The Karate Kid: Street Rumble

Given the recent resurgence in the popularity of scrolling Beat Em Ups, with River City Girls, Fight'N'Rage and TMNT: Shredder's Revenge all doing great business, it makes sense that developers would be looking for a memorable IP to stand out. 

The Karate Kid: Street Rumble adopts the cute chibi aesthetic to render Daniel LaRusso and his friends/mentor as the gang take to the streets to pound sprites. It really works too - the pixel art is absolutely perfect, as Daniel, Miyagi, Ali and Kimiko look fantastic, being both instantly recognisable and cute as buttons. There's even alternate costumes themed on different films too, which is a great touch and one I really enjoyed. Backgrounds are initially quite bland, but it picks up as you work your way through the game, with arcades, school corridors and more all maintaining a pastel-hued 80's vibe in keeping with the property. 

Your moves are straightforward. Standard attacks of course, dashing, flying attacks and a secondary harder attack that can be charged for maximum damage, like Daniel's signature crane kick. You can parry too, though I found myself not using the feature often. You have a special that charges over time and allows you to clear the screen of enemies. Movement is smooth and attacks work well - the lack of weapons does however limit the variety. 

You can have up to four people play locally, sadly there's no online play involved, but it does make it more of a party experience when everyone is in the room anyway. 

You have 12 stages to clear, all of which are pretty straightforward. There are no branching paths or myriad levels to make use of, but there's fun to be had with the combat and in spotting the movie references.

There are some issues though. The aforementioned lack of pick ups really limits what's on offer - scrolling fighters are notoriously monotonous without variety, and with the combat unable to switch beyond your set moves, Karate Kid suffers from repetition much faster than it needed to. I was also surprised at the lack of variety in opponents, the early levels containing copy-and-paste baddies in different coloured jumpers. Eventually things get a little more varied, but just look at the amount of repetition in the screenshot below:


Copy, paste, repeat...

Games such as Ninja Turtles break up the fodder by arming them with different weapons and attack patterns, putting them on vehicles or having them throw objects at you. River City Girls allows you to recruit enemies to fight with you. The Karate Kid just sends the same wave of baddies onto the screen and has nothing unique to meet them with - as soon as you see a character you know exactly how to deal with them, with only the moves you have from the start of the game. 

This combination of variety, pacing and restrictions do much to hurt the game's appeal, and that's a shame because the engine and the setting are very solid indeed. The sprites have bags of charm and the challenges dotted throughout the game can be fun too, often mimicking famous scenes from the films, but it's all lacking the spark a game like this needs to really stand out. I feel that the parry mechanic could have used some development, perhaps encouraging its use via bright graphics, or a link to more powerful moves as a counter. It could perhaps be used more in boss fights too, which are, for the most part, fairly bland affairs. 

There's nothing wrong with the game, there's just nothing great about it, which in a market with so many high quality competitors, means that it can really only appeal to people who love the films and TV series.

I'd love to see them come back with a sequel that has some more polish and new ideas added, because there's a very solid game here that just needs a little more bang, sparkle and thought to make it really stand out. Oh, and different cut scenes, because the Family Guy level art just looks awful. Stick to pixel art.