Players control Lee, and must defeat the sailor from the dance in Hong Kong, the chefs from the Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco, the martial arts master who challenges Lee, amongst others to progress through the game, recalling major action scenes from the film. However, the video game leaves out valuable plot information from the film and most of the romantic content between Bruce Lee and his future wife.
Players can use a variety of martial arts moves to defeat their enemies and build up a chi meter, which can help unleash special moves on their opponents. The player has three continues, and if lost, they must fight The Phantom (the personification of Bruce's fear who takes the form of an armored Japanese Samurai) to continue, though he is near invincible. They face The Phantom Samurai again at the end as a final boss.
The game supports up to three players simultaneously, playing through the game co-operatively, or against each other in a battle mode. Characters other than Bruce Lee are not playable, and so the additional players only control clones of Lee, differentiated by different colored trousers.
