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Welcome, dear friends, to your pop culture time machine, covering everything from the iconic, to the ironic.
Welcome, dear friends, to your pop culture time machine, covering everything from the iconic, to the ironic.
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Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Oh, the humanity...
Anyone who's spent more than, say, 30 or so seconds around me knows of my fondness for the 1984 film The Karate Kid. If you've not seen it...what's wrong with you? Anyway, if you haven't seen it, it's a standard underdog story with enough facets of terrificness provided by some great performances, and a collection of other nifty little bits to set it far above its peers.
The film was a huge hit in the summer of '84, and it made Columbia Pictures about a zillion bucks, for which they repaid us, the viewing audience, with a series of sequels. Here's the thing, see? I have to admit to liking the first sequel. It's not up to the level of the first, but still has some fun stuff to play with - even if one is horribly offended by the Peter Cetera song from the film; you know...the one that sticks in your head, and never, ever goes away?
The third and fourth? They are dead to me. The third was a moviegoing experience so bad that - even at the time of its release, when I was but a naive youth - I knew it was crap. Really, really bad crap, at that. The fourth film simply doesn't exist to me. I haven't seen it, and I never will, though I have it on DVD as part of the Special Edition boxed set.
As bad as those last two films were, though, they look like works of sheer genius in comparison to the fiery hellbeast of mediocrity unleashed by the soulless minions of LJN upon hordes of unsuspecting KK fans/NES players back in 1987.
I give you one of the worst video games ever created. I give you The Karate Kid - for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Oh, sure...it all starts innocently enough. Daniel-san, Miyagi, and so forth. Pretty soon, however, the hurting begins...and it just. Won't. Stop.
After a painfully easy tournament sequence, playing pitiful homage to the iconic final fight at the end of the first film (this version of the All-Valley Under-18 Karate Tournament would certainly leave doubt in the viewer's mind as to Daniel's status as "The Best...AROUND!"):
We're instantly catapulted to Okinawa: Miyagi's home, and the setting of the second film. There, we encounter every major set-piece from The Karate Kid II. Still sounds OK, right? Maybe it would be, were it not hellishly repetitive, and absolutely, utterly uncontrollable. Daniel-san pretty much does whatever the heck he wants to, and usually ends up in some kind of thug sandwich, getting the tar beaten out of him, while you try in vain to find some way to get everyone's favorite cinematic punching bag to defend himself.
Eventually, after no small amount of blind luck and manic flailing, you'll make it to several other remarkably similar levels; all of which feature hordes of identical bad guys, a complete lack of skill on Daniel-san's part, and just occasionally, a typhoon (remember the movie, where the typhoon just kind of sneaks up on Okinawa? Hate it when that happens!). Ah, yes...the typhoon. This is where the game's already-lousy control rockets right past "badly designed", and plunges deeply into sarcasm. See, there's this horrible hurricane-type wind, and yup...you guessed it; you have to walk INTO it, all the while, fighting off not only the standard bad guys, but also - rather inexplicably - flying ducks, and even wood clubs that, for some reason or another, come blasting randomly at your head.
Every once in awhile, there'll be a power-up, in the form of one of the film's secondary (or tertiary...) characters, mysteriously floating in the air, as seen here:
It's dang near impossible to get up there and grab them before they disappear, so I suggest that you abandon all hope of ever getting a power-up in this game.
One thing that actually IS kinda swell about the game is the selection of "mini-games" peppered throughout. If you jump into the doorways of the houses that you pass, you're taken to a bonus area, where you try and catch flies with chopsticks, break ice (from KK 2, in a scene with Clarence Gilyard, Jr.!), or dodge giant swinging implements of death. It's a nice distraction from a truly hell-spawned game.
Yeah...I own it. Come on...it's me, here, folks. Remember? The Karate Kid petition guy?
Back to the game, such as it is. Let's just wrap this mess up, right now.
Eventually, you make it here:
Where Col. Sanders pronounces you a master of the martial arts, and generally wreaks havoc on one of my favorite movies of all time. Sigh.
On a scale of one to five, with five marking the acheivments of some of the NES' classics like Mega Man, or Metroid, etc., I have to give this smoking crater a one. One Mario, that is - dumped unceremoniously on his head.
Curse you, LJN!!!
The film was a huge hit in the summer of '84, and it made Columbia Pictures about a zillion bucks, for which they repaid us, the viewing audience, with a series of sequels. Here's the thing, see? I have to admit to liking the first sequel. It's not up to the level of the first, but still has some fun stuff to play with - even if one is horribly offended by the Peter Cetera song from the film; you know...the one that sticks in your head, and never, ever goes away?
The third and fourth? They are dead to me. The third was a moviegoing experience so bad that - even at the time of its release, when I was but a naive youth - I knew it was crap. Really, really bad crap, at that. The fourth film simply doesn't exist to me. I haven't seen it, and I never will, though I have it on DVD as part of the Special Edition boxed set.
As bad as those last two films were, though, they look like works of sheer genius in comparison to the fiery hellbeast of mediocrity unleashed by the soulless minions of LJN upon hordes of unsuspecting KK fans/NES players back in 1987.
I give you one of the worst video games ever created. I give you The Karate Kid - for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Oh, sure...it all starts innocently enough. Daniel-san, Miyagi, and so forth. Pretty soon, however, the hurting begins...and it just. Won't. Stop.
After a painfully easy tournament sequence, playing pitiful homage to the iconic final fight at the end of the first film (this version of the All-Valley Under-18 Karate Tournament would certainly leave doubt in the viewer's mind as to Daniel's status as "The Best...AROUND!"):
We're instantly catapulted to Okinawa: Miyagi's home, and the setting of the second film. There, we encounter every major set-piece from The Karate Kid II. Still sounds OK, right? Maybe it would be, were it not hellishly repetitive, and absolutely, utterly uncontrollable. Daniel-san pretty much does whatever the heck he wants to, and usually ends up in some kind of thug sandwich, getting the tar beaten out of him, while you try in vain to find some way to get everyone's favorite cinematic punching bag to defend himself.
Eventually, after no small amount of blind luck and manic flailing, you'll make it to several other remarkably similar levels; all of which feature hordes of identical bad guys, a complete lack of skill on Daniel-san's part, and just occasionally, a typhoon (remember the movie, where the typhoon just kind of sneaks up on Okinawa? Hate it when that happens!). Ah, yes...the typhoon. This is where the game's already-lousy control rockets right past "badly designed", and plunges deeply into sarcasm. See, there's this horrible hurricane-type wind, and yup...you guessed it; you have to walk INTO it, all the while, fighting off not only the standard bad guys, but also - rather inexplicably - flying ducks, and even wood clubs that, for some reason or another, come blasting randomly at your head.
Every once in awhile, there'll be a power-up, in the form of one of the film's secondary (or tertiary...) characters, mysteriously floating in the air, as seen here:
It's dang near impossible to get up there and grab them before they disappear, so I suggest that you abandon all hope of ever getting a power-up in this game.
One thing that actually IS kinda swell about the game is the selection of "mini-games" peppered throughout. If you jump into the doorways of the houses that you pass, you're taken to a bonus area, where you try and catch flies with chopsticks, break ice (from KK 2, in a scene with Clarence Gilyard, Jr.!), or dodge giant swinging implements of death. It's a nice distraction from a truly hell-spawned game.
Yeah...I own it. Come on...it's me, here, folks. Remember? The Karate Kid petition guy?
Back to the game, such as it is. Let's just wrap this mess up, right now.
Eventually, you make it here:
Where Col. Sanders pronounces you a master of the martial arts, and generally wreaks havoc on one of my favorite movies of all time. Sigh.
On a scale of one to five, with five marking the acheivments of some of the NES' classics like Mega Man, or Metroid, etc., I have to give this smoking crater a one. One Mario, that is - dumped unceremoniously on his head.
Curse you, LJN!!!