Chinese Hero belongs to that first generation of side-scrolling fighting games that flourished after the success of Irem's Kung-Fu Master (1984): a protagonist advances through linear scenarios dishing out punches and kicks against waves of enemies, with level bosses that require memorizing patterns before being able to progress.
It was overshadowed by the references that popularized the formula, but it's a representative piece of that hinge moment when the beat 'em up was still defining its basic rules, before Double Dragon added the cooperative dimension that would go on to cement the genre.
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