Bruce Lee game! It definitely sounded much better then to say, you’re playing Bouncing Babies. ;)

Now this game is one of the earlier platform action games. The gameplay is simple enough. You can run left or right, lie on the floor (this makes you invulnerable to hits of the enemies), jump (climb) or hit. There are two hits you can perform. You can punch (press space while standing still) or do the flying kick (press space while moving left or right). While running, climbing and jumping all over the place you need to collect some glowing objects (I’m not sure what they should be). Collecting them will open you passages to continue further on (example: once you collect everything in the first three rooms, a trap door will open and you can go to the underworld).

There are off course obstacles on your way. There are beams that kill you instantly, geysers that make you evaporate and there are two guys trying to stop you. There is a cool looking Ninja and a fat Sumo Wrestler. They will start beating on you as soon as they can reach you. Watch out for the Sumo guy, he’s stronger then Ninja and can perform the same two moves as you. He’s also tougher, so you’ll need to hit him more times in order to make him disappear (but remember – the object of this game isn’t to fight these two guys off).

Thus far this sounds like a fairly average action game. Yet there is a twist to this game. The game supports four different modes of play! The game supports up to three players!!! You can play in one or two player mode, where the computer controls both opponents and the players are taking turns. When one looses a life the other one starts playing. But you can select a player to control an opponent! This would mean that you’re Bruce Lee and your friend would control the Sumo guy and try to stop you! Unfortunately you need joysticks for this mode!

Unfortunately the PC game is much worse then the Commodore 64 version was! Besides the PC speaker sound and slightly worse graphics, the game also had a bad interface. When you press a button to go in a direction, you’ll keep on running in that direction until something stops you (it’s easy to get killed this way).

I definitely preferred the C64 version of this game and I suggest that you take a look at our sister site (Abandonia Reloaded), for there is a Bruce Lee Remake. <-- (click on the name to get to it) The remake is almost identical to the old C64 game.

Select the B option when you are asked for the monitor type.
You need to use the numeric keys to play (or else you won’t be able to jump sideways), to hit use space.

You will need to slow everything down in order to play this game. You need to set DOSBox to some 200 – 250 cycles (you do that by pressing ctrl+F11).

WARNING!!!:
To get the same quality of screenshots, you have to change a setting in the DOSBox.conf file! Machine type should be changed from VGA (default) into CGA. Select Composite (TV mode) at the beginning of the game).