Woo hoo :) I've been dreaming of a remake of Karateka ever since Prince of Persia was remade in 3d.

Hopefully this is an enhanced and lengthened version on XBL and PSN.

axel000

Apple IIc was my platform.. 6th grade. I hope this is good. You're up against childhood memories

Denver80203

@paeper: i played it on commodore 64.

great game at the time, it blew the (tabi) socks off ye-ar-kung fu imo...

anyone remember an ascii side scrolling fighter with almost full screen characters? ill be damned if i can remember the name of it...

also, anyone remember 'nemesis'? it was a non-scrolling (single screen) beat-em-up where the bodies would pile up instead of disappearing.

interesting times those were...

undeadmachine

I must've missed this game when it came out, but it's great it brings back so many memories for everyone. You guys are gonna make me track it down. What console was it for originally?

Oh and I also think it's great the makers had a sense of humor- enough to even bump up production costs for a good easter egg.

paeper

Woahhhh....they're remaking me!!!! yeah baby. I knew karateka would be big some day. I guess I'm going to have to get this one when it comes out. I mean I am karateka :)

karateka

Wow. This really takes me back.

I could really see this being an Xbox Live/PSN title.

Normally I hate remakes of games.....but this.....this is going to get much love from me.

GrandfatherParadox

@underwhelm: if this wouldn't have happened, the universe wouldn't have no sense of humour at all. i trust this is not the case.

loopholezero

I've only played the NES version of Karateka and, well, it sucked, IMHO.

Vipre77

Wow, I never expected anything from this game again. I own a copy of the original.

Gam3r

Ahh...Grade 3. Our teacher had a computer in the classroom and let us play Karateka at noon and on breaks. First game I ever saw with blood. (When the gates kill you.) Mr. P even let us bring NES to school! Grade 3 was the best. Also I think the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup that year. Hmm...also Expo 86. Great year.

hastyp

Heh, yeah, it took me like 3 different tries before I realized that you had to drop out of fighting stance before actually touching the princess.

Hopefully Kareteka 2009 (or whatever it's called) will continue in its nad-stomping ways.

Doctor_Memory

F' the eagle. That is all.

SeedyROM

Karateka and Pitfall were sources of intense frustration in my childhood.

@sascha23:

I share your pain.

Synthemesc

Great. Karatekaz: Martial Artz get!

Knoxximus (360/PSN)

Damn, those guys were fun at their job =).
I liked Karateka but didnt really finish it, always preferred Ninja Mission to it. Still, its a fun time to live in with such games remade

Zorba

A well-done, modern Karateka game would definitely interest me.

KaneRobot

Ah, The Last Express. A true gem, and a shame-- a damn shame-- that it got screwed with the advertising/publicity/Broderbund shakeup. Hell, I think I'll dig up the discs and reinstall it this weekend.

Bakeroo

I remember playing this on my Commodore 64 when I was a wee lad. It also makes me feel bloody old.

Ah, memories...

sascha23

A remake of Karateka?

All I remember was getting a kick in the junk from the damsel after fighting hordes of bad guys, a trained hawk, and the shogun.

Fucking bitch...

banana_ridah

Oo, I hated that stupid eagle. Damn you, eagle!

Islandkiwi

I'd love a nice-looking remake of this. Maybe Karateka HD Remix? A boy can hope, right? Please, Jordan? This game is one of my favorite memories. I'd love to see a great-looking remake of this.

And of course, it's unrelated, but COMBAT HD Remix, too. Plaes!

wild homes loves you but chooses darkness!

Putting a disk in upside-down means I can play the game upside-down?

More modern games need easter eggs like this.

TackyLamp

I pray this actually happened.

underwhelm

Hah! That's awesome. Karateka was an awesome game, and it's cool to get to hear little facts about games like that even now. Actually, I didn't know about that easter egg, except for that Princess kicks your brains in if you mess up at the end deal...

Salen

Wow. This screenshot takes me back to when I was like 12-years old and I had this game on floppy disk (the REAL floppy, black, skinny 5 1/4 disks) for my Commodore 64.

Good times.

incredibilistic

One of the most played games in my "100 games in 1, but really half of them are the same game with different names" pack for some Korean rip off console.

It got as much playing time as "Antarctic Adventure". Yea, you know the penguin had some major air time.

PsycheE

God I hated that game. It wasn't that it was a bad game. I actually enjoyed it at first. And it wasn't cause it was ugly. It actually had some really beautiful animations which made me go "oooh!"
But the reason I hated that game...
It was impossible at times. I remember when I was younger I got stuck on some crap several screens in where something would fall on you. Yes, I could not be more vague but some memories in childhood we block out.
That's what my shrink said about my father and the naked man in the closet.
And Kareteka.
-Adam

ApocalypseVII

frakkin' sweet! i loved this game along with all the clones when i had my commodore 64.

cihx

man, i have fond memories of getting my ass kicked in this game....i wonder if it would be one of those nostalgia influenced bad game buys (like half of my VC library), or if it would really be fun to play the original again.

im interested to see what they do with an update though.

karl_hungus

It was with Karateka that I soon began down the path to a potty mouth!

SigmundTheSeaMonster

I miss you Mariko.I saved you all those years ago. You never called, wrote, you kicked me in the head. I still miss you.

jackal888

Hardest game ever, but then again I could say the same about the original prince of persia. Maybe it was my keyboard's fault I dunno.

Pornosaur

Did you play Karateka when you were 5??? It wasn't that hard. The hardest was definitely the eagle. After fighting him, the end boss was cake since he was way too aggressive and you just had to hold your ground and take him down.

But Mariko. Sigh. The first video game babe. She could take Lara Croft anytime. And that kick she did was lethal!

onlysublime

I must say that nothing was more frustrating not even the falling gate or the eagle than mariko at the end. You make it all the way to the end only to be kick to death by that bitch... I tried many different ways to get close to her and again and again she kicked me to death. If only I could get my hands on her I would slap that bitch. In the end I got her...and let me tell you I'm the boss in the end...yeah, who's your daddy now bitch.

karateka

Karateka, The Last Ninja, Way of the Exploding Fist ... classic C64 stuff. It really takes me back.

... and yeah, Mariko broke more than my heart in our first meeting, too. Thankfully, the second encounter wasn't so painful.

Iron_Cricket

Karateka is actually the very first video game to have a story AFAIK.
never managed to run it on a modern PC though...

coladict

Great memories.

Karateka

World National Karate Champs

Bruce Lee

Choplifter

These games gave me endless fun on my atari computer.

DwindleFlip

Oh hell yes... give me a new Karateka game. Ah, my teenage years.

You watch when it comes out: I'm going to go all Fallout-fanboy on it if they change anything!

"Why isn't this a side-scroller!?!? Why does it have more than 4 colors!?!? How come I can't fall backwards off the cliff!?!? Where's the eagle!?!? Intuitive, modern control scheme??? Where are my clunky keyboard controls?!? Voiced cut-scenes!?!?!? What the hell is with all this "story" and "plot" crap!?!? And why, oh why, the hell is it longer than 20 minutes!?!?"

Yeah... some good times ahead.

@karateka: I'm assuming by your name that you did eventually figure it out. I definitely shared your pain the first couple times... but it's so obvious when you finally do it right. :)

@wild homes loves you but chooses darkness!: Actually, a faithful XBLA + PSN version of the original would be quite nice, my snarky opening lines aside. I'd definitely buy.

dv8godd

@coladict: Well... it's definitely not the first VG with a "story". RPGs, text adventures and the like had long preceded Karateka when it came to plot.

But it was very innovative in the way that it told it, especially considering it was an arcade-style title (not typically known for "story"): no dialog whatsoever, no text after the introduction but still a clear narrative, engaging cinematic presentation, seamless blending of cut-scenes into the gameplay that broke the game into sections without appearing to break it into "levels", etc.

Karateka's presentation of story was definitely an inspiration to the way things are done today...

... though I don't personally think any game has ever surpassed it in its ability to do so much with so little.

Anyone truly interested in videogame development/technology/history owes it to themselves to play through the game: once or twice for the pleasure, a few more times to really think about its construction.

dv8godd

As long as the princess can still kick your ass, all is good.

Funny stuff about the upside down game.

Eltigro

Can't wait for The Last Express on DS, will finally give the game a chacne to shine.

basilafox

They already made a remake of this game, it was called MK Shaolin Monks. Funny to think Karateka was the pinnacle of game graphics back then. I still remember being 'blown away' by it.

GOLD5

I'm still wondering why the Jolly Green Giant was in a bootleg version of Karateka that I played on the X68000.

ManekiNeko

I loved Karateka, I played that game for hours and hours and hours. I could never get past the second stage, but it was a really fun game to play back in my boyhood.

Werrick

played it on my apple 2+ and on my friend's n64. I can still remember the music, the animation and the "hai!". It totally blew my mind at the time.

mariospants