The Making of Karateka

Following up Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, Digital Eclipse has made their Gold series, showcasing the making of early video games and their influence and place in history and have started with Jordan Mechner's Apple II game Karateka from 1984.

I was only very mildly familiar with the game and had no idea of its reputation when I only researched the early history of fighting games. Karateka was a popular game in 1985 and let him live off the money he made from it to make his most well-known game, Prince of Persia.

This compilation is a real gold mine of material for fans of this era. It contains interviews with Mechner, his father (the composer of the music in the game) and is extremely well-detailed. Mechner kept furious diary entries on his life at the end of high school and the making of his early games. So you see him go from an Asteroids-obsessed teen to making educational games on the side to help fund his new dream goal of Karateka. Along the way, you can see (and even play!) some of his early work like Death Bounce and an early Asteroids clone for his early Apple computers. It pays off big when he's invited by Broderbund to work and polish up the game which becomes huge.

There is a lot of documentation and revealing information about the video game industry in their footage that thankfully goes beyond just "Karateka, and I how I made it." Interviews with heads-up at Broderbund explain what they felt does work, and what doesn't, Mechter's journal entries show his fears about the game, how he fears it will compete with the arcade game Dragon's Lair and more. You also hear from creators of later game devs such as John Tobias of Mortal Kombat fame, Tom Hall of ID Software, and Raph Koster (who probably brings in the best insights of the fans) to the table.

I don't want to spoil too much but there are a lot of surprise bonus features ranging from really amusing to just goofy elements of the era, to practically its own podcast episode inside. If you are a fan of games of this era or have an interest in the history of video games, this is a really easy purchase to help give yourself an education and appreciation of games from the era.

Looking forward to what the Digital Eclipse team does next in their series.