11/10/20 Karateka (1984)

Karateka (1984) by Jordan Mechner of Liquid Entertainment, published by Broderbund for DOS, Apple II, Commodore 64, NES, ZX Spectrum, and many more. You might call this an early example of a beat ’em up, or as Jordan Mechner describes it, “a story-based game where the gameplay mechanic is fighting.” Karateka follows an unnamed protagonist fighting up the gauntlet of the warlord Akuma’s fortress to rescue the princess Mariko. The animations are very smooth, done using the rotoscoping technique Mechner would later use for his most well-known work, Prince of Persia. This project was borne out of a combined interest in Akira Kurosawa, his film studies, and the karate class he was taking at the time. In fact, Mechner’s karate instructor was used as the basis for the rotoscoped animations of the in game characters. Gameplay is simple and repetitive, you can get through most fights by repeating the low kick high kick combo, and there isn’t anything to differentiate your opponents aside from visuals, but you can see some of what Mechner meant when he called it a story-based game. Between fights, the camera will sometimes jump to the other end of the screen to show your next opponent running out to meet you, there are cutaways to other rooms of the palace to show Akuma sending his fighters out, or Mariko in her cell. Sound is sparse, as it was initially developed for the Apple II, which struggled to display so many frames of animation along with music, but the limited graphics still have a kind of pleasing, minimalist quality. Worth checking out as an interesting example of both rotoscoping in games as well as Mechner’s early work.