Karateka Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]
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- Опубликовано: 7 авг 2015
- Developed and published by Brøderbund in 1985.
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Before he became famous with Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner was responsible for developing this (possibly) lesser-known, but still-ambitious fighting game.
The game begins with an animated cut-scene detailing the game's plot and central characters. Considering that most developers completely eschewed endings in their games, to have an introduction was practically unheard of, especially for 1985!
Our unnamed Karateka (practitioner of Karate) has embarked on a mission to rescue princess Mariko from the clutches of the evil lord Akuma. Standing between him and victory are Akuma's loyal martial artists, all of whom are prepared to die in the name of their lord.
The main game is a side-scrolling adventure with a strong emphasis on fighting. I hesitate to use the term "beat 'em up" because it aspires to be more than just a simple button-masher, even if it only partially succeeds.
The game features three separate levels where the player must travel to the right of the screen, defeating any fighters that oppose him. Once a fighter has been encountered, coloured chevrons appear at the bottom of the screen, each of which represents a unit of the fighter's remaining health; the player's health is represented by the red markers and the enemy's by the blue.
Although the fighting mechanics are quite basic when compared to later fighting games (e.g. Street Fighter II), the player can't hope to win without strategy and careful timing of their attacks.
Each fight requires the player to land successive strikes on his opponent to reduce their health, with each blow reducing health by one point. Holding down the fire button and pushing in certain direction will initiate an attack in that direction, the type of which is determined by how long the fire button is held down. A quick tap of the button will throw a punch and a longer press executes a kick.
All blows do the same amount of damage, so the principle strategy is to observe the enemy's movements and to execute moves with sufficient range as to strike the opponent whilst vulnerable. It's possible to punch whilst moving forwards and backwards, so a good strategy is to initiate a short jab while moving towards the opponent and following up with a series of punches once in range.
Each fighter's health regenerates provided they don't get hit, so you must keep pressure on the opponent whilst remembering to back off if you get low on health yourself.
Unfortunately, there is one major problem with the game that becomes apparent the moment the game begins and that is that it's painfully, PAINFULLY slow to the point of being unplayable! The C64 wasn't alone in this regard as the Atari 7800 is equally sluggish, although the NES port runs at a much more playable speed.
For a game that places so much emphasis on timing, the game's speed means that you'll end up over-compensating when holding down the fire button or when trying move, often attacking at the wrong time.
Although you can compensate to a degree, Karateka threatens to become both a chore and a bore at times. Although the game possesses undeniable charm and boasts some great animation for the time, Karateka ends up as an inferior fighting game when compared to other titles, such International Karate.
Those curious to see what Jordan Mechner did BEFORE Prince of Persia might find some value here. Those looking for a great fighting, however, will be disappointed.
#retrogaming 
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Finally…I played this game for 5 minutes at a friend’s house that had a Commodore 64 at the time. I’ve never seen the final resolution of the game! So satisfying…
Damn, I’m glad I bought myself THE WAY OF THE EXPLODING FIST.
I always felt this was a slow and ultimately not very fun game, but THE MOVEMENTS LOOKED SO FLUID AND PRETTY and that's why you'd end up loading it. Also at the time the cutscenes were really impressive and hinted at a sense of story and drama, however ephemeral, that many other games were simply lacking at the time.
Of course, with PoP the guy hit his stride - the added puzzle/exploration elements and traps rounded out the basics he worked out in this game.
Strange. I remembered this game was much faster paced.
I bet it'd be a lot more playable on an Ultimate 64 with the clock speed ramped up. Check out the video at 2X speed.
I had it on Atari and it was so slow as in this video. This was probably the main reason why I didn't like this game.
It’s the video system of the CRT era. On an NTSC C64 it runs at 60 Herz instead of the PAL 50 Herz. On an emulator you can increase the CPU speed up to 120% and it runs smoothly.
I remember just running straight up to enemies at full speed and dropping them in one punch full force without stopping. It was risky but could work. Or they could drop _you_ as you ran straight into their fist.
I remember it being such a good looking and amazing game 🤩
21:35 so when Akuma lays down he's like 8 feet tall
I remember this on the NES, it was surprisingly good and different with its pace. Made it quite far into the house at some point when I figured out the moves. I seem to recall it not having continues...
Good gameplay and very good review m8. Congrats.
Got to know this game at my friend's house when he had the C64. I end up getting me one. Those were the days. By the way: Don't assume the fighting stance on your girl. She will defeat you with 2 hits if I remember correctly.
Thanks for sharing!!
At double speed it almost looks like fun.
One of the few C64 games that I completed. Not-so-fun fact: I didn't know how to run, so I side-stepped the entire long path, which took ages. And when I finally killed the warlord and approached the princess, I was too slow apparently: She kicked me in the shins and one-shot me.
Yeah. You can't approach her side-stepping. Which is what the game trains you to do for all the opponents. She interprets that as a battle stance and defends herself. This was always a fun game to watch people play for the time because, even if they were good at it and got all the way to the end after a few hours, they usually didn't know to run at her instead of side-step and gott killed after all that trouble. We wanted to warn them about the girl kicking and even how to handle the birds(as they could kill you dead with one shot too if you didn't high-kick them properly). But it would have taken a lot of the sport out of it. I distinctly remember a lot of p|ssed off yelling and harsh language happening after that.
@@mattwuxx3888 It makes a lot of sense that she attacked because the side stepping counts as a battle stance, thanks! I was very annoyed with the game cause I didn't understand it, now I feel better about that "horrible injustice" that I had suffered as a child. My shrink will be delighted!
Eventually I found out how to run in that game. Of course the reason why I hadn't know about it in the first place was cause I was playing an illegal copy without any instructions about the controls - so getting kicked in the shin for it was a bit of karmic justice :D
I realize, that we were playing with lot's of imagination
they ended up getting divorced. He couldn't stay out of the bottle
hahaha
Reminds me a little of fist 2 and barbarian 2. Nice addition to the channel though as I never got around to playing it at the time.
+rego023 Actually you can call this prequel to Prince of Persia: same creator. :)
13:40 I was watching this being played in college years ago, and one of the guys watching, after she stood up, said, "Damn, she's hot!"
classic, played on the old apple mac back in the days with those fancy analog stick controllers - btw, you can actually fall down the cliff at the start, just keep going back, left! ;)p
Use thd crane technique Danielsan!!😅😂
I miss playing these 64 games. I have them but they do not load anymore for some reason.
@@Reuel-bq6mt I don't know how that works or how to get the right one.
Wow, it must run at 5 FPS/s I know it was 1985, but still..thank god for PoP
metalcoola Because I believe coder doesn't use tilemapping or sprites. Just uses bitmap mode. So CPU has to blit every pixel to framebuffer. C64 ain't good for this because of slow CPU and no blitter to speed things up.
what is POP ?
@@farerse Prince of Persia
@@metalcoola omg .. I thought you meant some programming term. Yeah PoP beats this game.
Jordan Mechner designing and programming both games
i spent hours on this. slow play but i enjoyed it
Same here - people complain about it being slow, but at the time, it was way ahead of its time. Fantastic!
Never could figure out what that guy is wearing on his head at 10:01, surely not a kabuto .
There were play by mail games that were more responsive than this.
Now that is a fucking Commodore 64 ending, take notes people!
I may be a little late with this information...
Hey kid watch your mouth don't cuss
@@googlesucks5087 Get an education, child.
I played this game until the bird killed me at the end. Never returning to the game. Frown :(
The concept were innovative at his time but it was very hard to play with very slow framerate.
Other versions of the game run at a better speed - the C64 version ended up being really slow for some reason.
🥱😴
laaaaaaaaag
When this came out for the C64, it was dismissed due to the animation being way too slow. There were much faster, smoother Karate games on the C64 at the time.
I remember first playing Karateka, upon its release in late 1985. My friend and neighbor got Karateka,Hardball, and little computer people research project, for Christmas 🎄 of that year.
Compared to the c64 game, "Bruce Lee",which was made in 1984, this was indeed Quite Slow. Still, it had a Special sort of intriguing appeal for it's time, at least imo. Probably the music Helped it Alot ! The kicking Manuevers, although slowish and basic, seemed sufficient enough, for it's specific time.
Later, I would play c64 games like Exploding Fist and International Karate,and they obviously blew the doors off of Karateka. Even lesser games than those two, such as Kung Fu Master and Yie Ar Kung Fu, were still superior in graphics and game-play to Karateka.