International Karate

Year 1989, I'm sitting at my dad's computer watching two karate fighters beating each other against a background that looks better than half the games of that era. International Karate by System 3 wasn't any big surprise — the original version ran on 8-bit machines since the mid-eighties and the PC port arrived just when the fighting game genre was still figuring out what it wanted to be.

No story, no revenge, no demonic tournament league. Pure sport. Two fighters in karategi, one against the other, and the goal is to rack up points for clean hits before time runs out. You progress through a series of matches, the backgrounds change — various locations with worldwide flavor, from Japanese temples to sunsets over the sea. The ippon and waza-ari scoring system isn't overly elaborate here, but at least it breathes the spirit of sport instead of arcade bloodshed.

The controls are straightforward. Keyboard, joystick — movement, kicks, punches, blocks. There aren't a hundred moves, but that's not the problem; the problem is that once you figure out two or three combinations that work, the opponent's AI doesn't defend against them very convincingly. A high kick to the head from proper distance goes through reliably. Repeatedly. All the time. That's the part that's aged the worst — not the graphics, not the music, but the AI that after a while stops being a challenge and becomes just a target.

What I remember though, and what everyone who saw IK on PC remembers: that graphics really meant something. Smooth character animations, colorful backgrounds, overall visual polish. System 3 clearly paid attention to the artistic side, and at a time when a lot of fighting games looked like an epileptic seizure in a sixteen-color palette, it showed. The music was above average for the PC speaker of the day too, though Sound Blaster obviously got more out of it than a plain PC speaker could deliver.

Today International Karate will appeal mainly to those who want five minutes of simple arcade fun without installation and tutorials. It runs fine in a browser, you'll understand the controls in thirty seconds. For nostalgia buffs, it's a reminder that fighting games before Street Fighter II weren't just primitive — they were just different. And for everyone else, it shows where the genre started before combos, special moves, and half an hour of story cutscene loading.