Whether the more modern sequel Cobra Kai captured your attention or you’ve been playing games since the 16-bit era like I have, you’ll probably be well-versed in The Karate Kid franchise and its charismatic Mr. Miyagi. Gamemill Entertainment and Odaclick Game Studio are taking those of us who grew up in the ’80s on a nostalgia trip with The Karate Kid: Street Rumble.
Wax Lyrical
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble follows the story of the original three Karate Kid films from the mid to late ’80s. The game follows the story of Daniel LaRusso, Mr. Miyagi, Ali Mills, and Kumiko as they face off against memorable villains of the series such as Johnny Lawrence of the Cobra Kai, Chozen, and the especially evil Terry Silver.
The game’s story is told through in-game cutscenes with dialogue and brilliantly drawn art scenes. Sadly, there is no voice acting or clips from the actual films. They aren’t exactly the best replacement for the films either, so you may find yourself slightly lost if you’ve never watched the movies.
Better Learn Balance, Balance Is Key
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is a side-scrolling beat ’em up with plenty of walking to the right and punching down nameless thugs in the name of love, justice, and Miyagi-do. Each stage has you fighting off an impressive amount of Cobra Kai and other nasty students until you reach the boss of the stage, usually Chozen or Johnny Lawrence because this is Karate Kid.
As well as your standard action stages, there are occasional mini-games that give you a break between stages in the story mode. You’ll find events like rhythm games and quick time button-press events to mimic some of the training montage sections from the films. Don’t care about the story and just want to get into the action? You’ve also got the option of an endless mode that throws countless foes at you, an arcade mode that lets you play every stage uninterrupted, and a boss attack mode.
Combat is combo-based, always starting with a light attack and ending with a heavy one with different input timing creating different combos. Special moves which are pulled off with the press of a button and a direction are thrown into the mix too. These are limited by a Ki meter which gradually builds over time.
As well as the standard health meter, there’s a shield meter that builds up whenever you’re not taking damage. To avoid damage you can either simply walk out of the way or press the dodge button at the right time to avoid getting slapped in the chops.
Fear Does Not Exist In This Dojo
The stages, while covering the main locations of the film locations well, are sadly a boring slog to get through. They’re overly long with no set pieces to break anything up and no stage hazards either. It makes the experience feel rather bland. The combat, while serviceable, certainly doesn’t carry the game enough. On top of that, the lack of variety among the enemy types and the complete lack of weapons paints The Karate Kid: Street Rumble as a bland and bare-bones affair.
Boss fights are the genre standard: learn the patterns to find a path to victory. That said, unusually for the genre they seemed far too easy. The first few bosses didn’t even land a single attack on me! The only real times I felt any difficulty in the game was when I would try to accomplish the three additional challenges on a stage. These were optional objectives such as ‘Don’t get hit a single time’ or ‘Defeat X amount of people with X move’.
Ending on a bit of a negative, while the game can be very fun in multiplayer with up to four players—and I’d even hazard a guess that it was designed around it—The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is only local multiplayer. This is yet another way that the game disappointed me, given this game came out in the year 2024. I can only hope they manage to implement online multiplayer even if it’s just 2 players in the future.
Never Been Attacked By A Tree
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble is styled like a 16-bit throwback game much in the style of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge or the upcoming Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind. It has a “Saturday morning cartoon” style, unlike the more realistic uncanny valley style of the Cobra Kai games of the early 2020’s.
The graphics do look great in the style, even if I’m not sure if I would have associated The Karate Kid with it. Despite this, it works for the genre and the feeling of a throwback for us golden oldies. In my opinion, the in-game graphics are much stronger than the cutscenes where the scene has been drawn. The character sprites are well-animated and have a particular charm to them that I can’t deny.
The soundtrack is also made up of glorious chiptune earworms. Despite a lack of voice acting the music manages to be engaging enough to slightly detract from the tedium of the gameplay.
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble does have some nice extras. You can get different outfits for the characters reflecting the different films, a music player if you find yourself jamming away while mindlessly slapping people around, and art to look at the concept art. It’s a fairly robust package of bonus content which makes it all the more sad that the core gameplay is so lackluster.
Verdict
The Karate Kid: Street Rumble plays exactly how people who don’t like Beat ‘Em Ups would describe the genre. It’s bare bones, doesn’t do anything original, and gets repetitive very quickly.
As a fan product, the game covers the films well, has enough fan-favorite characters, and is somewhat carried by a fun art direction and a fantastic soundtrack. If you love the Karate Kid franchise I would suggest picking this up on a deep sale.
WAIT FOR SALE ON THE KARATE KID: STREET RUMBLE
If you would like to see more Beat ‘Em Up games, you may be interested in our review of River City Saga: Three Kingdoms.
Many thanks go to GameMill Entertainment for a Nintendo Switch review code for this title.
Pride of utopia & greatest thing ever, I found the One Piece, Collected the Dragon Balls & won the Mortal Kombat Tournament in one night, it was quiet for me that night! Follow me on Twitter @powahdunk
