♦ Livestream of the ZZT world “Karateka +” by James Ashby, Matthew Vecchio (2000) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/karateka/] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (4:25) “Karateka +” by James Ashby, Matthew Vecchio (2000) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/karateka/]
The start of a rather large adventure!
Karateka + as it calls itself, is an open-world ZZT adventure with inspiration from the Apple ][ game. (Hence the gag if you don't jump to the actual start of the game) The similarities are pretty much just the character names and loose story of a kidnapped damsel Markio (it says Mariko only once!) who has been captured by the evil Akuma. The unnamed protagonist of the original is now known as Karateka. Your task is to travel the land in search of various dungeons to defeat the evil guardians within that will then grant you access to Akuma's castle.
The world is pretty large! The entire game hits the board size limit so there are a lot of screens to explore, including a rather large town filled with shops, bars/hotels, hospitals, and homes. Our hero is allowed to have quite a dark streak to him, with a number of opportunities to lie to, steal from, and kill the innocent populace to amass more supplies, which really doesn't fit the attitude people have towards the player. It's a lot of fun seeing what you can get away with and what the game notices, making it a gamble if you'll be caught and banned from a store you steal some cash from or if they'll never notice.
The town takes up a huge portion of the game owing to just how much is crammed into it, featuring details like posters on the walls you can look at in scroll view or vending machines with a variety of health restoring drinks to purchase. It's a very dense game that can take a bit to get going due to your limited supplies prior to finding the king's castle and getting a bit of starting supplies.
Enemies can be fought off with karate skills (touching) or with "fire ball ammo" allowing you to shoot them as well. Friendly fire is common, but you'll still get pretty beat up until you can comfortably afford to fire at most enemies. Luckily the game is filled with beds to use to restore large quantities of health, though you may need to take a considerable walk back to get to one. These are one time use though, so stay on your toes!
The dungeons pack enemies into tighter spaces, often dark rooms, and do a good job differentiating themselves from the overworld encounters. Boss fights with the guardians can be tough if you can't keep your health and ammo high before entering.
Really it's a fun game! But it suffers in a few ways that do drag things down. You really need to retreat to town for health which is one thing in the overworld, but a real slog if you're in a dungeon. Enemies on the surface are sometimes found so close to the edges that you'll enter a board and immediately be assaulted. A few programming errors have been noted, some beneficial (a few shops don't seem to care if you don't have the money) and others less so (blood spilling enemies can accidentally destroy important objects). The dungeons are also roped off by locked doors or score requirements to force players to play the game in a specific order, which makes exploring the overworld early feel like a waste.
Despite the issues though, the authors say it's their first ZZT game, and by that standard it's a very impressive start. Some fine-tuning would be nice, but the game is really packed and goes above and beyond most first-timers' ZZT adventures.
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/karateka/
♦ Originally streamed on October 10th, 2025 ♦
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