The Way of the Exploding Fist (Melbourne House 1985)

[guinness13]

I loved this and IK games. I used to kick my buddies ass, because I mastered one of the first unbeatable combos - Leap over the head and do the spin-punch to the kidneys. Like early Ryu/Ken Hadoken, I spammed that bastard over and over. They never played me, even though we all enjoyed it. Exploding Fist rocked. International Karate rocked. Kung Fu Master rocked. Anyone remember "Ninja"? That game owned my life as a 12 year old.

[simplyeightiesdotcom]

Although not the first martial arts game (Karate Champ and Kung Fu Master were released in 1984) with its excellent character animation and a wide variety of moves, this game set the standard and influenced beat-em-up's that followed such as International Karate.

[MrDarkHatman]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[1787dude]

HYAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

[MacRief]

WTF?! This is a total rip off of International Karate!!

[baconismagic]

@MacRief

International Karate: 1986

Way of the Exploding Fist: 1985

Deal with it.

[MacRief]

@baconismagic Way of The Exploding Fist ain't got SHIT on IK!

Deal with it.

By the way IK was released in 1985 also.

Deal with that too.

[baconismagic]

@MacRief Way of the Exploding Fist was released in June 1985, and International Karate was released in November 1985.

So you're still wrong.

The 1985 version of International Karate was developed by a different team for the ZX Spectrum, and probably isn't the International Karate you're thinking of.

So you're double wrong.

In any case, they're both clones of Karate Champ, which was far better than both of them.

Also you're still wrong.

[MacRief]

@baconismagic Karate Champ was ugly as hell, had crappy animations and wierd physics. International Karate had the most excellent and smooth animations, brilliant physics and with out a doubt the best music ever written to any 8-bit console. Plus the characters didn't look gay. So actually... You're wrong.

[LambadLambadLambda]

@prammaven

This game was made in 1985....

[cujo9]

i remember this game from back in the day, scary noises coming from my bedroom as if i had a demon in there.

[flyingcumshot]

what was the fighting game where the losers trousers fell down?

[MacRief]

@flyingcumshot International Karate. When you hit space or waited for a while they lost their trousers. This game above is a total rip off of that game. International Karate was the best game for C64 imho.

[Yobotistan]

@prammaven Yes. This was a very early C64 game. Speech synthesis was a miracle. The whole game was a miracle.

[cinqo7]

@prammaven It was actually the "sound" of a tipical Karate shout that fighters do. I remember the first time I played this game with my sister I scared the hell out of she when I knew the shouting will come and I turned at max the tv volume.

[Relinque9]

It seems to be similar to the World Karate CHampionship or International Karate, but with different backgrounds.

Same sprites, same moves...

[LambadLambadLambda]

I played this game a lot when I was a kid. The invinsible move is to crouch down and do the leg sweep. If the cpu player gets too close, do a crouching jab.

[Nostrum84]

I don't even care about the scream, as it just fits into the general quality of digitized audio back then. What gets me more is the fact that this game looks an awful lot like International Karate...

[chaosgreyblood]

Wow, this game seems to play a lot better than Karate Champ!

[AlphaFirefly]

Horrible screams XD

HOAAAAAAAAAAAT HOAAAAAAAAAAT HOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA­AAT!!!

I mean what where the programmers thinking? "Meh, people are never gonna get sick of hearing the same damn scream over and over again."

[FeNsTa]

lol yeh that scream that happens when u load it up made me jump as a kid first time..

[1xWertzui]

Oh, IK is made a year later.

[poopsmell65]

I had this game for the Commodore 64, and yes the sound is not distorted. That's exactly how it sounded.

In fact hearing those sounds brought back a flood of memories.

[1xWertzui]

But... This is sooo much like International Karate from System 3!

Or Archer Maclean worked not only for System 3 and used almost the same sprites?

Anyway IK has much more fluid animation and digitised sfx than this.

Is this a "story" game or just pure endless arcade?

[tomthumbplum]

This game still holds up in the graphic compartment today.

I remember constantly doing that floor sweep and winning every time. Easy.

[tomthumbplum]

Thanks. Speakers are now busted.

[DingKong]

F*ck me the sounds effects are terrible. Great game though.

[Redline748]

IK was more polished and a very good game, but still doesnt take anything away from this classic

[ReverendSyn]

Did that opening sound make anyone else almost shit themselves?

Shouldve been called "The Way of the Exploding Sphincter"

[lone1980]

The first thing you hear is actually the scream of Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon.

[LouisLoiselle]

is this a clone of international karate? looks exactly the same to me :o

[BasKooij]

The C64 wasn't actually capable of digitized sound. What you hear is the noise channel of the C64 SID chip rapidly being turned on and off to create 'digitized sound'. This is a hack if you will to let the C64 to play "1-bit digitzed sound" on it's noise channel. Off course, 1-bit sound is always going to sound distorted. Quite clever they got it to work the way they did.

Pinball Fantasies (or their sound libraries) for the PC used a similar method to create digital sound on the PC speaker.

[zapfly]

@BasKooij

pinball fantasies had a great sound! even better than doom.^^

(those were the days...when noobs had atari/nintendo consoles cause they couldnt start any game on a pc! especially with a soundcard! xD )

[ItsMisterToYou]

Sound was always like this! Don't ask me why, because C64 could do much better!

[Ifonly1977]

wow this brings back so many memories. Is still one of my all time fav games!!!

[nvbrkr]

The sampled sounds were generated by using the noise generator. Apparently it was triggered on / off really fast, so that it was able to playback crude samples of this kind.

[joaovictor1994]

"AAAAAAAAHHHH YOOHOOO *POW* WOOOOOHHHH!!"

[joaovictor1994]

I lol'd at the very beggining

[DroidLife]

Oh man I loved this game to death! The memories.

[dtyp33]

The music pieve 0:08-0:11, longer in the actual game, is a traditional chinese song, "dance of the yao people" .

[herbal1971]

You have to fight Bolo on the last level. :)

[jurkis1]

I remember this game.

[agiar2000]

I laughed out loud at the first scream.

[malgez]

when i first loaded this game I had the sound up really high, and that scream scared the shit out of me!

[MarcSola7]

That scream came from the Bruce Lee movie "Enter The Dragon".

[ReverendSyn]

@MarcSola7 Sounds more like "Vacate the Bowels"

[Racefreak1976]

WOW! This was my veeeery first game ever! I was like 10 or 12 back then.

[TJae1]

great 1.. gotta get this rom... thanxs..

[drummerdickens]

These have to be the single worst AND greatest sound effects ever.

[FPAMulle]

The ingame music is awesome. Listen it with a SID player :)

[ninjakick1983]

do you know where I can get sid music from this game?

[bigmaxy07]

Love that roundhouse kick.

[Akhiloth]

Oh god the sound effects!! Explosions!

[sergeu78]

Which was firs this game or interkarate?

[CichlidAsh]

This was before IK but Ik was the better game

[DippShits]

Karate Champ (空手道, Karate Dō?, "The Way of the Empty Hand"), is a 1984 arcade game developed by Technos Japan Corporation for Data East. It is one of the first fighting games. and has been believed to be the first to use today's common side-perspective. However, Heavyweight Champ, released in Japan by Sega, used the same perspective and predates Karate Champ by eight years.[

[andy7666]

That was a great scream at the start! I prefered IK+ though!

[someguy6481]

I think that scream was sampled from "Enter The Dragon".

[CichlidAsh]

Yes that scream if from Enter the dragon

[PigeonPair]

you could get to 10th Dan easily here, just by sweeping the leg!

[TJae1]

Think this was a rip off version of World karate championship... the good ol'e days... sigh... >> Umma, how were U able to process & upload this 1?

[Commodorian]

I'm pretty sure this come out a couple of years before WKC.

[TJae1]

85'; 86'

 was a console rip off from 84's ... do U know who?

[Commodorian]

A rip is something different but it does copy a lot of ideas from Karate Champ. The bull scene, the old man, some of the moves..etc

[TJae1]

yeah, thus a rip. esp. with WCC.

[Commodorian]

It's just a cheap imitation. I don't see anything that has been ripped directly from Karate Champ

[TJae1]

Plenty was ripped, U even noticd that.

[Commodorian]

You mean the title screen with the sample ripped from a Bruce Lee film ?

[TJae1]

sorta, 80's era karate games; success breeds imiators, mainly. They did do a bruce lee game for atari; sorta like a kung fu master w/ bruce & a sumo wrestler, that could moo. Neat. Can any1 tell Me, how these ppl upload & play these primative games?

[Commodorian]

Some use a real machine from the 80's or an Emulator. You can get programs that will capture video..

[TJae1]

Which C64 emulators, do U know, that definitely, wrk w/windows. Thanxs.

[Commodorian]

WinVice

[TJae1]

How about the C64 roms? any recommended sites?

[Akhiloth]

RARRRR!

[cosine303]

nice game, remember having it on spectrum first.. but the later versions weren't so good :( . IK+ sole it's thunder =)

[STUARTSt321]

Shit, that bit at the start gave me a heart attack.

[Watcher3223]

You should try listening to that sound after waiting a few moments for that splash screen to come up after loading the game from the floppy diskette.

Great way to startle kids is to surprise them with a sudden outburst of a scratch digitized sound bite from "Enter the Dragon."

[karhjoo]

Played it 5 mins ago on C64

SIK OOSOM !!

[FuManBoobs]

Hahaha me too!

[SHOREHAMSTREETSKIN]

Wot a great scream i remember buying this excellent game the day it was released love the bonus stage with the smashing of the bull a CLASSIC.

[posthumanfetus]

Man, I was NOT expecting that scream. I am wearing headphones on loud volume and I was a little bit freaked. Anyway, soothing music and a good atmosphere, except for the horrible sound that plays every time anyone throws a punch or does any move at all; it sounds like he's . The opening scream sounds like someone trying to piss out a cactus.

[redknee]

frigging loved this game , another c64 classic and redline748 iknow what you mean about the scream bit lol i nearly shit my pant the first time i loaded this up lol

[plurp7]

this was a seriously kick ass game for the commodore, brings back some Fond old memories i tell ya. thanks for posting. this really makes me want to eat cheese.

[8poseur8]

loved this background song, used to play these games at my cousins house all the time, watermelon, summer & floppy disks.

[shredbaron]

I loved this game... I think I was about 9 years old when I got it. Great memories.

[Redline748]

the first time you hear that scream you nearly shit yourself, especially when you have the volume right up, oh those were the days lol

[ReverendSyn]

Shouldve been called "The Way of the Exploding Sphincter"

[hennahito34]

getting hit with that roundhouse was worse than getting tagged in the nuts. great game. even better memories. that scream in the beginning that's from "Enter the Dragon" right? when Bruce Lee puts down OHara. nearly crapped myself when I first made the connection.

[charliemac1974]

Classic! man i remember thinkin this was the nuts when it came out:)the roundhouse was so cool.

[cavalierpictures]

i loved this friggin game waaay to much. lol

[Umma6umma]

The opening screen is always like that, it's probably one of the designers screaming into a mic and then digitized.

The fighting grunts are generated tones, made to sound like tortured exhales, I guess.

[eubasaban]

Hey The opening screem is an example of early sampleing. It is taken from the Bruce Lee film "Enter the Dragon" The part where Bruce does a devestating jump side kick on Ohara (The man who killed his sister)in the tournement- thus killing him. Check it out it's pretty exact! This game was the tops by the way! I can always remember on the box something about the current UK Karate Champ Jeoffry Thompson on there ahh the good old days!

[BringerOfTheTruth]

@Umma6umma its not one of the designers screaming into the mic, the sound was programmed like all other sounds on the commodore. You could not "record" anything.. It sounded distorted cuz all speech synthesis on the commdore sounded like that, it was simply the best quality there was. The computer had 64 kb and only 32kb free ram, that less than your average JPG.

[shenanhawkins]

@BringerOfTheTruth sure you could "record" stuff; it's called digitizing. The scream at the beginning/intro is in fact Bruce Lee.

[BringerOfTheTruth]

@shenanhawkins tell me what program you used to record with..I'm from the c64 era and used to program basic and machine code on it and never heard of a program that could record sounds..you do realize the 64 has only 64 kb of memory ? thats 4 times smaller than your average nude picture downloaded from the internet lol.

[6581R4]

@BringerOfTheTruth I do not remember the name but there was a program you could digitize audio from an audio tape in the tape drive. You had to record something at near distortion level and it sounded about this bad.

[Checkingokop]

@Umma6umma lol title screen is Bruce Lee's scream

[NoVPops]

@Umma6umma Actually, it's from Bruce Lee's film "Enter the Dragon" :) Yes I know, necro-bump from hell (3 years!?)

[skullmanUK]

@Umma6umma They're just sounds robbed from 70's kung fu films, and then horribly compressed. Ever play the Barbarian games on C64? The sound effects were blatantly robbed from the Conan films lol. Love these old classic games though, glad I was a gamer during the golden age!

[skullmanUK]

although remembering, Barbarian not on c64, might have been the ST. 

[MrMaccaderby]

@Umma6umma I think the speech is the noise Bruce Lee makes in 'Enter the Dragon' when he kills O'Hara

[MrMaccaderby]

@Umma6umma I think the scream is the noise Bruce Lee makes in 'Enter the Dragon' when he kills O'Hara

[jipsom]

It's actually a sample of Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon - shockingly compressed, of course :)

[OneEyePI]

@Umma6umma The opening scream is a digistised version of a scene from Enter the Dragon

[HenrikRagnarsson]

Anoying noise...

[Umma6umma]

Heh, I remember hearing that scream for the first time firing up this game and thinking "what the hell was that?".

[wwetnasux]

The music itself is pretty cool though.

[Umma6umma]

Little details too such as how the winning sparrer adjusts his Gi after every bout are what make this game special.

[Simon0]

@Umma6umma i lvoe that opening scream!