Play the history. Go behind the scenes of Jordan Mechner's landmark game Karateka in this interactive documentary from Digital Eclipse, with archival materials, video features, and more. Experience pixel-perfect versions of this legendary game, with all-new features.
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Discounts
Every price cut of more than 20% we have observed, in each market that quoted one, with this game's chart position on either side of it. These are episodes, not a model: a sale is one event, and one event cannot tell you what the next one will do.
Reviews, worldwide (the counter carries no country): 0/day in the week to Aug 27 → 0.14/day in the week after.
About
Genres
Sums Steam only; GOG, Xbox, Epic, Nintendo publish no volume signal, so the true total is higher by an unknown amount.
Engagement
Reviews
Themes across 42 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
Reviews
Not as interesting to me personally as Digital Eclipse's later work with Tetris, but it's still easy to see why this codified their modern Digital Museum project format. Karateka is also in its own right pretty interesting for a game I'd never heard of before the documentary game hit. It's really fascinating to see Karateka take some extremely early baby steps into the world of narrative and cinematic framing in video games at a time when the sheer limitations of the hardware available made such things extremely difficult to even approximate. The Karateka Remastered production is also really cool, strikes a strong balance between honoring the original rotoscoping and minimalist framing and adding in just enough quality of life performance improvements and visual flourishes to better convey the original vision. 4/5 stars
YES!
Media
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Price dynamics, follower growth, revenue and sales trajectories with interactive tooltips
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For scale, across Steam · Top Sellers · Brazil over the last 30 days: the 26 chart moves that followed a price cut of more than 20% went a median of 7 places towards #1, and the 2,400 moves with no price cut behind them went 2 away. One store, one chart, one country — it is the only place we have enough observations to say even that.
Prices outside the United States have been collected since 6 August 2026 and chart positions since 19 July 2026, so a cut older than that has no market to compare and a market that joined later has no history yet. Nothing here is converted between currencies.
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English*, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese*languages with full audio support
| $5.99−70% |
| 56ratings |
| 98% |
| — |
| not modelled |
| $19.99 | — | — | — | not modelled |
| $19.99 | — | — | — | not modelled |
Matched by title — a reused name can pair the wrong games. * is a critic aggregate. Prices and positions are each store's United States storefront; Epic charts worldwide. Audience and Score too, except Steam's, which is worldwide.
Hours played at review time, across 42 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
An amasing insight in one of the most consequential games of all time. Being the first in so many things and also having the developers direct commentary and notes makes this a must-have for anyone even remotely intrested in older games and their preservation.
There's tons of great content even if sometimes you see the same information here & there, but that's okay. ;) As a game developer myself, it's absolutely fantastic to see where it all started! It really shows how we shouldn't hesitate to experiment and try to expand on things we already know. It's incredibly motivating and being able to replay the old games is a real bonus!
The Making of Karateka is one of the coolest and most meaningful retro releases out there. As someone who first saw Karateka on an Apple IIe as a kid, this was a nostalgic trip - but it’s much more than that. This isn’t just a re-release; it’s a full interactive documentary that lets you explore the game’s history in a genuinely engaging way. You can play multiple versions of Karateka, including early prototypes, while browsing a brilliantly organized timeline of videos, documents, and images that bring the development process to life. If you’ve seen Digital Eclipse’s other interactive documentaries, it follows that same fantastic format - and arguably perfects it. It’s insightful, playable history, and easily worth the price for anyone interested in games, their evolution, or just a really unique experience. This experience was truly a joy!
When I first bought this, I was expecting this to be just a game compilation of Karateka. It is not. It is so much more. This is a documentary with games as extras in it. You have access to the Apple II, C64, Atari 800, and a remastered version of the original Karateka. It briefly mentioned the remake from 2012 which is not included (however I last saw it for under a dollar on Steam). If you read at the top there is a quick access to the game library. It also includes some of Jordan Mechner's earlier games as well as prototypes of the Apple II versions of Karateka. However i recommend going through the documentaries before you play. I found the videos included in this documentary very interesting and you see what leads up to the creation of Karateka.
Awesome experience, very well produced. Great content, amazing stories, and an emotionally satisfying notsalgic journey to early 80s vide games. Also spent more time then I want to admint playing Deathbounce Rebounded.
I just played through [b][i]Karateka Remastered[/i][/b] (2023) for the first time, knowing well C=64 and Atari 8-bit versions. The remaster is done really well! But the Atari 600/800 version is still king. Otherwise, The Making of is really done well! Highly recommended!
Karateka es un juego tan bien hecho, que aún cuando le cayeron 40 años encima sigue sosteniéndose bien gracias a que su dificultad y su sistema de combate son tan desafiantes como el primer día, además de su historia atemporal y su cinemática que sigue siendo impresionante para lo que fué su época. Se nota que los de Digital Eclipse eligieron este título porque los influenció a seguir el camino de los videojuegos, pero también aprovecharon la ocasión para crear todo un documental alrededor explicando cómo Jordan Mechner se resolvió con lo que tenía a mano en ese entonces. Y que incluso te expliquen las cosas que tuvo que hacer para a sus 14 años poder costearse la Apple II, cómo usó su conocimiento en Basic para poder reproducir en su computador los juegos de arcade de una manera fidedigna y así poder ahorrarse el gastar monedas, el cómo lo contactaron compañías de videojuegos y los problemas legales que tuvo al adaptar asteroids. Este título recopila todas las versiones de Karateca que salieron en diferentes computadores, en su momento jugué la de Atari y ahora que la comparo con las otras me dí cuenta que salí perdiendo porque me tocó la peor de todas, nunca supe cómo se tiraban las patadas y salía todo de chiripa, cómo tuve que equivocarme varias veces hasta aprender a correr y cómo de ir corriendo me recibieron de una patada en locico y me bajaron toda la energía de una. Pero la sorpresa mayor es que también incluye una versión remasterizada adaptada a los nuevos tiempos y aunque usa mas cuadros de animación, mejora gráfica y musical, el juego básicamente se juega igual que toda la vida. Por cierto, como es un juego/documental también tiene varios segmentos de video donde te explican la línea de tiempo de Jordan Mechner, y todos los clones de Asteroids que programó hasta evolucionarlo en Deathbounce (que también presenta sus varias versiones y por supuesto la remasterizada adaptada a nuestros tiempos). Entre otras cosas también se muestran varios documentos de diseño inéditos que Mechner usó para programar sus juegos. Pero como una forma de finalizar mi análisis, no le recomiendo este título a las generaciones mas jóvenes ya que probablemente no sabrán apreciar su valor histórico y salgan corriendo apenas vean los píxeles que de seguro les parecerán anticuados.
An interactive museum exhibit- truly nothing quite like this exists. Great if you want to learn more about this era of video game history.
Selling now
See how fast this game is selling right now — estimated copies and revenue per day from recent review growth.
Players by region
Where this game's players are, estimated from review languages.
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