 Before Injustice, Tekken, Smash Bros., Mortal Kombat, or even Street Fighter, there was another game that let you digitally beat up your friends in a button-mashing melee, and that game is Karate Champ. I absolutely love retro gaming and old technology. I'm a child of the 80s, so consider this episode as our version of a throwback Thursday. I thought it'd be fun to take a quick trip down memory lane and remember this little gem. Now to be honest, this game has not necessarily aged well, and when I say gem, I'm speaking from my own personal nostalgia. There are a lot of gamers who look back at this game and they want to chuck it across the room, but we'll get to that. Video games aren't an escape from our daily routines, and fighting games are no exception. But in a digital world of Hadukins, superheroes, and grotesque finishing moves, it's nice to see a game occasionally try to emulate a realistic fighting experience. Karate Champ was one of the first to attempt this. It was originally released in the arcades in 1984, and there were two primary versions of this game. The first was simply called Karate Champ, and it helped establish the popular one-on-one fighting model. Players controlled their Karateka in a white gi, and they battled against a computer opponent in a red gi. Now, this game was really simple, but it wasn't easy. The whole concept is to execute Karate moves and score two points before your opponent does. Some moves are worth a half a point while others a first point. If you scored two points before the computer did, you won the match and you moved on to the next round. Which was the same thing, but set against a different background. If you lost, the game was over, and that was it. You had to start over again. Now there are also bonus stages in between matches where flower vases are thrown at you. Gah! When that happens, your objective is to either smash or dodge them. In the arcade version, there was even a stage where you face the bull. Could that possibly be a nod toward Kyokushin founder Masayama? Now, shortly after the release of this game was a second version called Karate Champ player vs player, which was basically the same game, but it allowed two people to play simultaneously. This game saw popularity in their arcades and it found itself ported to several home consoles including the Apple II, Commodore 64, and my personal favorite, the NES. I love this game as a kid, mainly because it was extremely ambitious for its limitations and it came at a time in my life when I was starting to become interested in the martial arts and martial arts movies. Now, the NES controller was a bit limited, you know, with only a directional pad and two main buttons, so games had to get creative. Most games were limited to just a jump or a base attack function, but not Karate Champ. With only the directional pad and two buttons or joysticks in your arcade, players were able to execute 24 different functions. That was pretty incredible at the time and that set the stage for a lot of strategy. I mean, just take a look at the manual and you can see that they really made the most of the controller functions. And most of the moves were basic Karate moves, no throwing spears, teleporting, or ice balls, but front kicks, reverse punches, and sweeps. So why do some people like to dump on this game? I mean, the concept was so great, so what's not to love about a fighting game that lets you do 24 maneuvers with only two buttons? Mainly the fact that you have 24 moves and only two buttons! The main problem with this game comes down to play control. It's a little complicated and it's not quite as responsive as one would hope. There's a slight delay and the timing takes a little bit to get used to. Now, I can only speak for the NES version. I never played the arcade, but here's where I struggled with it the most. It's actually really 10 strikes in four directional segments, forward, back, jump, and duck. So that's 14. So how did we get to 24? Well, that's because if you get on the other side of your opponent, you'll be facing away from them and completely vulnerable until you do a jumping back kick and switch directions. When you switch directions, you're facing the other way, which means all those 10 strikes now operate with a reverse button sequence. So to do a front kick facing the right, you would press the directional pad to the right and the A button. But if you were facing the left, you would press the directional pad left and the B button. So essentially, each attack had two key combinations to do, and it got confusing and clunky pretty quickly. Now, overall, in my opinion, it's not a bad game at all. I have very fond memories of it. Yes, the play control is clunky, but you can't get used to it. And if you do, you can get some really good sequences down and the game actually becomes quite fun. The game also saw a re-release on the iPhone as an app. So if any of you Apple users feel like getting your retro on, that might be a fun one to check out. Just watch out for those flying vases. So that's it for today. Thank you so much for taking a moment to geek out with me and taking a look at some martial arts video game history. And for those of you who also appreciate vintage technology, I just want to say as a disclaimer that this is not an artificial VHS filter look. No, this episode has been brought to you today via an authentic, bona fide, and somehow still working VHS camera. So thanks for watching. Please like, subscribe, and let me know in the comments if you have any memories playing this or any other martial arts game.