The Making of Karateka- The Definitive Review (Includes Bonus Reviews of the NES & Game Boy Karateka)

Before starting this review, I’d never played Karateka. I didn’t even know what genre it was going to be. Apparently I wasn’t alone. The first video in the museum features legendary designers of games saying they weren’t sure what to expect when they saw Karateka on shelves. Some thought maybe it would be like Karate Champ or a similar one-on-one fighter. I was thinking it might be more like Kung Fu, aka Kung Fu Master, aka Spartan X. Actually, we were all right AND not even close. I decided, for this review, I would go in completely blind, and I’m going to review all the builds and prototypes in this set in the actual sequential order they’re presented in the program’s five chapters. This includes a review of every prototype and every build of the games Karateka, Death Bounce, and Asteroid Blaster, the final two of which never released. Each game review below was written immediately following the specific build was played, before I moved on in the museum’s narrative. The sections on Presentation & Features and Emulation were written after the game reviews were completed.

The Making of Karateka retails for $19.99, and therefore it has to create $20 in value to win my seal of approval. After I finished reviewing the games, I assigned extra value for the emulation quality and the quality of what would be called “extra content” or “bonus content” in most other collections. For The Making of Karateka, that content is equal to the games themselves, but I’m still going to treat the games like they’re the reason people would buy this. Like with Atari 50, I’m not setting fixed value on any YES! game. Instead, I’ll say what I think it’s worth.

I used the Nintendo Switch version for this review. I’m pals with many people at Digital Eclipse, but that doesn’t factor into this review.

PRESENTATION & FEATURES

For the purposes of this review, any video game prototypes or features that require actual gameplay are scored separately.

Wow, where do I begin? Using the same menu system created for Atari 50, The Making of Karateka is essentially part book, part documentary, and part whatever you call all the other extra features you’d typically find on a Blu-ray or DVD. It’s really not JUST a Karateka feature, either. It’s probably best to look at this as “Jordan Mechner and The Making of Karateka” because Jordan’s background and entrance into game design takes up the entire first chapter (of five total). This really is an all-encompassing experience. I’ve heard Making of Karateka get compared to Criterion Collection, and that’s spot-on. Name something you’d want, and it’s here. I’ll start with the typical things you’d expect. Making of Karateka is overflowing with the usual “drawing board” items like concept art, graphs showing the sprites, deleted ideas, box covers, instruction books, and advertisements. I’m hugely into this type of stuff. Some people aren’t. If pencil drawings or old magazine ads do absolutely nothing for you, it’s fine to knock $5 off the value I award at the end of this section.

Going a step beyond concept art, there’s correspondence between Jordan and the publisher of his Death Bounce prototype, including the results of a focus testing. You never expect to see that type of thing, even in a feature like this. It feels almost taboo, and I loved them. By the way, viewing these documents is intuitive and easy. As far as engines designed to read documents using video game controls, I can’t imagine doing better than this. Of course, the main highlight is several documentary-style interview segments. Thankfully, only two are the usual fluff like having famous designers talk about their love of Karateka and what it meant to their gaming upbringings. Actually, one of them cracked me up pretty good: where the famous creators talked about the, shall we say, less than enjoyable aspects of Karateka. When Tom Hall talks about the gate or the bird, the look on his face and his body language do not match the praise he’s giving, which gave me a terrific giggle. I mean, look at him!

The behind-the-scenes stuff is some of the most educational gaming features I’ve seen. The three main subjects of the clips are creator Jordan Mechner, his father Francis (who did the music), and Veda Cook, who led the first two ports (Commodore 64 and Atari 8-Bit computers) after the original Apple II build. All three of them are so dang charming that you can’t help but like them. For me at least, it totally made me scream fewer cuss words at some of the more infuriating design choices of Karateka. I especially liked Francis, who is one of those renaissance man types where you hear his story and all the things he’s done with his life, that it makes you reevaluate your own life. He was a concert pianist, research psychologist, a  famous creator of game soundtracks, invented the question mark, and convinced Wendy’s to use square-shaped patties. I made up those last two but you could believe otherwise with this guy. But what makes it really special is Jordan is next to him, and he has the eyes of a man who is so proud of his father. I found myself wiping away tears just seeing that look. You can tell that having him there to talk about what they achieved together meant the world to him. I loved these interviews. And I loved the information in them, too. Cook gets one of the longer videos to talk about the challenges in the ports. There’s a clip devoted entirely to rotoscoping. There’s some interviews explaining things from Brøderbund’s side of the project. They covered more bases than I expected.

There’s one non-interactive audio commentary included, for the Apple II version of Karateka. The commentary features Jordan & Francis Mechner and runs close to twenty minutes. I’m all for more Francis in this set, and he’s all over this commentary as his musical cues are discussed in his own words. Combined with the feature in the caption above, and I really feel like I came away from Making of Karateka having learned actual applicable lessons about the usage and implementation of music in visual media. So, hot damn, I didn’t expect that. There’s also behind the scenes footage of how they actually created the rotoscoping effect, using Francis as the model for the hero. This directly ties to one of the coolest features I’ve ever seen in anything like this, which I suppose you have to lump-in every DVD/Bluray I’ve ever browsed: Rotoscope Theater. Using sliders, you can manually adjust the Super 8 footage shot for the rotoscoping with Jordan Mechner’s line drawings AND the final sprites of the game. It’s such an inspired idea. We ended up spending close to ten minutes just playing around with these four short segments. My family is really big into filmmaking and learning about the production side of things, and the two Rotoscope Theater parts of the presentation were a BIG hit in my house. Everyone was so happy fiddling around with them. Just when I thought Digital Eclipse had gone the extra mile, it turns out the extra mile had extra miles.

What’s missing? Jeez, I had to think quite a while about this. I guess I’m semi-curious what Jordan’s final grades were at college since that’s such a big part of the feature. Really, the only major thing I would have loved to have listened to was audio commentaries from Veda Cook for the Commodore 64/Atari 8-Bit versions she ported. Preferably both, but I’d settle for one. Or maybe Cook alone for one, and Cook with Jordan in the other. Maybe they felt the six minute feature on the ports was enough, but I still would have enjoyed it. And of course, I’d have liked if the “bad” versions of Karateka were included. I guess fans call the original three the “holy trinity of Karateka” and Mike said in the audio commentary of Remastered that ports like the one to the Atari ST didn’t “get it.” I’ll have to take his word, because they ain’t here. Not that I would have wanted to play Karateka a dozen times, but I am morbidly curious why they’re so disdained by the fandom. Otherwise, even if you ignore the games, there’s easily three hours worth of material here and not a stinker in the bunch. This is as good as a prestige collection like this gets. For all the features in the main presentation, I award the max $20 in value to The Making of Karateka. And like I said, if you’re really not into concept art or marketing materials, you’d probably want to deduct $5 off that.

Max value is fixed to each set’s MSRP, so future sets might get a higher value for such features.

EMULATION

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The Making of Karateka has a fully-powered Infinity Gauntlet of Emulation: save states, rewind, button remapping, optional hardware enhancement (in this case, enhanced frame rate for the Apple II & Commodore 64 versions of Karateka), display options/screen effects, and full gameplay videos with optional jump-in. It’s worth noting that enhanced frame rate is NOT an option for any prototypes. It’s also not an option for the Atari 8-Bit version, but I can’t penalize that as it’s not a platform you can really do that without fundamentally altering the core gameplay in negative ways. You can also change the CRT effect of the ground in Karateka. The most important feature, besides the hardware buff, is the option to change the standard one/two button combat into a Street Fighter-like six button scheme. It works fine, too, but oddly enough, I actually liked how the one button gameplay for Commodore 64/Atari 8-Bit worked and preferred it to the six button. But I also very much enjoyed replaying the Apple II with the six button scheme. For the emulation, I award The Making of Karateka $10 in value, which is my standard for having all the bells & whistles.

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account, at least for the games themselves. For The Making of Karateka, historic value absolutely will factor into my review of the prototype-based content. Otherwise, I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

Asteroid Blaster
Platform: Apple II
Year: 1981
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Work-in-Progress Prototype for an Unreleased Game

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Asteroid Blaster is why I love the Gold Master Series concept as much as I do, as even if the games get a NO!, Digital Eclipse is certain to more than make up for it with the extra features. In the case of Asteroid Blaster, it’s only here because it’s the introductory game to Jordan Mechner’s career. At just the age of 16, he wrote.. and sold.. this visually impressive take on Asteroids. At a time when the market was flooded with wannabes of varying quality, I can’t imagine the astonishment of the people at Hayden Software when they first played this. It looks more like the vector graphics coin-op original than any other Asteroids port of this era. The biggest problem with Asteroid Blaster is the speed. It just never has the same level of pep in its step as the real mccoy. This becomes especially pronounced when you’re a couple levels in and the controls begin to suffer greatly from input lag. Because of it, moving around too much is a bad idea. Even with the lag, the difficulty feels like it stops scaling after just a couple stages. It’s too easy to point straight down at an asteroid and tick off most of its particles before they have a chance to separate. It’s still Asteroids, with gameplay better than the 2600 version, easily, but I’d not want to play this for entertainment in 2024. It’s still a damn shame a giant asteroid with WARNER BROS. LEGAL DEPARTMENT stamped on it prevented Asteroid Blaster from releasing, as this probably rises to the level of being satisfying enough in 1981.
Verdict: NO!

Star Blaster
Platform: Apple II
Year: 1982
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Work-in-Progress Prototype for an Unreleased Game

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In an attempt to stave-off the giant WARNER BROS. LEGAL DEPARTMENT asteroid, Mechner changed the UFOs in Asteroids. The bigger, slower one is now a smiley face. As ridiculous as that sounds, much like Berzerk’s Evil Otto, there’s an undeniable creepiness to it. Meanwhile, the little UFO is now a mushroom that looks like something from Super Mario Land a full seven years before that game was released. That’s not the only change from the previous build of his Asteroids knock-off. The game plays much faster this go around, and it was certainly a nice touch to have final pieces of rubble speed-up. This is so close to getting a YES! that it can taste it. One thing that impressed me a lot is how accurate the collision detection is. As far as I could tell, it’s pixel-perfect. But, the input lag is still an issue, and you really don’t want input lag in a game like Asteroids. What I find particularly astonishing was that Hayden Software’s proposed solution to get around Atari’s ownership was to eliminate the shooting and create an avoider-type game. Seriously? Hey, avoiders can be fun. Some LCDs successfully built games around it, but if people see asteroids, they’re going to want to shoot them. Mechner knew that and offered to turn the asteroids into soap bubbles (clever!) but Hayden declined, and that was the end of this project. If *I* was running a game company and a 16 year old brought me a remarkably convincing Asteroids port, I’d hope I would recognize the long term potential he had as a game maker and not let him get poached by the competition. Hayden no longer exists, as a software developer OR a book publisher. I can’t imagine why.
Verdict: NO!

Death Bounce – “First Prototype”
Platform: Apple II
Dated April 28, 1982
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Work-in-Progress Prototype for an Unreleased Game

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Building off his Asteroids engine, Mechner reached out to Brøderbund with a spin-off of the concept that replaced deep space and rocks with bouncing balls and physics that feel more akin to playing Asteroids on an air hockey table. It’s not the worst idea by any means, but it just wasn’t as fun as you’d hope. At first, I was convinced that the collision detection was off. Upon closer inspection, this seemed to be an optical illusion where the animation of the gun combined with the high velocity the balls move to give the appearance of the bullets traveling through the side of the balls. Or, maybe I’m wrong and any shot but dead center scores a kill, but I’m willing to accept that Death Bounce is creating eye trickery. Instead, the main issue is that the targets are just too small. With the exception of a giant white ball that appears every few seconds, all the targets are equal in size to the smallest pieces of rock in Asteroids. I did like how the shield works, as you go skidding off when the balls collide with you in a way that makes you look like a hockey puck. A bigger problem is that the giant white stalker ball appears too close to you sometimes. As a first build, this isn’t awful, but I’m grateful he kept working on it.
Verdict: NO!

Death Bounce – Colored Balls Prototype
Platform: Apple II
Dated June 5, 1982
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Work-in-Progress Prototype for an Unreleased Game

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Death Bounce’s second version changed the stalker ball to a stalker ship, and now the balls that were already hard enough to shoot take multiple shots. Once again, it’s not the worst idea by any stretch, and this time around, your shield’s fuel has a very helpful gauge that refills between stages. So nice to have. But, I actually preferred the first version. Both builds of Death Bounce thus far have an issue with the stalker spawning too close to you, but it happened a lot more often in the second build. Because the game speeds up to the degree it does, moments like the one in the above slideshow happen constantly. Expecting players to react in the literal small fraction of a second they were given isn’t a reasonable challenge. It’s just not. This was inching closer to being a good game, as I think the formula would work. This is why I hate reviewing beta builds. I feel like a bitch for all these NO!s.
Verdict: NO!

Death Bounce – Little Man Prototype
Platform: Apple II
Dated August 4, 1982
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Work-in-Progress Prototype for an Unreleased Game

After three prototypes, I’m now fairly certain that Death Bounce, as the concept stands, never had a chance of working out. This build wisely sets the shield to holding down the button instead of toggling it on and off. That was smart. It also adds lines that make the balls look like tennis balls and gives the game a sense of motion. Also, now there’s an animation of a little guy running into the ship every new life. Adding a little flavor is never a bad idea, but, all the gameplay problems that have been there from the start are pretty much still here. The stalker ship can still sometimes spawn too close to you to give you a reasonable chance of defending against it. I haven’t even mentioned the frame rate drop when too many objects appear on the screen at once. This is then countered by everything moving too fast when the screen starts to empty. But, the biggest problem of all is that Death Bounce just plain isn’t fun. I still think the concept could work, and I believe the dullness here is mostly tied to the targets being so small and hard to aim at. All the main targets are the same size, over and over and over. The stalker ships are not at all effective in breaking up the monotony. Having targets of different sizes would have gone a long way towards helping with that even if they didn’t shrink between each shot. This is boring, and I think it would have been considered boring even at the time. It’s bizarre too, because Jordan went from making a version of Asteroids so convincing that Atari had to stomp it out to making a less dynamic, significantly less fun version of Asteroids.
Verdict: NO!

Death Bounce – Space Train
Platform: Apple II
Dated January 20, 1983
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Work-in-Progress Prototype of an Unreleased Game

I take back what I said! I TAKE IT BACK! Had THIS version of Death Bounce ever been released and, you know, actually gotten purchased by anyone, it would have gone down in history as one of the worst video games ever made. Where do I even begin? You have two movement speeds: faster than light, and stop. So, imagine playing an Asteroids-like shooter with bouncy walls where the slightest press of the thruster takes you from the center of the room to up against the wall. And mind you, that was the absolute fastest tap of the trust button I ever did. Most of my other attempts at barely touching the button gave me enough thrust that I bounced off the top wall, then the bottom wall, then made it halfway back to the spot center spot I started on. Holy crap!! Is the ship greased with Clark W. Griswold Jr.’s kitchen lubricant?

Now, take THOSE movement parameters and play the same game seen in the previous three reviews. Except this time, the enemies are much bigger and easier to crash into. If you use your shield, you’re going to go flying from the impact, usually hitting a couple walls before you come to a stop. Use counter trust, you say? I tried. It didn’t work. I just instantly went flying in the opposite direction. The intuitive Asteroid-like physics are gone. The only time movement isn’t miserable is when you die, ironically. That’s because in order to be able to use your extra lives, you have to guide your character to the right door. Fail and it’s game over no matter how many lives you have left. Now THAT isn’t a bad idea at all, and thankfully the controls support it. And finally, in this version, when you finish all the enemies, you have to exit the left door. Have fun with that. Just the act of moving to the next room is agony. Now I know why he abandoned this for a karate game. After playing Death Bounce, I was in the mood to hit something too!

Okay, so it goes without saying..
Verdict: NO! BUT..
While the entertainment value of the six non-Karateka prototypes isn’t there (honestly the best of the six was probably the third version of Death Bounce), as a critic of games, I did enjoy experiencing first hand the linear progress of this whole project, including the correspondence between Jordan Mechner and his publishers. For that final version of Death Bounce that I deplored, there’s even a letter that details the result of a focus testing. Presumably a focus test that ended with the subjects killing and eating each-other in protest. The important thing is I’m pretty sure this is the closest I’ve ever come to getting into the mind of a young, aspiring game designer from this era. For the all Asteroid Blast/Death Bounce prototypes and their presentation, I award a bonus of $3 in value to The Making of Karateka.

Funny, because after playing that last build of Death Bounce, I said the exact same thing. But, there’s one last note on Death Bounce. Digital Eclipse wanted to take a crack at it.

Death Bounce: Rebounded
Platform: Reimagined Series
Year: 2023
Designed by Dave Rees and Jeremy Williams
Published by Digital Eclipse

The creators of VCTR-SCTR, Haunted Houses, and Swordquest: Airworld from Atari 50 took the base ingredients from Death Bounce games, especially the fourth version, and created a wonderfully slick and modern twin stick shooter as a bonus game for Making of Karateka. Even I admit I was a little worried when I saw that was the inspiration, but worry not, dear reader. Every wrong there is righted here. The controls are amazingly intuitive. The collision detection is god-tier. The pacing is intense. The shooting is satisfying. I even enjoyed getting all the fake achievements. Mind you, this is an all-but-ignored bonus game that basically got no promotion or hype, even as publications were declaring Making of Karateka the best thing since the invention of carbon. NOBODY would have bought the set for this game, but actually, it’s one of the most enjoyable shooters I’ve played in recent memory. The type of game that would be heir-apparent to Geometry Wars if sold separately.

It’s a really simple game, too. You fly through the space train from Death Bounce’s final build, shooting the enemy birds that you need to clear out to progress. You get bonuses based on how quickly you clear each room. Each train has a different number of cars, but the final car is always a bomb with a protective shield around it. The “Death Bounce” name isn’t just there as a hold-over from the prototypes. Rebounded is almost like a twin stick shooter set inside one of those inflatable castles. The effect on your ship is subtle, but the effect on your bullets is what makes it work, as you can ricochet your shots. It’s still a teeny-tiny bit annoying to get through the door after you clear each stage, but thankfully it’s not even in the same galaxy of annoyance as the fourth Death Bounce prototype. Meanwhile, every aspect of the bomb rooms is so exciting. Once you pump enough bullets into the bomb’s core, you have to crash your ship into it, and oh, it’s so satisfying. Really, the whole game is. Even the little touches help, like how you’re temporarily invincible when you first enter a room, but the enemies aren’t, and crashing into more than one gives you bonus points. That’s one of those ideas that feels like it’s a band-aid over the potential problem of cheap enemy placement, only it would be like if that band-aid gave you super powers.

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It’s not perfect. When you lose your last life, it still does the “escape to the door” bit. There’s probably an Easter Egg or some kind of one in a million chance of getting an extra life, but in a couple hours of playtime I never did it. Having the last life still end the same way every life does is completely immersion breaking. Besides that, and besides the lack of online leaderboards, the only complaint I really have is one of the same ones I had for Jeremy Williams’ VCTR-SCTR: no time attack mode. Weird that Digital Eclipse keeps making games perfectly suited for such modes, yet is failing to capitalize on it. BUT, that’s so nit-picky. Really, Death Bounce: Rebounded has amazing movement physics, excellent scoring balance, and a breakneck pace. Death Bounce: Rebounded is one of my favorite gaming surprises ever. Hey, I found a LOT of enjoyment in Making of Karateka, but the reason it’s not being deleted from my Switch after the review is completed is Death Bounce: Rebounded. It’s the type of game I want to keep on stand by for when I have ten minutes to kill, or when I just have an itch for a really good twin stick shooter.
Verdict: YES! – $15 in value added to The Making of Karateka
You only get initials, guys? TWO? I ought to fine you ten bucks for that 🤪

Karateka – Jordan’s Prototype
Platform: Apple II
Dated May 1, 1984
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Work-in-Progress/Proof of Concept Prototype

This demo was, to the best of my knowledge, my first experience ever with Karateka. My first initial thought was “gosh, I hope the finished game plays faster than this.” (Cathy from the future to Cathy from the past: “wish into one hand..”) Yea, yea, old computer game. I know they go to the beat of their own drummer. Oddly enough, for a game that runs so slow, Karateka’s combat has decent, bordering on good, OOMPH. For my first-time readers (who are hopefully going to end up just plain ordinary readers), that’s what I call video game violence that feels like it has real world weight and impact. Karateka achieves this by having gigantic impact stars when you land a hit and a satisfying noise that I’d describe like the sound I make when I flip down on my oversized bean bag chair. Which, hey, I love that sound! I just wish I loved the rest of the game as much.

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So, the birds. This is one of those “good idea, less than ideal execution” situations. Between the fights, and near the end of the game, you have to fight a bird. And this bird’s collision detection has absolutely no logical visual cue or basis on its sprite OR your sprite. The moment when it’s actually vulnerable to attack is completely arbitrary. Something a player has to figure out by trial and error while also programming their brain to ignore the logical point of impact, AND, you have to factor the lag it takes to stop moving and get into your fighting stance AND the lag that happens when you throw a punch. It’s a deal breaker for me. The weird thing is, it was around the time I started whining about this that a few people started coming out and saying that, neat as this Gold Master Series kick-off is, Karateka has always been kind of a crappy game. Apparently the birds are so notorious that a parody account exist on the former Twitter centered around them. Well, that’s ominous. See, this isn’t a “GIT GUD” thing. If the sprites for what you’re trying to punch or kick don’t directly tie to the collision of the object you’re trying to hit, that’s just bad design, no matter how many times you rotoscoped your father jumping over a car. And I didn’t even really get into how the controls are very unresponsive. There’s this frustrating lag and slowness to everything. So bad was this prototype that I cancelled my plans to not touch any of the other Karateka builds, just to make sure it gets better. It does, but the version I could enjoy most wouldn’t release until 2023.
Verdict: NO!

Karateka – The Brøderbund Prototype 1 & 2
Platform: Apple II
Dated July, 1984 and August, 1984
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Work-in-Progress Prototype

The first time I went to attack in the first Brøderbund prototype, I pressed the kick button, and then about two seconds later the kick actually happened. The next time I did it, I literally counted it out, pressing the attack button and saying “ONE-ONE THOUSAND, TWO-ONE THOUSAND” before the kick actually began. Holy mother of god. This was input lag on a scale I’ve never seen before. And that’s assuming the button press even worked at all. Sometimes it didn’t. Have you ever tried to load up a new game on an old computer? That’s what playing that prototype was like. Do I even need to waste a NO! to explain further? So, I loaded up the second prototype, which is supposed to be near complete, and thankfully it played much better. It’s still really slow though. At this point, I decided to quit the work-in-progress builds and begin playing the Karateka games properly, as I was afraid the prototypes would sour the overall experience for me.
Verdict: NO! but I’m again awarding $3 in bonus value for the inclusion of the prototypes, along with all the documents and correspondence related to them. Mostly because I want to see more of this in future prestige releases like this.

Karateka
Platform: Apple II
Release Date: December, 1984
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Published by Brøderbund

After hours of pre-Karateka prototypes, production notes, interviews, lessons on rotoscoping, and even an audio commentary from a music expert where I actually learned things about film and game musical scores, I finally got Karateka. About ten minutes later, my brain said “all this hubbub over a game that’s not even that good.” Put down your pitchforks and torches, classic computer gaming fans. Nothing I can say should be able to ruin your childhood memories. If me saying Karateka isn’t very fun in 2024 makes you angry, that says a lot more about you than it does me. Besides, it’s not like I didn’t want to enjoy it. I don’t remember ever being so heartbroken by a game, but to say that Karateka didn’t live up to the hype would be an understatement. It was unlikely Karateka, a game that pushed the boundaries of PCs in 1984, was going to survive the test of time. I just didn’t think I would end up questioning the test of 1984.

I wanted to like Karateka, especially after watching all the videos of Jordan Mechner and his adorable father. While it might have been jaw-dropping in its day, if a game released tomorrow that had as much unresponsiveness and lag as Karateka, it would be critically lambasted as one of the worst games ever made. The really weird thing is there’s universal agreement that Urban Champion is bad, right? I mean, not completely universal, because I actually gave it a YES! on the grounds that it felt like two angry guys throwing hands on a street, and I enjoyed the satisfaction of knocking a guy into the sewer. Karateka is sort of cut from the same cloth as Urban Champion. The fights ideally should have that rock/paper/scissors vibe, since you have six forms of attack: punches and kicks that can be thrown high, low, or middle. No blocking. So far, so good, at least for a game from 1984.

The problem is any amount of finesse or strategy is almost entirely negated by the input lag. Lag that happened even after I turned on the optional “enhanced frame rate.” This DID make things better, but the lag still got progressive worse the closer I got to the final level. By the end, the lag was so bad that the fights were practically choreographed by satellite delay. Because of that input delay, you can’t really plan to counter your opponent’s move because by the time the game registers your movement, the enemy has already done the move you’re planning to counter and might even already have started the animation of their next move. The end result is you’re forced to button mash and really just hope the stuff you press lands.

I tried playing this like a martial arts movie, with deliberate and graceful strategy, and maybe on a couple of the earlier fights, that’s totally doable. But by the time you’ve entered the dojo, the enemies are too advanced. Anything but button mashing isn’t going to work. I would normally complain about the lack of a block button, but in the case of Karateka, the lag wouldn’t allow for a working block anyway. It’s a reminder that all the revolutionary aspects of Karateka, from the rotoscoped graphics to the “cinematic” presentation, all came at a very steep cost to the gameplay. Maybe the trade-off was worth it in 1984, but it’s 2024 now, and it’s just not acceptable for a game to be this unresponsive. Even the best emulation money can buy from Digital Eclipse couldn’t fix it. I salute Karateka and Jordan Mechner for their contributions to the pastime I love, but I would also never have wanted to play Karateka at all outside a set like this.
Verdict: NO!

Karateka
Platform: Commodore 64
Release Date: June, 1985
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Ported by Veda Cook
Published by Brøderbund

After the Apple II version, I genuinely didn’t think I’d enjoy any of the three original versions of Karateka. It wasn’t long into my session with the Commodore 64 that I realized that might not be the case. The control scheme, assuming you use the default controls, is the biggest part of that. The Commodore 64’s joystick only had one action button, but Karateka was written as a two-button game. To compensate for this, the port by Veda Cook has an ingenious solution: tap the button for punches and hold the button down for kicks. I loved this, as it finally gave the tiniest hint of finesse to the fighting. The input lag from the Apple II version takes longer to arrive, but it does arrive. The effect is just less pronounced because instead of you having to time two separate button presses, if you stick to the kicks, you only have to do one. Instead of mashing attacks, you almost guide them via the joystick. Just having that as an option made all the difference in the world.

Well, at least until the end.

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During the bird attack that’s the penultimate fight before the final boss, the lag was the worst it had ever been on the C64 up to this point. The problem is that the bird itself moves faster than the input lag, often not leaving you enough time to factor in both the lag and the position of the bird. This is where the “hold a button down” works as a determent. Since I couldn’t land a single punch on the bird, I ended up having to switch control schemes and utilize the six-button layout provided by Digital Eclipse for these ports. EVEN WITH THAT, I never would have gotten the bird without rewinding. Thankfully, rewind is an option that Digital Eclipse was wise enough to provide instead of being one of those companies that screams “GIT GUD” at old games. Karateka is an all-or-nothing, win every fight and get past every obstacle in one life or start over from the beginning. That doesn’t work for me, so for all the fights except the one with the bird, I utilized save states at the start of encounters. If I died, I’d start the fight itself over from the beginning. And low and behold, I had a good time in that format, where it was okay when I died, and a thrill when I finally won a bout. Still a challenge, but not the type of insurmountable one I’d never want to face on its own terms.

Surprise! I actually had more fun than not with the C64 version of Karateka. It’s still a problematic experience. I played with the enhanced frame rate option turned on, and the game still felt like the emulated device playing it could catch fire at any moment. A lot of ambitious games from this era made sacrifices to the visual experience in order to optimize the gameplay. Karateka didn’t do that, and the “cinematic experience” comes at a massive gameplay cost. The input lag has this strange “it’s a feature that makes the game harder, not a bug that makes the game less polished!” vibe to it. To believe that, you’d have to believe that it was possible the game might NOT have had the lag and it was a conscience decision to allow it, just to increase the game’s challenge. Such a decision would get a game burned at the stake by critics today. I can overlook that to a certain degree because the fights are fun AND, indeed, cinematic. Fighting games age badly, and games that cross the limitations of their era age really badly. That there’s something enjoyable left in Karateka in 2024 is a small miracle. It wouldn’t take a lot of modification to turn Karateka into a convincing Enter the Dragon licensed game. That counts for something. Not much, but something.
Verdict: YES! – $2 in value added to Making of Karateka

Karateka
Platform: Atari 8-Bit Computer
Release Date: October, 1985
Designed by Jordan Mechner
Ported by Veda Cook
Published by Brøderbund

At first, the 8-bit Atari port of Karateka seemed like it was going to run away with the title of best version of the so-called “holy trinity.” For about the first third of the game, it doesn’t suffer the horrendous lag that the other two versions do. It allows you to appreciate what feels like the first elegant and authentic MMA-style fighting game. The “hold the button to kick” gameplay from the C64 port is back and it’s awesome, and those first handful of fights where the game plays at its maximum frame rate are such a joy to behold. I could never get bored playing THAT Karateka. If that type of pace lasted until the end of the game, it would have gone down as one of my favorite martial arts retro games ever. Of course, it doesn’t last, but what I wasn’t prepared for was how bad it gets.

For a brief, shining moment, Karateka was everything I wanted it to be. A satisfying, hard-hitting karate game where the snap of your foot landed right on your opponent’s noggin is a joy to behold. A pleasure that vanishes completely just so the game can paint a door at the end of the hallway you’re on. A door. A DOOR! That’s the source of the lag. Let’s measure the potential for enjoyment. Option 1: full-speed karate action. High-impact punches and kicks that the player feels like they have direct control over due to the lack of input lag, with a beautiful mountain in the background as you walk forward towards rescuing the princess, and then the screen turns to black after you reach the end of the scene because you’ve entered the next area. Hell, create a new screen that’s just the door and let players walk through it, without any encounters. Still cinematic, but gameplay is still given the sense of importance it deserves. Option 2: slow motion karate action where sometimes it might be as much as two-to-three seconds before your button press translates to an on-screen action as you inch your way towards rescuing the princess, ending with the illusion of walking through a static door. You can’t even say “at least it’s more immersive” because there’s NOTHING immersive about control lag. Do you know what’s a lot more immersive than walking through a door? Pressing a button and having the action happen instantaneously.

The amount of end-game lag for Karateka on the Atari 8-Bit was almost a deal breaker. The brilliance of the early fights feels like a tease by the end. Yes, having to kick open a door is fun, but only someone dangerously high on their own vision would choose that and laggy primary gameplay over no door and lag-free, enjoyable karate action. To give you an idea of how bad it is, take the bird encounter, where, depending on where you’re standing, you basically have to choose which of the three channels you’re going to attack before the bird even shows itself. The lag wasn’t consistent, either. Sometimes it lasted one second, and sometimes I’d press the button, the bird would cross the room and attack me, AND THEN I’d throw the kick that I’d cued up when the bird first entered the room. Release a game like that today, and no matter how celebrated or decorated the designer was, the press would lop their heads off. And yet, when the fights are fun, they’re really fun. If the frame rate had held, I’d say this is a $7.99 game even in 2024. But it didn’t, and it ain’t. It’s just barely better than the C64 port.
Verdict: YES! – $3 in value added to The Making of Karateka

Karateka: Remastered
Platform: Reimagined Series
Release Date: August 29, 2023
Designed by Mike J. Mika
Published by Digital Eclipse

Don’t go into Karateka: Remastered looking for an entirely modern remake of Karateka in the same way Yars’ Revenge: Remastered was in Atari 50. While there’s large aspects of it that are decidedly modern, such as having a checklist of extra goals and a very flexible lives system, this is not an attempt to create a 2020s version of the early 80s classic. Instead, think early-to-mid 90s. In the audio commentary for Karateka: Remastered, designer Mike J. Mika revealed that he was inspired by two driving forces. The first, and likely the biggest, was how letdown he was in his youth by hypothetically more advanced ports of Karateka that just didn’t capture the essence of the original. Second was he wanted to capture how he felt when he first experienced the upscale that happened between Prince of Persia if you went from an Apple II to PC. In essence, he created the Karateka that he always wished for that never happened. Karateka: Remastered is the PC version that never was, based around what a hypothetical computer running Prince of Persia in that era from that era could do. This was apparently one of his dream projects. No pressure or anything.

Speaking of the audio commentary, it’s not something you can detach from the game itself, like you could with the commentary for the Apple II version with Jordan & Francis Mechner. This commentary is context sensitive, sort of like the kind found in Portal. I loved the commentary track. Like the best filmmaking tracks for movies, it features a passionate creator mixing the right blend of personal history, technical explanations given in layman’s terms, anecdotes, and oddball factoids. I actually did learn things I didn’t know even after I finished the entire Making of Karateka presentation and walked away with a greater appreciation of what Jordan Mechner accomplished with it. But, the track does create its own set of problems. First off, you actually DO have to play the game, and if you want to hear the whole track, you have to beat it. Commentary plays automatically when you reach an activation point, and it’s reactivated by pressing DOWN. In a game where you often want to press DOWN to perform low attacks, that gets very annoying very quickly. In the final rooms, there’s TWO spots in each room, meaning if you want to engage in low attacks, you have to retreat and straddle the two context sensitive spots. Sadly, unlike the emulated versions, there’s no button mapping. Logically, you’d want the replay button to be something you wouldn’t expect to be able to hit on accident. Clicking the right joystick makes the most sense to me, since you don’t use the right stick at all. Maybe Mike factored in the 0.01% of PC players who will use a retro controller versus the 99.99% who use a standard dual-stick controller. Or, maybe he has a sick sense of humor. It’s probably that one.

As for the gameplay, yea, this is the version of Karateka to play. It’s more or less the same game I’ve already played three times, only without any hiccups to the frame rate. The input lag is still there, but it’s different this time around. Because it’s not based on the performance of the hardware being emulated, you quickly realize that it’s based on when you’re moving or standing still. Once I understood that the movement happening or not happening was based on things I was doing instead of what the hardware was doing, it became predictable and avoidable. In fact, it was so predictable that I realized that if you handcuffed yourself to a copy of the original three versions, you’d probably know when the input lag would happen and adjust accordingly. It would take a while though, and it would never be as immersive as it could be. That’s ultimately what I love about the Remastered version: without performance issues, you can finally lose yourself in it.

On some level, Karateka is the type of game I’ll never fully be able to appreciate in the same way my older readers do. The closest I can come is to remind myself that, once upon a time, I didn’t know what made a game good or bad. The first ever game I got after I got my first console for Christmas in 1996, the original PlayStation, was Bubsy 3D. Do you know what? 7 year old me didn’t comprehend I was playing a bad game. Handing Karateka to 34 year old me is like handing Banjo-Kazooie to my nieces and nephew today. If they enjoy it, it almost certainly won’t be on the same level I did when I was their age. Not with those pointy polygons, foggy backgrounds, and occasional.. okay, fine, FREQUENT.. slowdown. Hell, even I’m like “wait, was it really this bad when I was their age a quarter-century ago?” Yes, Cathy, it was.

That’s why something Mike said in the audio commentary stuck out to me. He said something to the effect of “games that defined your childhood are rarely as good as you remember them” and that, For Karateka: Remastered, he wanted to make a version of Karateka that lived up to his own memories. And you know what? I could feel that even before I played the game with the commentary turned on. He wanted to make a version of the game that was enjoyable for those who grew up with Karateka, for crotchety millennials such as myself, and for the wide-eyed children of Gen Xers like my niece, Sasha. She’s only 8 years old, and yet, she was positively dazzled by Karateka: Remastered. Sasha practices Taekwondo and knows her Asian martial arts, so I wanted to get her opinion. When she, a child who has never seen a hand-drawn Disney film release in her lifetime and who calls any 2D video game “retro”, saw that the stances and technique of the punches and kicks looked like what she’s taught in her dojo? Wow. She was so overjoyed that it was worth the $19.99 price for the look on her face alone. And for just a brief second, Karateka: Remastered gave me a glimpse into what seeing the original game for the first time four decades ago must have felt like. So, maybe not every version of Karateka holds up to the test of time, but the heart of the game clearly must.
Verdict: YES! – $10 in value added to The Making of Karateka
$10 in bonus value awarded for the style and content of the audio commentary track.
And I’m issuing a $2.50 fine for the lack of input options and a $2.50 fine for using what I feel is the wrong button to replay the track.
$15 in total value for Karateka: Remastered
FINAL VALUE: $71
$19.99 flipped the bird to the bird in the making of this review.

BONUS REVIEWS

Hey, Digital Eclipse worked hard on Making of Karateka, so it’s only fair that I do the same with my review. So, I present to you my reviews for the NES and Game Boy versions of Karateka that never came out in the United States. Remember, these are NOT included in The Making of Karateka. This is just for funsies.

Karateka
Platform: Famicom
Released December 5, 1985
Published by Soft Pro International
NEVER RELEASED IN AMERICA

You’d think a publisher in the United States would have been all-over Karateka for a US release. One of the best selling PC action games of the era and they passed on it? Even Acclaim? If you think there must be something horrifically wrong with Famicom Karateka that NOBODY would roll the dice on it, you’d be right. On the plus side, no lag. On the negative side, the game is broken. Specifically, the gate just plain doesn’t work in this version. Even the guide I found at GameFAQs describes the process of trying to trigger it to drop so that you can eventually run through it as “nearly impossible.” And, yea, actually that was my experience. I spent AN HOUR wiggling back and forth next to the damn thing, throwing every type of attack in my arsenal at the air in front of me. It never triggered unless it was killing me. Even with the virtue of having rewind and save states, this just didn’t want to activate. And mind you, if you take too long or step too far away from the gate.. which isn’t very far at all.. it spawns a new enemy. I thought “maybe you have to defeat X amount of enemies before it works.” That doesn’t seem to be the case, either. Spare a thought for the poor bastards that tried this WITHOUT rewind or save states. It’s not like this is the only problem. Punches are basically worthless, and even when it seemed like I should have been landing them, instead, they went right through enemies. In general, the look and feel of the game is like a stripped-down form of the game everyone remembers. It’s easy to get why no NES publisher ever picked this up, and why Digital Eclipse didn’t bother.
Verdict: NO!

Master Karateka
Platform: Game Boy
Released December 28, 1989
Developed by Tose Co., Ltd.
NEVER RE-RELEASED

What’s with this “MASTER” Karateka malarkey? It seems almost presumptuous, doesn’t it? Logically, shouldn’t this be one of the weakest versions of Karateka? Well, yes and no. In terms of audio-visuals, honestly this does a much better job replicating the look and animation of the holy trinity of Karateka than the Famicom/NES version did. The walk animation has the PC-like fluidity that the NES version didn’t even attempt. That’s not nothing. And this brings the best aspect of the NES game: no lag. To be honest, I didn’t expect that from the Game Boy of all platforms. In fact, this might be the fastest version of Karateka I’ve played, including the Remastered game. It might be. That really depends on you, and how YOU play it. See, the big twist with this version of Karateka is you choose your own load-out right from the start.

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Despite what the screenshot says, I put the lion’s share of my points into power, and it reduced the fights of the game into trivial encounters where three to four strikes were enough to take enemies down. Otherwise, this is the same basic Karateka game I’ve already reviewed seven times. There’s three levels, a bunch of guys with different helmets, cut scenes, a bird, a gate, and a last boss. A few of the enemies.. as in I remember it happening three times.. throw ninja stars you have to block, but otherwise, it’s the same old Karateka. OH, and one final key difference: you can block in this game. I never needed to, as it only seems to be there because the enemies use it. The ones who seemed like they blocked everything had an easy to figure out exploit: just step back. When they step forward, perform a middle kick. This helped me to make minced meat of the normal fighters. Like the NES game, punches are basically worthless, but kicks do the trick just fine. It wasn’t until I reached the gate that I actually struggled at all.

The gate, like the NES version, is so bad that I can’t believe anyone ever beat this game without the virtue of rewind. It makes me appreciate how clockable the gate in the three holy trinity versions is. I only needed to mess up once on those before I was able to get past it, and while it would have been VERY frustrating if I had to start over when I died, I don’t think it’s a challenge that I would have so little patience that I could never overcome it. That wouldn’t have been the case on the Game Boy, where I would have needed around 100 attempts to get it right, and when I finally won, it almost seemed like I clipped through the damn thing.

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You might have noticed there’s a space for “items.” What’s that about? Beats me. I just finished the game twice and the only “item” I found was a jar laying on the ground at the start of the third level that did nothing. Like all other versions of Karateka, your health slowly refills if you do nothing, and I had a full health meter on account of having just started the level anyway. I didn’t bank it, either. I’m not even sure what it did. On my second playthrough, I punched and kicked the air between enemies and nothing ever showed up. I consulted the FAQ at GameFAQs and it doesn’t even contain the words “item” or “jar” anywhere. Maybe this is a relic of an earlier concept that got deleted. I have no clue. Anyway, the final boss blocks every single attack you throw. To beat him, you have to walk back into the previous room, which is actually something that sort of happens in other Karateka games, only the “blocking” is replaced by sucker punching you as soon as you walk into the room. The final battle usually happens in the room where you fight the bird. Only, in those games, he follows you into the previous room immediately. On the Game Boy, you might have to wait quite a while. Like, over a minute, maybe two. Ridiculous. Even worse: the moment he enters the room, you might as well drop the confetti because the game is over. He won’t attack and he likely won’t successfully block your shots. In short, every addition to the formula Master Karateka makes is undone by some haphazard design. Interesting concept, and the execution was SO close to earning the faintest YES!, but that last bit with the final boss sealed it. What were they thinking with that wait time?
Verdict: NO!