Karate Blazers is one of the many Final Fight copycats that appeared back in the glorious ‘90s; one more beat ‘em up that had people feel all heroic while quietly vacuuming coins from their pockets. Some imitators were actually pretty good (like Sega’s Streets of Rage), but Karate Blazers is unfortunately the sort of imitator who copies the homework, misspells the title, and somehow still forgets to answer the question. One of the games offered in Hamster Corporation’s Arcade Archives line of rereleases, this is hard to recommend to anyone but the most passionate of retro collectors.
You actually won’t believe how ground-breaking of a story there is here: a girl has been kidnapped by a gang and luckily the hero knows karate. This is fortunate, because if he knew accounting instead, this would be significantly shorter. He and his equally punch-inclined friends proceed to fight an army of original villains like punks with mohawks, large hit-absorbing gentlemen, biker dudes with chains, and various other individuals who appear to have wandered in from Double Dragon after taking a wrong turn. Okay, there’s more to it than that, but nobody plays a beat ’em up for narrative depth. Some kind of originality would be more than welcome, but it’s no big deal.
The part that matters, of course, is how good Karate Blazers is with the punching and kicking of one million bad guys. How good is it? Well…there’s nothing particularly bad to talk about. The opening stage is genuinely fun, although nothing that hasn’t been seen a thousand times before. The main hero(es) punches crowds of thugs, while everything moves at a brisk, satisfying pace. The first boss is classic beat ’em up fare: knock him down, run away, repeat until victory. It is simple but enjoyable. Mechanically there’s nothing special to talk about. You kick, you jump kick, you do a health-decreasing super move…and then the game reveals its true personality: that man at parties who won’t stop telling the same story!
Levels become absurdly long and repetitive. Gameplay barely changes. Players fight the same enemies in what feels like an endless parade of identical trousers and poor life choices. One stage can drag on for nearly 20 minutes, which in arcade time is roughly equivalent to watching an entire trilogy while someone repeatedly pokes you. Eventually, the illusion of fun evaporates. What remains is endless persistent repetition. And that is its cardinal sin: an arcade title should never make one not want to insert another coin. The only thing that kind of saves the experience is the fact that this can be enjoyed (or endured) in a group of four people so that you don’t feel lonely and drowsy.
There’s inspiration, there’s blatant copy-pasting, and then there’s copy-pasting where the copied file somehow ended up being worse than the original. This can’t be stressed enough: Karate Blazers is Final Fight. There’s almost nothing here that is truly its own. Everything looks fine and all, the generic tunes that bop along the action do their job, and the gameplay isn’t terrible. If Karate Blazers wanted to win the ‘Okay’ award, then it definitely deserves it. This is Okay: The Game. Even as a relic of the past, it’s not really a high recommendation, as it’s way too safe and unremarkable for its own sake. Something terrible would actually be far more interesting.
