by 
All Moyses know two things: Fish and Karate. Well, three things: Fish, Karate, and Hamster Archives. Except without the Karate. Or the Fishing. What I'm essentially saying is that the NES port of Data East classic Karate Champ is coming to Hamster's Console Archives today.
Released in 1986 and adapted from the phenomenally popular 1984 arcade game of the same name, Karate Champ is one of the earliest examples of the one-on-one fighter, as two experts in the way of the exploding fist face each other in a battle for The Glory of Love (Peter Cetera).
Under the watchful eye of a referee/sensei, bouts take place at a variety of locations, including a dojo, warehouse, pier, back alley, and clifftop. The first fighter to land two clean, unobstructed blows wins the bout.
This is easier said than done, as the NES edition of Karate Champ is notoriously hard to control, with contextual attacks that seem smart, given design limitations, but are simply frustrating in reality.
As such, perhaps the best element of the NES port is the synthesised speech that begins and ends each bout. Other than that, NES Karate Champ is a poor conversion of the arcade classic, where landing a punch is a baffling ordeal.
Karate Champ was part of a wave of gi-wearing titles that hit the market in the mid-late '80s, capitalising on a sort of "Karate Mania" that hit the world in the wake of the 1984 blockbuster The Karate Kid - not to mention a flood of martial arts movies imported from Hong Kong.
Every park saw kids Waxing On and Off, while New York City became awash in dubious, back-alley Karate schools. It was a wild and dangerous time to be in the playground, surrounded by kids who "knew Ninja" from repeated viewings of No Retreat, No Surrender. Which is why I stayed hidden away with a ZX Spectrum and a copy of IK+
Sweep the Leg. No Mercy.
Karate Champ arrives today on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2.