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System:
NES
Genre:
Action
Publisher:
LJN
Developer:
-
Players:
1-2
Release date/year:
1987
Other systems:
-
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- Karate Kid
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1987 - LJN - NES
- Ah, LJN. Fine video game makers, perhaps the finest! Most--if not all--of their games were based on popular films of the day. Video games based on movies? That's a genious idea! Thank goodness for LJN. Without them, we wouldn't have seen such great games as Friday the 13th, those other great LJN games, and Karate Kid! Thank you, LJN. You are gods among men! Oh wait, nevermind, I must be thinking of a good game company. That's right, LJN sucks!
The game starts out at STAGE 1 (WOAH!! And that's just one of the game's many surprises!!), which is a karate tournament or something. Four rounds. I don't even move. Just wait for the other guy to approach, kick, repeat. Then STAGE 2: DANIEL SAN IN OKINAWA, the first of three sidescrolling levels. There's a boss at the end, too . . . He's just one of the standard bad guys (which there is an infinite number of, by the way) with a brown shirt instead of red. He has more health, but he's just as easy to beat. STAGE 3: THE TYPHOON STRIKES (or something). Same as STAGE 2, only now it's raining. That makes it darker (Oooooh) and it also makes it windy so these tiny sticks and birds or something come flying at you every three seconds knocking you back. They don't cause any damage to you (directly), unless they push you back into the water or something. Whore stick-birds. I was never able to pass a certain point in this level for many many years, and my sister would lie to me about how the next level was a pirate ship, because that made me want to get to the next level. But the next level isn't a pirate ship, it's a fucking desert or something. STAGE 4: FINAL BATTLE WITH BAD GUY, or basically the same message. Enemies with spears that have a longer range than your kick could ever have, lots of little cliffy things to mess you up, and some rolling boulders that come at PERFECT times to piss you off. And piss you off, this level will. And then you get to the final boss. I've never beaten the final boss (Hell, I've only reached him twice, and the first time I had no health and he knocked me into the water), and after today I doubt I'll ever try again. ON WITH IT!
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Graphics
I guess they're decent for 1987, but that's not saying much.
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Sound
I'm not quite sure if this game has music. Oh yeah, I guess it does. Not noticable. Sound effects are annoying, as usual.
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Controls
One button kicks, one punches. D-pad up mmakes you jump. Standing still and punching/kicking will do the special punch/kick, if you have any special punch/kick item stuff happy hallo! Responsive enough, I guess, except for the jumping.
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Gameplay
You're standing at a very bad place. You want/need to jump/move forward, but you can't because if you do an enemy will hit you and knock you back to the place you just came from. You think "I'll just clear these few enemies and then go," but no! No! No! Because enemies comes at a certain rate that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for you to go through with your plan of moving forward.
Or, more commonly, you try to jump up to get to a higher elevation, and an enemy hits you in the air, sending you back into the hands of another enemy coming from behind. He hits you, you go forward, into the one that just knocked you back. He hits you, you go back into the second guy who hits you back into the first and so on all within a matter of seconds. Sometimes you are lucky enough to somehow escape their game, other times you die. Die. DIE!
Sure, when you get hit in most games you get knocked back, but in this game it seems ten times more annoying.
The final battle (The actual battle, not the name of stage 4.) is QUITE A FUN ONE, IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF.
The boss comes out, I hit him while he's still jumping, he loses some HP and falls into the water. He jumps at me again from off-screen, full health. I do this a few times and then realize it. I back up so I can fight him and all. But when I do this, the person sitting on the floor starts backing up. S/he backs up too much and falls of the edge into the water, and I die. I DIE, because some dumb bitch fell into water. Did that happen in the movie? I haven't seen the movie since I was like 5, but I'm guessing that it didn't. It didn't!
Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention the bonus stages. There are three bonus stages scattered randomly throughout the levels. One is a chopsticks fly trap thing, where you . . . catch flies . . . with chop sticks . . . It's easy. The next is an ice break one, where you YOU GUESSED IT, BREAK ICE! Also quite easy, assuming you have full health. The third and most frequent one is the swinging hammer, where you stand on a tiny platform above water and have to dodge this swinging thing (I believe it's a "hammer"). I could never do it before, but I did it a few times today. The bonus games add nothing to the game, though. It still sucks. Stupid game.
Oh yeah (again), there's also a 2-player one-on-one mode. Needless to say, it's boring and stupid and useless and shut up.
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Overall
Come on, it's LJN. Did they make any halfway-decent games? NO! Well, probably, but I can't remember.
It's a game based on a movie. You know how those go, don't you?
It would be nice to see Miyagi take a gun and shoot DANIEL-SAN in the face. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen in the game. Doesn't happen at all, and therefore, the game sucks.
I don't know how to end this, so I'll just
//Marshall
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