Karate Champ

At the beginning of the game, you will practice your karate techniques. During the practice stage, you score points by doing each of the moves correctly.

There are twelve different tournaments with twelve different scenaries that you have to win in order to become the champion. During each tournament, you must demolish your opponent with a single blow while dodging or blocking your opponent's attacks. You must win two rounds in the tournament in order to proceed to the next.

You need to score from 600 points to 1000 points when you strike your opponent in order to gain a full point in the round. If you only score 100 points to 500 points when you strike your opponent, you will only get a half point in the round. You need at least two full points in each round, in order to win the tournament. If time runs out during the round, your score will have be higher than your opponent's or you will have to be the one who scored before time runs out, in order to win the round.

Between each tournament, there is a bonus stage that will require you to either evade flying objects and then destroy them with your hands or feet, a "Demo" where you will attempt to split all the wooden boards with one kick or try to knock out up to three separate charging bulls with a single punch or kick.

The screen shots shown on this page are from the one-player version of this game. The observations mentioned in the "Gameplay" section are all about the two-player version which is similar but a little different from the one-player version which is shown in the screen shots on this page.

The 2-player version is seen in the movie Bloodsport. Frank Dux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) challenges and defeats Ray Jackson (Donald Gibb) in the hotel lobby when checking in.

The Japanese version used Japanese voices and had a different storyline: you would fight your way through tournaments at various levels and finally end up at the nationals. The bonus stages were also different: kicking a vase, kicking apples out of another man's hands and off his head and jumping up and kicking a tall post. Screen shots of this version are available at http://www.sikasenbey.or.jp/pit97/karate.htm

A little known fact about Karate Champ is that while the game was published by Data East, the game was actually created by Technos Japan Corp. Gee, not only did they created the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre, they also created the one-on-one fighting genre as well.

CPU: Z80
SOUND CPU: Z80
SOUND: 2xAY-8910 and 1xDAC