Karate Champ (Arcade) - Let's Play 1001 Games - Episode 431
11KARATE!!
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I'm Gaming Jay: Youtube gamer, let's player, fan of retro games, and determined optimist... Join me in this series while I try out EACH of the video games in the book 1001 VIDEO GAMES YOU MUST PLAY BEFORE YOU DIE, before I die. The game review for each game will focus on the question of whether you MUST play this game before you die. But to be honest, the game review parts are just for fun, and are not meant to be definitive, in depth reviews; this series is more about the YouTube gamer journey itself. From Mario games to the Halo series, from arcade games to Commodore 64, PC games to the NES and Sega Genesis, Playstation to the Xbox, let's play those classic retro games that we grew up with, have fond memories of, or heard of but never got a chance to try! And with that said, the game review for today is...
Karate Champ
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate_Champ
Karate Champ, known in Japan as Karate Dō (空手道 "The Way of the Empty Hand"), is a 1984 arcade fighting game developed by Technōs Japan for Data East. Karate Champ established and popularized the one-on-one fighting genre. A variety of moves can be performed using the dual-joystick controls using a best-of-three matches format like later fighting games.
A separate arcade game that allows two players the option to compete against each other was released in 1984 under the title Karate Champ — Player vs Player (対戦空手道 美少女青春編 Taisen Karate Dō: Bishōjo Seishun Hen, "The Competitive Way of the Empty Hand: Pretty Maiden Edition"), a distinct video game featuring a multiplayer mode and more varied gameplay. It was released for the arcades shortly after the original during the same year, also published by Data East. This version would serve as the basis for the home ports of Karate Champ.
Unlike most later fighting games, there are no health bar or hit points. A hit successfully landed ends the round and earns 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 score two points is the winner. If the player loses a battle, the game ends. The game features digitized speech for the judge to call out such phrases as "Fight!" or "Winner!". The speech is in Japanese in the original version.
Karate Champ was ported to the Apple II and the Commodore 64 by Berkeley Softworks. Data East began publishing the home versions in the USA on October 12, 1985.[1] The NES version was released in North America on December 1986.[2] Like the home computer versions, the NES port was inspired by the Player vs. Player edition of the arcade game. The port was later released in Japan for the Disk System on July 22, 1988, but never made it to the cartridge-based Family Computer. Data East published this port of the game, both in North America and Japan.
An emulation of the arcade version was released by Hamster for the PlayStation 2 as part of its Oretachi Geasen Zoku Sono lineup. Only the original game was included (the Player vs. Player version being ignored from the compilation). The emulated version from Hamster was re-released in 2015 for the PlayStation 4 on the Arcade Archives compilation which, unlike Oretachi Geasen Zoku Sono, was officially distributed outside of Japan.
The arcade version and the NES port were released in 2018 by Dreamgear LLC under its "My Arcade" brand. The arcade version of Karate Champ is part of a compilation released in the shape of a mini arcade cabinet featuring 34 Data East games.[6] The NES version was released both as a standalone mini arcade cabinet and in a handheld device that includes 300 built-in games. [7][8] In the case of the NES version, the referee's digital voice was removed and the music themes were replaced. The arcade version is unedited. Since My Arcade's releases are single-player only, the 2 player mode was removed from the NES version, and the Karate Champ — Player vs Player edition was not included in the compilation of 34 arcade games.