I genuinely love how intimate this one is compared to Atari 50 and The Jeff Minter Story; a good 50-60% of the video segments are just Jordan Mechner and his father going down memory lane while presumably one of their family members shakily holds the handicam. The pure reminscence and wonder of Francis Mechner as Jordan reminds him of his involvement in Karateka is infectious and it really makes for some beautiful documentary moments.

There may not be nearly as much in the way of variety of games here, but it more than makes that up with prototype progression; seeing Deathbounce slowly come to fruition only to be rejected and then reborn under Digital Eclipse's development team is vindicating and serves as the perfect precursor/prologue to the main course, especially as we learn that Mechner was always ahead of the curve with other project ideas but never pulled the trigger, with games like King's Quest beating him to the punch when it came to revolutionising the point and click genre. Similarly you really get to grips with the progression of the Apple II version of Karateka and are ready and able to jump in at any moment of each iteration thanks to a fully explorable interactive demo playthrough, which is a genuinely nice touch.

What there could have been though, is a smorgasboard of available emulation of the many versions of Karateka that are summarised in the last few points of Chapter 4; if I could play the IBM, Atari ST and Amstrad versions I really would consider this the ultimate package. I know for a fact that emulation of at least the Atari ST is stable (and considering the Atari 800 version is included it's safe to say they're on board) but we only get the "holy trinity". I want to see just how bad ports for this game got for history. Ultimately this package this is a much more intimate look at only two games compared to Atari 50 or The Jeff Minter Story, so it would make sense to pack as much of its star attraction as much as fully and legally as possible. I would happily forgo the 16 minute audio podcast oozing over the original soundtrack and the blown out 6-12 minute talking heads segments that can easily be condensed into 4-7 if it meant providing something more of merit like a fully encompassing library across emulatable platforms.

That being said, Digital Eclipse's remaster of Karateka is genuinely quite amazing; they somehow manage to capture a lot of the primitive nature of the original while fixing a lot of the problems caused by its hardware. This is still a very strategic-yet-basic side scroller but its thankfully devoid of a lot of what made it frustrating.

These collections truly are worth these reimaginings of classics. As far as DE compilations/documentaries go this is the weakest, but only by a small margin; as always I look forward to their rather unique form of classic game preservation though and genuine appreciate their efforts.

I like the concept of an interactive documentary, but it is as interactive as searching through a folder on my PC. Some of the documents seem redundant, because of their later contextualization in video form. The biggest pro is giving us playable versions of prototypes and different ports - something more games should do! Nevertheless, some things should be an e-mail - this should have been a linear documentary. These were the parts I enjoyed the most. (And the games of course. Played more Deathbounce and Karateka than I imagined beforehand!)

Utilizing the interactivity of this medium to tell the history of a game and creator is the perfect use of this technology. Being able to work your way through this timeline and jump into an unfinished prototype, or a specific retro version of a game being discussed, adds invaluable context to the documentary that a simple video version could never provide. Jordan Mechner's unbelievable level of self-diarizing made him the perfect candidate for the first of this Gold Master series, in a way that I'm now actually worried about how others will be able to follow this up with similar historical assets.

Karateka was a game I knew basically nothing about, so learning about its impact on gaming through this was incredibly fascinating. Though I don't think the filmed documentary sections in this were of the highest quality, the whole package still got across the importance of this game's use of rotoscoping, music, and dramatic styling at this point in gaming history. While I'd never played Karateka before this, I had played Prince of Persia, and it was easy to see the lineage there in hindsight. Though Karateka seems somewhat slight by today's standards, it was still fun to play through the various versions of it, especially with the historical context in place.

This style of gaming documentary is such an easy recommendation from me, and I can't wait to play more in this series.

Decent presentation of the history of the game, using the clean and simple UI you move along a timeline, getting information and images/videos you can scrutinize to your liking. At any time you can play the included games, though each included game is presented appropriately along the timeline as it becomes relevant.

Beyond the inclusion of the Apple II original version of the game, the contemporary Commodore and Atari ports are also included and fully-featured. Playable prototype versions are also included, as well as brand-new remakes of the two main games in the documentary.

This is the first entry in the developer’s “Golden Masters” series, which I’ll be keeping an eye on in the future. I do hope that the production quality of the interviews will be better in the future, however.