Sensei

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Two karate fighters are sweating and bleeding on the dojo to proceed in gaining belts and higher ranks. Sensei is a classic martial arts fighting game in which you compete in a series of one-on-one karate matches. The characters can perform up to 10 different movements including jumping kick, roundhouse kick and a variety of high and low punches and kicks. To control each player you can either use a joystick or the keyboard. Typically, in each fight you must bring the opponent's health bar to zero before your own health runs out whilst there is a timer that if it goes to zero the fighter with the higher health bar will be the winner. The opponent's difficulty level gets higher as you progress to the next stages. Also, between fights you engage in a bonus game in which you break a surface made of several bricks. Press the fire button as fast as possible to break as many as possible bricks and gain extra points. Sensei is surely fun, much like the International Karate game series by System 3. The game's controls are pretty smooth and responsive and the difficulty level's increase is quite fair.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Sensei's graphics look great and colorful with some oriental style backdrops. Note that each screen has 60 to 100 colors and the characters' animation is smooth. But what is really impressive here is the sound that has a great example of stereo music particularly on the intro scene where it plays drums alternating speakers! There are also several sampled sound effects along with some high quality speech during gameplay!