Shack's Arcade Corner: Karate Champ
Shacknews is back with another look at a classic arcade game. Today, we take a look at Karate Champ.
On this episode of Shack's Arcade Corner, we are taking a look back at Karate Champ. One of the first classic arcade fighting games, Karate Champ hit U.S. arcades in 1984. The game was developed by Technos Japan and published by Data East. The arcade cabinet didn't feature any buttons for gameplay interactions, and instead challenged users to control their characters with two joysticks. The left joystick controlled movement while the right joystick controlled the moveset. There were actually seventeen unique moves that players could execute in the games, which was pretty impressive for such an old school arcade game. Karate Champ also featured some very interesting minigames that challenged players in between rounds. The game was ported to NES in 1986 as well as some home computers. The folks at Arcade1Up will be releasing a Karate Champ cabinet later this year, in case you are looking to get back into the retro 1v1 fighting game action.
Special thanks to Arcade1Up, our promotional partner for this episode of Shack's Arcade Corner. Be sure to check out the official Arcade1Up website to find out more about their cool line of retro arcade products.
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Greg Burke posted a new article, Shack's Arcade Corner: Karate Champ
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Greg! OMG, this is one of my all time favorites (I'm a 6th degree bb in TKD, so it kind of makes sense)
Anyway! Thank you for reviewing this one, I spent so much money on this game and I still love it. I'll definitely be checking out the mini version when it comes out.
Also - I believe there were two versions of this - one where you fought in a bunch of locations (back alley, beach, etc) and one where you were at like the world championships.
Aww man, I was so pumped to see this, and the ending of your vid gave me goose bumps!!! -
Sadly when I was young, this was the closest I got to Karate Champ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1WT0VbxlIQ
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Not that bad: https://pcmuseum.ca/images/tandy1000ex-ad.jpg
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We had a Murphy's Mart with one in the front window about 10 miles from home and we'd stop there on the way back from our weekly bike trips to the comic book store and play for an hour. I don't know how we afforded it. We'd TEAR through quarters in that machine. haha
They eventually replaced it with a Superman game, which was still pretty fun. I hated playing as the weird-colored Superman. :P -
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