Review: Karateka for iOS is a beautiful fighting game for the casual player
If, like me, you are approaching your “late youth” and grew up in the 1980s alongside your trusted Apple II, chances are that you spent a considerable amount of time playing a game called Karateka. As the titular martial-arts expert, your goal was to free your beloved Princess Mariko from the clutches of the (presumably evil) warlord Akuma, who keeps her confined against her will while sending his (also evil) henchmen to dispatch you before you can reach his chambers.
Developed by Jordan Mechner, who would later rise to prominence with his long-running Prince of Persia franchise, Karateka was known for the fluidity of its animations—quite the feat considering that the Apple II could barely sustain eight frames per second—and for its uncanny ability to reduce grown men to tears. With notoriously tough enemies that required considerable hand-eye coordination to beat, and a twisted sense of humor that would turn Mariko into a death machine if, upon defeating Akuma, you forgot to exit your battle stance before attempting to free her, Karateka was the game everybody loved to hate.
The fair Mariko, awaiting rescue.
Oh—and you had only one life: running out of energy meant immediate and definitive death, no matter how close to your objective you had managed to get.
Fast forward nearly 30 years, and Mechner’s creation has landed on iOS—still under his direction, but with the help of a small team from software house Liquid Entertainment. The Apple II’s blocky pixels have been traded in for a rich three-dimensional environment and gameplay has been significantly simplified for modern audiences, but the game has remained very much faithful to its ancestor in many other ways.
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