Despite the popularity of The Karate Kid trilogy in the ‘80s, it didn’t gain anywhere near as many gaming adaptations as the likes of Back to the Future, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. The first film saw a considerably rough entry on the NES, published by the notorious JLN, while the Amiga and Atari ST were blessed with a reasonably well received tie-in for the sequel. It seems that by the time the third film rolled around in 1989, attention had turned to the likes of Rambo, Terminator and Predator, with many early tie-ins for the Mega Drive being more violent and gung ho. It probably didn’t help that Part III was panned by movie goers either.
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble presents an appealing proposition for long-time fans. It takes key events from the three movies and spreads them across twelve scrolling beat’em up stages, along with a handful of mini-games for variety. Make no mistake though; this is a heavily abridged affair. Part II only has a handful of dedicated stages, although the temporary shift to Okinawa does provide a slight reprise from the more suburban locations. It’s presented like a 16-bit video game, recalling the SNES in particular, with Daniel, Mr Miyagi, Ali Mills, and Kumiko all playable. While there’s no online play, it does support four-players simultaneously.

Each character has four simple combos to learn (two light, two heavy) while signature moves are mapped to RB, only one of which is available from the outset. The remaining must be unlocked throughout play, with your chosen character levelling up at the end of each stage. It’s also possible to perform charged attacks, grapple, and attack multiple enemies at once using an aerial kick. Enemies can be juggled using Daniel’s crane kick, and also bounced off the sides of the screen. While this may sound encouraging, brawling still feels considerably casual – it’s possible to blitz each stage by herding a bunch of enemies together and then performing a heavy-hitting signature move before waiting for it to recharge. There’s a notable lack of weapons to use too (which may simply be to keep things authentic, or perhaps a stipulation of the license) and items such as breakable boxes only appear infrequently.
The 12 stages last 6-7 minutes each, culminating of a runtime of around an hour and a half. Some have a timer and encourage you to run, stopping only to deal with certain foes or to break down barriers. This is as much ingenuity as you can expect, with nothing in the way of unique set pieces. The presence of mini-games is also negligible, as they’re all one button affairs that last less than a minute. One simply involves bashing the ‘X’ button as many times as possible. The absence of a ‘wax on/wax off’ mini-game stands out as an odd omission, although the rest are at least drawn from the trilogy. Once the story mode is beaten, the mini-games can be played ad nauseam from their own menu, along with a single screen endless mode – which isn’t too well balanced, becoming chaotic far too soon. The additional arcade and boss rush modes are better, with the latter being reasonably meaty.

The presentation, in general, isn’t bad at all. The music is appropriately upbeat, and the pixel art is well drawn – with Mr Miyagi looking delightfully caricature-esque. While the backdrops aren’t fully animated a handful of touches are still present, such as puddles shimmering and billboard posters flapping in the wind. Character animation falls short of other examples of the genre, though, and the repetition within the backdrops and enemy roster also lets things slide. It isn’t uncommon to face 3-4 identical enemies at once.
The issue with the stilted animation runs deeper than face value, as it leads to collision detection issues too. Instead of going toe-to-toe with enemies, in a similar manner to something like Streets of Rage, you’re often absorbed into the middle of them, especially larger foes. If it wasn’t for the health bar, it wouldn’t always be obvious when you’re taking damage. Making matters worse, the AI can only be described as functional. Enemies will follow you around the screen and occasionally retaliate but won’t react to certain attacks or use a heavy attack to break your defences. Take a typical boss battle as an example; they’ll appear and crack their knuckles or make an idle threat while you barrage them with kicks and punches, and then spend the remainder of the battle casually walking around the screen while elaborate attack animations pan out. Instead of being interrupted, you can simply pummel them while these are playing out too, and they rarely connect. The illusion of a dramatic boss battle is here, and it may fool you at first, but eventually, you’ll notice how staged it is.

I can only assume one of two things occurred during Street Rumble’s development. Either publisher GameMill instructed the developers to keep things simple so it would cater towards a family friendly audience, or the team simply didn’t have the time to expand and refine the combat system and AI. It isn’t broken, nor is it ugly to look at. I’d even say that it has the advantage over GameMill’s Cobra Kai games as it doesn’t drag on for hours. At best though, it’s borderline average – both functional and serviceable enough for fans, but also lacking in hidden depths and surprises. With its short runtime and throwaway extras in mind, fans of The Karate Kid may be better off rewatching the trilogy for the umpteenth time.
GameMill’s The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is developed by Odaclick Game Studio and out 20th September on all formats. A retail release is available.