The Karate Kid: Part II was the wildly successful 1986 sequel to the just as wildly successful 1984 movie, The Karate Kid. Part II sees Daniel and Mr. Miyagi travelling to Okinawa, Japan to embark on many a karate related adventure. I assure you it’s all very exciting. Most of the movie wasn’t actually filmed in Japan though, with various locations in Hawaii being sneakily movie magic’d to fit the aesthetic of rural Okinawa. Dishonesty aside, Part II may not be quite as well liked as the first movie, but it’s still a nostalgic piece of 80’s pop culture that people hold a warm fondness for to this day.
The same can’t be said of the NES game, though. The Karate Kid is one of the more infamously hated titles on the system, being lorded as one of the all time worst gaming experiences the 8-bit generation had to offer. However, the dojo of NESJunk follows a strict creed when approaching games for this challenge: never let pre-conceptions cloud one’s judgment. This is the fabled “way of the weirdo who won’t stop playing NES games.” Daniel-san’s romp through Okinawa, Hawaii is no exception, so let’s shake, bow and begin to give The Karate Kid a fair look.
Sharing a weird parallel with the movie’s culturally confused production cycle, The Karate Kid is touted as being developed by the American company LJN, when it was in fact ghost developed in Japan by Japanese company Atlus. If you’d like to know more about this strange collaboration, I went into more detail about Atlus’ and LJN’s unusual partnership in my review of another one of their other joint projects, Jaws. Unlike with Jaws, Atlus didn’t shrug the development responsibilities onto one of their disciples, so we have no one to blame but them.
The Karate Kid is as typical of a side-scrolling platformer as they came in 1987. As the esteemed Daniel-san, you kick and punch your way through four levels, with the ultimate goal being to beat the unremarkable bad guy from the movie. It bears a lot of suspicious similarities to the NES classic Kung Fu – like, someone might’ve heard from IREM’s lawyers if they had any lawyers to sic on people levels of suspicious. I just found out that all IREM do in the modern age is churn out middle of the road pachinko machines. Say it ain’t so! I’ll be sure to pour one out for them the next time I’ve got some cheap hooch on hand.
Anyway, that’s enough about the depressing state of developers-turned-pachinko drones for one post – back to The Karate Kid.
What little the visuals have going on is cheapened a bit once a player with a discerning eye notices that that every single enemy in the game – including the final boss – is just a recolour of the player sprite. Awkward. The enemy AI is all the exact same, too – from the Cobra Kai baddies in Level 1 to the final boss and everything inbetween, the cookie cutter guys just walk towards you and attack without a care in the world – a well timed kick will kill almost everything with ease. The music’s not half bad; surprisingly, this game’s composer is the prolific Tsukasa Masuko, who’s best known work on is a little known franchise called Shin Megoomi Tensay. In all seriousness though, this guy’s responsible for the music of SMT: Soul Hackers, which is one of my personal favourite games AND soundtracks, so I can’t even joke about being a hater. It just goes to show that everybody’s gotta start somewhere.
With all that limp praise being said, The Karate Kid experience isn’t greater than the sum of its so-so parts. The level design is downright obnoxious, and has a lot of sleazy tricks up its sleeve to stop poor, defenseless players from progressing. Being hit by anything sends Daniel flying in the opposite direction, typically into more danger. It’s kinda funny the first time thanks to how absurd the visual of Ralph Macchio being flung across space and time is, but when you’re being helplessly ping ponged back and forth between two enemies until you die, it loses its amusement factor pretty quick. Now’s a good a time as any to mention that the controls are surprisingly solid – it’s just the world around you that makes keeping a hold of your character difficult. The wind shoving you back in the third level is evil, and that’s not even getting into the stray twigs and birds trying to roundhouse kick you the entire time. I’m being 100% serious when I say that those sticks were harder to deal with than the final boss.
Rather than being a unfairly maligned hidden gem or a total shitload of fuck, The Karate Kid is totally, irrevocably middling. Like room temperature water, or a cracker that’s just about to go stale, but hasn’t yet. Not very anger inducing, but far from satisfying. If the game was any longer it’d definitely cross into irredeemable territory, but the fact that this thing can easily be finished in an hour by just about anybody – even less than that if you’re halfway decent at action games – is a big point in its favour. It may be worth checking out if you’re starving for a quick NES clear, but there are plenty of better titles out there to spend your time on. If you can’t live without a NES movie tie-in…I dunno, maybe give Jaws a try instead. I thought Jaws was pretty okay.
Initial Interest Rating: 6 out of 10.
Final rating:
NESJunk 