Previous Next

Karatian... beyond the great hill and to the north, there was once a great man who guarded the five belts. You have to fight against your friends and evil to get these belts. Only then will you be able to leave this land where strange creatures dwell.

Hmm, an eerie ending but this isn't a horror game. It's quite the opposite: a game that is a parody of three other commercial games.

I had never seen this game before and did not know what this was about. The loading screen straight away illustrates the game's concept. "KARAT" is taken from International Karate+ and "IAN" s taken from Barbarian to give you the name "KARATIAN".

Hage and Steve, of Wizcat, put this together in 1995 and it's amazing what can be done with CPC games. Here they have grabbed Beyond the Ice Palace's loading screen, music and scroll and put them into their own game. Then they have grabbed two different backdrops from Barbarian and have got you playing Kung Fu Fighter, International Karate+ style. It's weird, but oh so wonderful.

They have introduced a few minor graphical changes, which make the game look even more impressive: with the hit dots replaced with a clear yin and yan circle. The playing screen has been moved up; at the bottom of the screen is an impressive-looking score, ranking and fighter font with colourful reed border. All looking rather polished and crisp.

There are some hit and move spot effects for sounds and a Beyond The Ice Palace explosions that blows your character up at the end of the round, which is a cool addition. The play has changed slightly from IK+. I couldn't seem to do the somersaults or double kicks. Maybe some moves have been omitted. Instead of two CPU players and one human player, as in IK+, Karatian has added a fourth player and the limited moves makes it a much harder game than the original IK+. If timed right you can also get your character to scream out in a comic blog which looks like "CHA".

It also looks like you can only score half a point at a time where as in the original IK+ you could score full points. The game held my interest from start to end; then got me thinking about other CPC games that could be brought together like this.

Not sure if there are any bonus stages as in IK+ as I didn't get that far into the game - the CPU opponents move rather quickly even on white belt. A must play and see.

Taking the best from the two games, Wizcat have actually come up with a decent game. All right so it's not exactly original, but at least it's got great graphics and gameplay.

Advance five belt colours.

Graphics 80%
P. Nice additions to Barbarian backdrops.
P. Characters move fast.

Sound 70%
P. Cool explosions when round is over.
N. But no in game tunes.

Grab Factor 80%
P. How cool is this concept?

Staying Power 85%
P. Just one more go...

Overall 82%
An interesting concept. Hope to see more done like it.