Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting!

Lights, camera, action! Kung Fu Chaos released worldwide for the Xbox in 2003 and got everyone who played it acting like a kung fu action hero. Just read and see how awesome this game is: it breaks the fourth wall, has a monkey god as a playable character, has couch co-op and includes Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas as the game’s theme song! If that isn’t awesome, I don’t know what is.

Face it, it’s frigging razor! Kung Fu Chaos is a four-player free for all fighting game that allows players to kick the crap out of their friends in various settings resembling classic kung fu films. The game doesn’t always follow this rule—hence the Jurassic Park look-alike mission, which makes it even more awesome than it already is. Everybody was kung fu fighting!

Well, gaming critics weren’t. They were on the teeter-totter. Kung Fu Chaos received “average” reviews according to Metacritic, yet it was included among the best Xbox party games by IGN in 2005. AllGame gave it 2.5 stars, and Famitsu gave it 30 out of 40. See what I mean? Teeter-totter. The question is, why was a sequel never developed? Was there not enough commitment to the project? Was there conflict within the Just Add Monsters ranks? Was their budget too low? What really happened? Time to solve the mystery!

Many Will Perish In Picturesque Agony

At the 2014 GCD Europe, Tameem Antoniades, co-founder of Just Add Monsters, released a massive 51 page PDF entitled “The Independent AAA Proposition” which discussed their evolution as a company, and within that presentation are 15 important words: But before Kung Fu Chaos hit the shelves, we were already working on a sequel. Sadly, Microsoft barely took the effort to advertise Kung Fu Chaos, which resulted in poor sales and no funding for the sequel. Just Add Monsters then ran into two problems: Microsoft owned the Kung Fu Chaos IP, and the coding was exclusive to Xbox. “We didn’t have the financial leverage to own the IP and take it forward, so it was effectively dead,” said Antoniades in the Proposition. Just Add Monsters was then forced to let the sequel die and begin anew with a spiritual successor.

But what was the spiritual successor? “After Kung Fu Chaos, we concepted a game called Kung Fu Story,” said Ninja Theory in a 2014 Twitter post. The game was supposed to be way more mature than its spiritual predecessor, and it had all the works of a great game—story telling, combat and flow. It even had a full-length concept stage cutscene, which tested the game’s art style, combat system and visualization.

However, video games releasing at that time had “realistic” graphics and weren’t as “artsy fartsy,” and Just Add Monsters realized that publishers preferred this. “A stylized game like Kung Fu Chaos was not appealing to publishers. Kung Fu Story was in the same boat,” said Antoniades in the Proposition. C’mon, guys. What’s wrong with an exaggerated, cartoon ninja? Once Just Add Monsters realized Kung Fu Story would flop, they scrapped the project. Sniffle. Another one bites the dust. After Just Add Monsters obliterated my hopes and dreams for good, they shifted their focus on developing video games for the next generation of consoles.

Oh, No! The End Is Near - 10 Seconds Near!

In 2004, Just Add Monsters vanished from the grid, re-established themselves as Ninja Theory and crafted a brand new IP—Heavenly Sword. Since then, they have released hits like Devil May Cry, Enslaved, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice.

So, there you have it. Ninja Theory’s choice to kill my childhood was a financial one and a strategic one. It is unfortunate that a classic like Kung Fu Chaos has no sequel, but maybe Ninja Theory will make a new spiritual successor inspired from the original spiritual successor, or cut a deal with Microsoft and make a direct sequel. C’mon, guys. Make this thing happen! The idea isn’t out of Ninja Theory’s mind, for Antoniades stated in The Independent AAA Proposition, "To this day, if we could work on a [Kung Fu Chaos] sequel, we would."

It looks like there is still hope, kung fu fighters! And that’s a wrap!

Styles HD

Styles writes funny stuff and is a funny guy. Or so he thinks. He writes novels, lives in Hangar 11, and plays a lot of Halo. He’s pretty good at it - message him for 1v1’s.