The Making of Karateka devs on the importance of the game and game history
Preserving game history one title at a time
While millions upon millions of people play videogames, many don’t really know or care about what came before the modern era. They play what came out when they were a kid and go on from there. Even worse, those who do want to see the game that came before their years often have trouble doing so, as those titles and necessary hardware can be extremely tough to find.
Digital Eclipse sees this as a major problem, which is why they work so hard to bring those classic titles back to the modern era. The most recent example of that is The Making of Karateka, which not only includes the original game, but an absolutely magnificent breakdown of how the game came to be, the effort that went into it, and the people who made it possible.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Digital Eclipse’s Chris Kohler spoke up on why it’s important that today’s generation not only gets to experience Karateka, but also see how this decades-old title lead to the creation of a whole wave of game devs who are now creating today’s biggest titles.
With Karateka, it’s like this game very specifically inspired a generation of designers that came after it. Karateka did, not games like it - that game. And when you play The Last of Us, you can trace the line back. If you ask Neil Druckmann what inspired him and you keep going back and back and back, you’re going to get back to Karateka. But the thing is, people don’t know that necessarily because a lot of that game has been forgotten. If you just play it, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is a video game.’ But if you understand first that it was the first game for people that felt like a little movie, that had all these cinematic elements, that told the story - if you understand that, you have so much more appreciation for it.
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