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.

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.

I love the idea of making this more than a documentary and really leveraging the medium.
But it’s also mostly just short documentaries that aren’t amazingly produced, interspliced with what feels like random quotes from the diary.
Unfortunately, even the ingenious parts like overlapping the sprites with recorded video and traces is clunky and has you going across the menu to see the next stage, instead of it all being integrated together.

But there’s a lot great here and I’m really looking forward to seeing where the Gold Series goes from here. Just hoping we’ll see more innovation and less iteration

🇬🇧 full review | 🇧🇷 resenha completa

Nem todo jogo tem uma história legal por trás, ou teria o público para justificar essa quantidade de trabalho, mas estou muito feliz que Digital Eclipse finalmente encontrou a maneira definitiva de criar documentários de jogos. Contexto, narrativa, pessoas e interatividade não são apenas os principais recursos que tornam The Making of Karateka tão interessante, mas são provavelmente as partes mais importantes do processo de compreensão da história dos videogames.

Digital Eclipse’s Making of Karateka is a fantastic interactive documentary giving a Criterion Collection quality exploration of a game as well as preserving it to allow people to play it. The collection focuses on Jordan Mechner’s early years in game dev up until the release of Karateka and its ports. The collection is structured in chapters chronologically with each chapter being comprised of timelines that showcase a smorgasbord of information dealing with Mechner’s early works and Karateka. This information includes content such as concept art, magazine articles, interactive viewers that allow you to see how the animation process of Karateka was designed, and present day interviews with people like Mechner, some of the old Broderbund crew who worked on Karateka, and game devs inspired by the game such as Tom Hall and John Tobias. The way this all is structured is really engaging. The interviews dealing with Mechner’s early years are especially charming as he and his dad reminisce how the whole family inspired and worked to help Jordan make Karateka like how his dad dressed up in a karate gi and essentially did the motion capture for the Karateka MC and how he composed the whole soundtrack. Making of Karateka also does a splendid job preserving not only Karateka and two of its most popular ports, but it also has playable prototype builds. It also has previously unreleased games Mechner made before Karateka complete with earlier design builds as well, one of them being Death Bounce, an Asteroids inspired space shooter. There’s just so much clear love and care put in this collection’s creation and it’s truly splendid to see, especially because video game history and preservation isn’t considered as a serious undertaking compared to older artistic mediums such as literature and film. Video games, being the youngest of the mediums, was born in the age of mass corporatization where being a product that sells is considered to be far more important than being of piece of artistic media that should be celebrated. Films managed to emerge right before rampant commercialization happened so they were still able to be considered art that needed to be preserved, but games haven’t been as lucky and tend to just be considered expendable products, especially by major publishers. It’s just so heartening that it exists. I do have one problem when it comes to this whole package though, I think Karateka is just a straight up bad game.

Karateka may have been a technical marvel at the time, as the documentary materials extensively shows, but it has completely aged like milk and is just not a good game to actually play anymore, especially in the present when a vast plethora of games have surpassed it in all regards. It’s slow, clunky, and repetitive, combat is just mainly spamming kick and moving and back forth, the hitbox on the eagle is an absolute pain in the ass, and running is super awkward and can lead to enemies’ one-shotting you if you don’t get into combat stance fast enough. There’s no lives or continues so you just gotta slog through all those boring fights and unskippable cutscenes all over again. I’m admittedly not a big fan of 80’s games, but I can pick up games like Super Mario Bros., Tetris, or Galaga and have fun with them and respect their quality, plus they’re still quite accessible. Karateka is just miserable, to the point I’m surprised people even liked it at the time. Like it’s kinda sad to me the most fun I had with Jordan Mechner’s older games in this collection was his blatant ripoff of Asteroids he made in high school. Similar to my thoughts on Night Dive’s remaster of Rise of the Triad this year, I feel Digital Eclipse gave a gold star treatment polishing to a turd, an influential one, but a turd nonetheless. Digital Eclipse also did their own remasters of Karateka and Death Bounce, they’re more playable but they still don’t really salvage the games at all to me. The Karateka remaster does add the option of giving yourselves extra lives and it does play a little better but it adds the leopard that got the cut from the original game and that section is just awful. The Death Bounce remaster is okay, though I feel the Rover is just kind of bullshit, though arcade space shooters ain’t really my forte.

Overall Making of Karateka is a wonderful documentary and preservation package for a game that has unfortunately not stood the test of time at all. Regardless if you have any interest in video game history I whole-heartedly recommend it. Definitely looking forward to Digital Eclipse possibly making this an entire series and cover games that were influential and actually good, like Doom or Monkey Island. Man, I want a Doom one so bad…

Sure, this is a well put together interactive documentary, that kinda feels like eating your video game vegetables, but woah the dad feelings! Jordan and his dad repeatedly show up to talk about the making of Karateka. We see what looks like a positive father son relationship. Francis, dad, a classical pianist and grand chess master on top of his day job, told his son, Jordan, to pursue his dreams, flake on school, continue making Karateka because that was his true passion.

Watching them both commentate on the original game is near emotionally devastating. Two people creating art, using new tech, father guiding son, as told through a small slice of game's history. The unmentioned absence of the mother, the grand piano that frames their conversation, the bluntness of old age but simultaneously mental alacrity that Francis has.

Overall, I hope this new series works for digital eclipse but it's hard to picture many other games. There's no archival efforts across the industry and a lot of big games are gonna want to remain secretive. They're doing prince of Persian next seemingly, but without mechner's personal documentation where does this go?

I'm excited about the potential of Digital Eclipse's "Gold Master Series". These are interactive documentaries, following the production of notable games. We got a preview of this format in last year's Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection, but its utility as a resource was hindered by the breadth of the topic, and the limitations regarding what they could cover in a piece of retail software. With the involvement of the small development crews of early games, and all the rights in place, there's potential for some really interesting coverage here. Not every game developer is a Jordan Mechner, though.

Mechner is most widely known as the creator of Prince of Persia, but a lot of what that game pioneered was introduced in his first retail release, Karateka. Rotoscoped sprite animation, cutscenes, a theatrical-style soundtrack. It's all pretty cutting-edge for a game that came out two years after Pitfall, but it's pretty rudimentary too. I hadn't played it before buying this, and was expecting something more along the lines of the cinematic action adventure games that it lead to, but I think you're better off thinking of 80s proto-beat em ups like Kung Fu/Spartan X and Splatterhouse. You have high, medium and low kicks and punches, but there's no strategy to fights. Sometimes an attack connects, but there's little predicting it, and nothing preventing you from spamming the same attack over and over.

Seemingly, what's brought Digital Eclipse to Karateka is Mechner's extensive archival material and enthusiastic support. We get to explore original Super 8 rotoscoping footage, journal entries, early prototypes, design sketches, and correspondence from prospective publisher, Broderbund. There's also a bunch of interviews with Mechner and his father, who composed the soundtrack and contributed significant ideas (such as the distinctive rotoscoping technique), and industry figures who were once young fans of the game. I found the most endearing part to be an archived piece of fanmail from a young John Romero, excitedly speculating on how visual effects were programmed and asking Mechner if he'd like to try the games he'd made. Much of videogame history has been told from the perspective of the arcades and console market, and it's always nice when we're shown how significant something like the 80s home computer scene was in America.

Mechner is not shy to discuss his glory days in the 80s. To this date, he has created four games and worked as a consultant for two reboots, but he's written three books covering the development of his games, and has a graphic novel awaiting release. It's easy to see why he'd say yes to this project, and by the point you get to the end of timeline, you can tell Digital Eclipse almost certainly have a "The Making of Prince of Persia" lined up. I'm not sure who else they can really expect this level of contribution from, in future Gold Master Series releases. As much as I'd love a Making of Super Mario Bros, or Duke Nukem Forever, I'm not holding my breath for them. Molyneux's probably jumping at the chance to tell us all about Populous again, though.

I don't think the package is bad. There's insight to be dug from the timeline, and Broderbund's responses to Mechner's revisions are particularly illuminating. This was a kid who was mainly playing arcade games from the 70s, but the home computer market had already shifted towards more narrative games than score-chasers at that point. I actually think his original submission, "Deathbounce" is a little more fun than Karateka, but it's definitely more derivative, starting out as an Apple II port of Asteroids. In quite a cute twist, Digital Eclipse have worked with Mechner to present "definitive" versions of both Karateka and Deathbounce here, incorporating ideas that he didn't have time to include in the original versions. They're far more enjoyable than the low-budget reimaginings included in Atari 50, though I doubt they'd be of much interest to anyone who hadn't been following each game's development history.

I want to support this series, and I think that means buying every release, but despite the direct influence it's had on a lot of my favourite games, I'm already a little too sick of this guy to get excited about the Prince of Persia version. I'd love for this to be such a big format that key industry figures were bending over backwards to tell us all about the histories of our favourite games, or particularly secretive stories of development hell, but I don't think it's a realistic expectation. There's too much money tied to the wider perception of the big name titles, and too many legal issues with publishing it all as an eShop download. What's here is a documentary that will only really excite diehard fans, and they've already bought the book twice.

This would be 5 stars but the PS4 version had audio issues in the videos. Audio peaking and low quality. Enough to be distracting while watching.

I really hope this Gold Series Digital Eclipse is starting with this continues for a long long time. The detailed documentary treatment of an important game that I would have otherwise found obtuse and inaccessible really gives an awesome opportunity to enjoy it instead of pass it over as a relic of the past.

Reading or watching a segment about an early game of Mechners or a prototype and then being able to hope in and play a pic is so cool and really how all game Docs should be. It’s like a compact museum display with documentation, the whole games and prototypes and even interactive displays.
A truly important contribution to game history and preservation.

The Making of Karateka is an interactive documentary, which may sound a bit off-putting at first, but I assure you it's not. This indoc will allow you to experience the development cycle of Karateka through the life of its creator, Jordan Mechner. It's split between five chapters, each focusing on a different time in his life: his first attempts at making games, the initial lead up to Karateka, the development of Karateka, its success, and lastly its legacy.

One of my favorite moments are when he and his father, Francis, are discussing the past and what was being done to create the game. Francis was very involved in helping his son get this game off the ground, by acting as a rotoscope capture model and the composer for all the music. Francis genuninely cared for his son's success, and it's charming to watch them talk about the game's development.

Also included are about 2 hours of video footage from Jordan and Francis Mechner, as well as other industry figures, who discuss the game's impact on the video games as a whole. There are also several photos and document scans, showcasing the development and reception for Karateka.

And don't worry, the game is included, alongside a remastered edition that is faithful to the original (and includes its own commentary track by Mike Mika of Digital Eclipse). There are also several playable and complete prototypes of Karateka to play, along with the original and remastered versions of Deathbounce, a game Jordan never got published, despite his best efforts. There are also a couple of clone games, based on Asteroids, which were his first attempts at making video games.

As a complete package, it's a phenomenal first entry in Digital Eclipse's Gold Master series. If you enjoy video game history at all (even if you haven't ever played Karateka), you should pick this up. It's a history of a video game, in a way that is easily experience and enjoyed. As a source of game preservation, The Making of Karateka really hits the mark.

If you want an even more interesting fact: look at Francis Mechner's Wikipedia page.

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!)

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.

Although I love the idea of this "Gold Master Series" of documentaries and its importance in video game history preservation, as a product, I feel like some improvements can be made in the future.

There hasn't seemed to be a lot of editorial choices in what to put or to omit from the game here. Everything and the kitchen sink is thrown in, which results in a lot of correspondences and interviews that are repetitive or flat out boring.

It generally feels like the story of Karateka is not that interesting to tell apart from a few fascinating tidbits.

I'm super glad this exists, and it is a polished product, but it did outstay its welcome since it didn't always aim for quality in historical content, but quantity and completeness.

On the upside, the next documentary appears to be about a game designer and a bunch of his games which seems like a fantastic idea. It might just fix all the gripes I had with this first experiment in innovative documentary by having a lot more material to go over.

The second of these glorious Digital Eclipse interactive documentaries, I just love this format so much.

I had no idea what Karateka was, despite being, what I thought at least, pretty well-versed in video game history and culture. So it was a real treat to see all the footage and play all the builds/prototypes to really learn about this story from scratch.

My favorite thing in the collection is a scan of a letter from John Romero to Jordan Mechner. It's just a lovely piece of history from pre-Doom Romero.

I don't really like the game! But I love this product. And honestly from a value proposition, digital movies cost $19.99. This is a movie's worth of documentary footage, plus documents, plus games, plus a remastered version of the game. It's easily worth the $19.99 and I will continue to purchase this series the second they releas.

What Digital Eclipse began with Atari 50 and continued into the Gold Master series is one of the most positive impacts on games history in a long time. This is how you create an interactive museum of information and context. The Making of Karateka solidifies a template that promises boundless potential for what it means to be "the Criterion Collection of video games". It's also just an absolute masterwork in and of itself, and I'm immensely grateful that Jordan Mechner has kept so much of these materials over the years. Prior to this release, my only experience with Karateka was goofing around with the C64 port in an emulator and thinking "this seems ambitious". But there is SO MUCH here, and it's deepened both my interest and understanding in Karateka, Mechner, and an entire movement of 80s PC game design that I've largely only explored the surface of.

Using the 'interactive museum' format of ATARI 50 as a template, Digital Eclipse is starting a series of smaller releases focusing on single games, and this is the debut. I love this idea, and there's no better proof that it's a good one than me being totally into this despite not caring at all about KARATEKA previously.

Standout features in this newest DE effort are full-length commentaries from the original creators over gameplay and a neat interactive overlay where you can directly compare the different elements of developing the character animation, from video reference to sketches to rough sprites to final graphics. Little hiccups like some slightly amateurish production in the interviews (overwrought original music throughout, and the lion's share of content with Mechner and his father coming from a single interview seemingly captured by someone with vertigo who had never held a camera before) can be excused and will presumably be improved upon as the series continues.

Even though this is a cheaper, smaller scale release, I was a bit surprised to see it stop where it did, featuring only the three major computer versions of the game. No NES version? I feel like a little more exploration of the game's legacy might be warranted.

But again, this is a great start to something. Can't imagine how hype I will be if they announce that they're doing, like, DOOM next or something else I actually like.

This is the future of video game preservation and historical study. Combining scanned documents, documentary video, and a selection of playable titles ranging from never before seen prototypes to a modernized take on the classic Apple II version of Kartateka, The Making of Karateka is as academic as it is fun, putting proper polish on games that might otherwise be lost to time.

The holy trinity of Karateka versions (Apple II, Commodore, and Atari 800) are all featured, demonstrating their varied strengths (for example the Commodore features the best music, while the Apple II features separate buttons for punch and kick). And for those looking for something new, Karateka Remastered adds cut content like the jungle cat attack set piece, and Deathbounce: Rebounded (a rebirth of an original Mechner creation that was never published) stands out near the top of modern stick-shooters. I played Deathbounce alone for HOURS, it had such a hold I me I felt like I was in an arcade as a kid again.

Even if disinterested in Karateka or Mechner's work, Digital Eclipse has, with this title and its predecessor, Atari 50, taken the first steps in what will be the future of game research. It's both a great gift to culture at large, and an incisive prediction of what comes next for the industry once we escape the sway of the ever-repeating HD remaster.

Let me preface this review with a big statement, this 4.5/5 is not for Karateka. As a game, its something that's absolutely aged and not altogether for the best, it has clunky elements, unfair elements and some bits that flat out don't work anymore.

But this review isn't for Karateka, its for this package as a whole and this is absolutely one of the best and more comprehensive re-releases of any retro title and then some. Digital Eclipse before released the incredibly solid Atari 50 and have used that as a base for this to an expert degree, providing all sorts of content to browse through, listen to and play.

We have a wealth of letters, back and forths between the creator Jordan Mechner and Brøderbund following his start in the industry. There's photos, detailed design documents, proof of concepts, Super-8 footage and breakdowns of marketing and legacy. Its such a joy to dig through and uncover so much. The breakdown of the rotoscoped graphics and the ability to view every piece together, from footage, to sketch, to early spritework and final spritework is something awe inspiring to behold.

As for the game itself, not only do we have what's known as the 'Holy Trinity' of the ports (the Apple II original, the C64 port and the Atari 800 port) but we also have several prototype versions, a brand new remaster made by Digital Eclipse themselves and also a heap of formerly unreleased titles that Jordan Mechner (lead developer) made based off the back of a request for a Asteroids clone which would later become known as Deathbounce... Which also has a remaster/remake present too.

And when you think that they couldn't have put in enough, we also get the ability to watch a playalong for any of these games, the ability to dip in and begin playing from any point in these longplays but also the ability to listen to a full audio commentary within Karateka itself.

Its a collection that's just full of so much respect and love for the original game that you cant help but absolutely love it for what it is. I am absolutely looking forward to seeing what's next in what is hopefully a long lasting series of games and what will hopefully stand as Gaming's take on the Criterion Collection in regards to keeping game preservation and documentation alive.