You know that meme that starts off "Nobody", followed by a thing that zero people asked for? That's Shaq Fu in a nutshell. With its shrimpy sprites, poor presentation, bad controls, and one of the goofiest rosters for a fighting game that makes War Gods shake its head, everything that makes up Shaq Fu is embarrassment and shame. Because I didn't watch basketball as a kid, I didn't know a lot about the gravy train marketing campaign that was SHAQ, except he had a publicist that thought a movie where he bonded with one of the most annoying little twerps of a kid as a genie was a good idea. Since I'll seldom have a chance to pose this in a contextual manner, was Shaq Fu as bad a fighting game as Kazaam was a movie?

So Shaq Fu itself. Ridiculous concept aside, how does it fare as an actual game? Well, if you purposefully placed fish hooks underneath each of your finger nails and was lifted three inches off the ground, you would only be able to endure half the pain, agony, and frustration of actually trying to play this as a fighting game, and that lies in fault mostly with the staff in charge.

Developed by Delphine Software, Shaq fu was released in 1994 and had several ports across the SNES, Sega Mega Drive, Gameboy, Amiga, and the Game Gear. It was originally going to be a basketball game, but Shaq was a big fan of Mortal Kombat and an overhaul was in order, even adding MK-ish lore to the game's story mode, like interdimensional beings upon which Shaq has to fight.

The biggest problem with the controls is that they aren't traditionally bad, but rather they're too good for a fighting game. Delphine Software International is more known for their rotoscope animation in games like Flashback: The Quest For Identity, which is similar in execution to the puzzle game, Prince of Persia. What does this mean? The animation was too good, making it feel like it's unresponsive. Fighting games balance out the meta of their normal and special moves with start-up frames and active frames, it's how the first combos were structured, as well as general movement, helping players gauge their ability to follow up with attacks or react defensively.

In Shaq Fu, there's so many frames of animation in strikes, jumping, motion inputs for specials, and just getting around that everything feels like it's on a delay. Air-to-airs or anti-airing normal jump-ins in the game feel virtually impossible to trigger adequately. Delphine's animation is very impressive for the time period, but not the foundation upon which a fighting game should be built. Reading and reacting becomes very cumbersome. When you counter with a Dragon Punch in Street Fighter II, which boasts significantly less frames of animation, your ability to respond accordingly feels much more free. The cardinal sin in Shaq Fu is that it was...made too well? A little overproduction winds up impairing this game more than anything else.

The characters are comically silly and sums up some of the lamer aspects of fighters and the attitude of the early 90's. With names like "Beast", "Colonel", and "Voodoo", it's like they just had a toddler in the daycare draw nouns out of a hat and assigned to failed Image Comics rough sketches pulled out of a waste bin. Not until Ergheiz: god Bless The Ring would such a generic and forgettable cast of fighters populate a video game en masse. 

Yet, with all of this, I still don't think it's the worst fighting game per the era. Shaq Fu rightfully deserves to get roasted, but it isn't as incompetent as Rise of the Robots, UltraMan (should I even consider that a fighting game? yeah, I think I'm gonna), VR Troopers, or BALLz. The music is okay. The Mega Drive version comes with a larger roster than the SNES version and has a more robust story mode, so I'd say that's the optimal Shaq Fu to grab. Shaq Fu is bad, and there are few redeeming qualities beyond "so awful, it's good", but you really don't have to go too far to find significantly worse than this. As far as basketball star licensed games under Electronic Arts, it still isn't Michael Jordan: Chaos In The Windy City. Hell, the original Shaq Fu will continue to be far more memorable than the incredibly tepid and unappealing A Legend Reborn brawler follow-up, something AGAIN nobody asked for, in 2018.

......Would Shaq have made Space Jam better? Would Michael Jordan have been a decent rapping genie? These are things I think about when I have long overlays for flights.