The Karate Kid

"LJN...man, can they ruin a movie-to-game adaptation."

Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street...Karate Kid is in good company. Sadly, its score of 5 makes it the best of the cursed LJN group (in my book). The game is based on the ending of the first Karate Kid movie (the tournament in which you, as Daniel, win the championship) and the final plot of Karate Kid Part 2 (in which Daniel fights to save Kimiko, his kidnapped love interest from Okinawa). The game takes you through a multitude of side-scrolling action levels, each with major flaws that keep this game from ever amounting to anything.

The graphics in Karate Kid are mediocre, even for the time period. The characters are all small, with two frames of animation for walking (leg forward, and leg back). They not only strain your eyes but also make you wish some real time was put into a game that by its martial arts-inspired nature would require at least a passable level of character animation. Although the backgrounds are decent, and the animations for Daniel-san's two special moves (the Crane Kick and the Drum Punch) are good, the whole effort ranks as mildly nauseating.

The music is repetitve, but what is here is reasonable. Each stage (except the final one) shares this numbing, simple drum beat that does little to enhance the gameplay. The final stage music and the boss theme offer interesting variations on the main theme, but little else is there except these dull thudding sounds the game makes when you hit an enemy.

The controls are unforgiving, and this is a flaw due to game design. If you press the controller right or left and hit the Punch (A) or Kick (B) button at the same time, Daniel will administer the appropriate basic attack to the enemy. This may or may not make them fall, depending on their toughness. However, if you press A or B while standing still, you will execute a Crane Kick or Drum Punch (and by the way, these are limited and you must collect D and K icons in order to get more). ARRGH!!! This mechanic becomes extremely cumbersome when you are in the middle of battle, and it drags down the gameplay horribly. Oh yeah, and Jump is performed by pressing up on the D-pad, and don't get me started on how bad that works.

The rest of the game suffers from a few major flaws that break the basic rules of side-scrolling action games. Rule #1: If you have Boss characters, at least make them give you a hard time. In Karate Kid, there are Bosses at the end of each level, but you don't have to defeat these Bosses in order to beat the level. Instead, there are icons of characters in the game (like Mr. Miyagi) that you must touch, and this ends the level. What, does the Boss go home after that happens? Not only does it fit in with Epo's wonderful ''Nintendo Logic'' section, it really hurts the challenge and replay of the game. SPOILER ALERT!!! Rule #2: Don't leave the option open to kill the Final Boss with one hit. In this game, if you fall into water, you die. Why oh why then is the Final Boss positioned right in front of a pit of water? With one well-placed Crane Kick, you can win the game. Ugh. END SPOILER. The rest of the game as I said just doesn't so much as a side scroller.

Karate Kid is a disappointment by all accounts. The graphics and sounds are mediocre at best, and the control and gameplay amount to slightly subpar conditions. Avoid this unless you are a hardcore Ralph Macchio or Pat Morita fan (and if you are, seek help immediately).

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/13/00, Updated 04/13/00