(Played and Finished through "The Making of Karateka" from 2023)
The original Apple II version of Karateka is quite a hard one to quantify and qualify; on one hand here lies one of the most groundbreaking games of all time, responsible for influencing games like Ninja Gaiden on early cutscenes and for being a notable very early example of rotoscoping for realism in movement, something taken to extremes in 1991's Mortal Kombat. The level of detail for the time and sheer effort is unmistakable and Karateka really did game so much to the game industry in its time.
However, upon actually playing it there's a lot to be desired, especially in a modern setting. Chief of this is the degree to which movement is delayed, something which is vital to success. You are able to move away from an adversary and even cancel out of a current string of attacks to evade, but once the Karateka takes a step back or forward he commits completely - a movement which can take an entire second.
In Level 3, where your health bar is substantially lower than all of your adversaries, this can actually become very frustrating and contribute to a feeling of lack of complete control, leaving you often vulnerable to the opponent's next attack because the AI is made to respond to your last input rather than account for human error. Other than this though, the level of pure strategy involved really does a good job of accurately mirroring the strategy of karate itself for its time.
The original Apple II version of Karateka is quite a hard one to quantify and qualify; on one hand here lies one of the most groundbreaking games of all time, responsible for influencing games like Ninja Gaiden on early cutscenes and for being a notable very early example of rotoscoping for realism in movement, something taken to extremes in 1991's Mortal Kombat. The level of detail for the time and sheer effort is unmistakable and Karateka really did game so much to the game industry in its time.
However, upon actually playing it there's a lot to be desired, especially in a modern setting. Chief of this is the degree to which movement is delayed, something which is vital to success. You are able to move away from an adversary and even cancel out of a current string of attacks to evade, but once the Karateka takes a step back or forward he commits completely - a movement which can take an entire second.
In Level 3, where your health bar is substantially lower than all of your adversaries, this can actually become very frustrating and contribute to a feeling of lack of complete control, leaving you often vulnerable to the opponent's next attack because the AI is made to respond to your last input rather than account for human error. Other than this though, the level of pure strategy involved really does a good job of accurately mirroring the strategy of karate itself for its time.