Karateka (computer game)

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Karateka
Developer(s) Jordan Mechner
Publisher(s) Brøderbund
Designer(s) Jordan Mechner
Engine Custom
Release date(s) 1984
Genre(s) Action game
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) N/A
Platform(s) Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 800XL, Atari 7800, Commodore 64, DOS, Famicom, ZX Spectrum
Media 1 5¼" disk or other, dependent on platform
Input Keyboard and/or joystick

Karateka is a 1984 computer game by Jordan Mechner, the creator of Prince of Persia. Karateka was Mechner's first hit game, and was designed while he was attending Yale University. The game was renowned at the time for its realistic animations, given the limitations of graphics at that time. In the United States, Karateka was published by Brøderbund. Various versions were licensed to Ariolasoft for publication in Europe.

Contents

[edit] Pronunciation

The title is derived from a Japanese word meaning 'practitioner of karate', and is pronounced kƏrätěkä. The title is often mispronounced as kārätēkä, and was even said incorrectly in a television commercial for the Atari 7800. In proper Japanese, however, it would be pronounced (kä rä tā kä).

[edit] Description

The game begins with an impressive graphic of the fortress of the evil Akuma. Akuma is holding the lovely Princess Mariko. The player must defeat the guards of the castle and must eventually face Akuma himself in order to rescue the princess.

Mechner adeptly used character gestures and musical cues to evoke the game's immersive atmosphere. The animations nearly match the quality of the ones seen in Mechner's Prince of Persia five years later.

Combat consists of side views of the two combatants, very much like as with a platform game. The hero and the foe fight it out, trading various punches and kicks. Both the hero and enemy can throw three punches and kicks, each at a different height. In the original Apple II version, the height of the blows are controlled with either the joystick, where the type of blow, punch or kick, is specified with one of the two joystick buttons; or the keyboard, where each height of punch of kick had its own key.

The player only has one life, but in lieu of lives, the player has health points. Receiving blows from the enemy lowers these points, but they can be recovered by resting (not attacking or being struck). The enemy's health points are also visible to the player. When all health points are exhausted, the hero or foe is defeated (it is never made clear whether the vanquished adversary is killed or merely knocked unconscious).

Typical of games from this era, and because the game was so short, Karateka did not have a "save game" feature.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

At one point, the hero must fight Akuma's trained eagle before facing Akuma himself.

One notorious point of the game is a section where there is a spiked gate. If you simply run or walk through it, it will fall down and impale you. The solution is to walk exactly in front of the gate, then kick, so that it falls down a few pixels in front of you. Then you have to RUN (not walk) into the rising gate, ignoring the damage, until you can finally pass. You can also pass it via walking forward then quickly backward.

At the successful conclusion of the game, the hero is reunited with Mariko as he frees her from her prison cell. He must then drop his fighting stance and run into her arms. The game concludes with a musical tribute and description of the player's success.

Amusingly, if the hero approaches Mariko in fighting stance, she kicks him in the head, killing him in one blow. There were apparently a significant number of players who never figured out how to avoid this fate.

[edit] Versions

The game was originally developed for the Apple II. It was later ported to several other systems, including Amstrad CPC, Atari 800, Commodore 64, DOS and ZX Spectrum in 1986. The Atari 7800 port was released in 1987, but had sluggish controls and choppy animation - and is widely regarded as one of the worst games for that console[citation needed]. The game was released in Japan for the Famicom in 1984, ported by Soft Pro. An original Game Boy port was done under the name Master Karateka with release limited to Asia.

The Apple II version came on one apparently single-sided disk. As an easter egg, a second version of the game was placed on the flip side of the disk. If one put the disk into the drive upside-down, the game played identically to the first side, except that the game was displayed vertically flipped. According to Mechner, this was done as a joke, causing naive users to call tech support and ask why the game was upside-down. Invariably, they would receive the reply, "take the disk out, insert it right-side up, and reboot".

[edit] External links

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