Karate Champ

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Karate Champ

Developer(s)	Technos Japan Corporation
Publisher(s)	Data East
Release date(s)	1984
Genre(s)	Fighting
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players simultaneously
Platform(s)	Arcade
Input	2 joysticks per player
Arcade cabinet	Upright
Arcade display	Vertical orientation, Raster, standard resolution (Used: 224 x 256)

Karate Champ (original title: 空手道 Karate Dô, "The Way of Karate") is a 1984 arcade game developed by Technos Japan Corporation for Data East. It is one of the first fighting games and was the first to use today's common side-perspective.

1 Overview
2 Media
3 Ports and release information
4 External links

[edit] Overview

In this game, the player assumes the role of a Karate competitor and fights against another player or the computer. Using two joysticks, players can execute a number of moves.

Gameplay consists of a two dimensional fight between Karate characters wearing white and red gi, followed by various bonus rounds for the successful player. This pattern repeats itself in the next, more challenging round set against a new background. Unlike most later fighter-type games, there are no health bar or hit points. A hit successfully landed ends the round and earnes the player or his opponent either one point or half point (along with a numeric score for the top ten but this has no effect on winning a match per se). The first to two points is the winner.

Karate Champ led to the creation of a direct sequel called Karate Champ - Player vs Player which was also released in 1984. Both versions are very similar in the sense that they use the same hardware, have the same sprites and title screen, and the gameplay is essentially the same although the computer AI is greatly improved along with control and hit detection. Whereas the original game started with the first level taking place at a dojo and all the following levels taking place at a tournament stadium, Player vs Player has the characters fighting it out over girls at locations around the world. The original Japanese title of Karate Champ - Player vs Player is Taisen Karate Dou which can be translated in English as "Way of Karate Competition - Beautiful Young Girl Chapter". Unlike its predecessor, Taisen Karate Dou (Karate Champ - Player vs Player) was developed in-house by Data East with no involvement from Technos.

The game also featured some early speech synthesis, in which the judge would call out such phrases as "Fight!" or "Winner!" It's also spoken in japanese in the japanese version.

[edit] Media

The game was featured in the Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport. Frank Dux plays it with his fellow competitor Ray Jackson (played by Donald Gibb) as soon as he checks into the Hong Kong hotel.

[edit] Ports and release information

Karate Champ was ported to the Apple II, Commodore 64 and the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The Apple II and Commodore 64 ports were both developed by Berkeley Softworks.

The NES version was developed by Data East USA in 1986, making it one of the rare games that was developed by the U.S division of Data East. The port was later released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System on July 22, 1988, but never made it to the cartridge-based Famicom.