Karateka

Karateka is a martial arts fighting game and the first title created by the famous designer Jordan Mechner, author of Prince of Persia.

Karateka was developed by Mechner for the Apple II and published in 1984 by Brøderbund. It was later ported to several platforms, including the Commodore 64 version that we are presenting, released in 1985. Unlike other martial arts games, Karateka is not based on tournaments, it's more a story-driven game, where fighting is just the way you advance with the plot. Mechner was passionate about both karate and animation techniques and you can see this from the fluid animations. He applied the rotoscoping technique that will be used later on Prince of Persia.

The Commodore 64 version is considered by Mechner himself the best port, thanks to the graphics and the reorchestrated music. It was Broderbund's best-selling Commodore game as of late 1987. A new version of Karateka was released for iOS, Xbox, Playstation, and Windows in 2012.