Karateka

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Written on an Apple II by Jordan Mechner in his Yale University dorm room, Karateka became a bestseller and affected a generation of gamers with its groundbreaking animation and cinematic cut-scenes.
Evil Akuma kidnaps and holds the lovely Princess Mariko. You must defeat the guards of the castle as well as Akuma's eagle and eventually face Akuma himself in order to rescue the princess. The game's perspective of the two combatants is based on the typical 2D arcade fighting style. Your fighter can perform 3 different kicks and 3 different punches, depending on where the hits land: high, medium and low. Thus, the control layout becomes quite intuitive after just a few minutes of play time. A classic energy indicator is used at the bottom of the screen to display the amount of damage you and the enemy can endure. Each time you or your enemy retreats both of you regain health. The controls are slow and that's really the only hiccup of this fun fighting game.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
We first tried this game on the Atari XE and a few months later on the Amstrad CPC. The game has amazingly colorful graphics for its time and a flawless character animation. Remember, this is a 1984 fighting game. The graphics look more detailed on the Atari XE/XL (and the CPC) compared to its counterparts (a few more details found at the top of the mountains, the sprites have more shadows). The sound on the Atari XL/XE computers is not bad at all and features some low frequency sampled sound effects but no music except of the game's opening and between each level scene.