The Episode
My only experience with the Karate Kid game was actually one of my earliest NES memories – a rich kid who went to the same school as I did was playing it one time in the NES bus. The game seemed impressive at the time since the NES was still so new to me, but it wasn’t until this AVGN video that I learned it was actually a horrible game.
For some reason, though, the fly-catching sequence in the game is the main memory I have of the game, so I was sad the Nerd never directly covered it in this episode.
Rainbow-Free
I have good news and I have bad news.
The good news is that many (most?) LJN games didn’t make it to Japan.
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The bad news is that that means I can’t dig into any game differences.
But to make up for it, here’s a bit of extra info anyway.
First, “The Karate Kid” movies and series are actually known as “Best Kid” in Japan:
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That also goes for all all the sequels and even the recent remake/reboot thing:
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I’m not really sure why the name changed, but it’s interesting that the Japanese title removes the reference to the thing that Japan is really famous for.
Next, I totally forgot about this until now, but there was a Karate Kid cartoon back in 1989. If you don’t mind an overdose of 80s, here’s the intro:
Japanese Responses to this Episode
Since this game was never released in Japan, I’m curious to see what kinds of comments Japanese AVGN fans have to say about this episode. Let’s take a look at some random Nico Nico comments I’ve translated.
More like WORST Kid
LJN LOL
Good job LJN
Best Shit
the Rainbow of Death
The series is slowly but surely coming together!
He started editing beginning with this episode lol
weird socks rofl
He’s gettin’ Nerd-like now!
Early-era Nerd is amazing
Yeah, the first two or so were just tests, so he seemed to have gotten more serious from the third and on once they got popular
Ah so this is what the HVGN is based off of
Foreign cartridges are shaped so weird rofl
the rainbow of terror
He’s still so young
The early era Nerd’s raw craziness is scary compared to now
Daniel-san~
It’s a shame, the movie was so good
This is easy-to-understand English!
The audio’s not half-bad though
Licensed games are such crap
rofl that’s just you sucking at the game
Even in the PS2 era crappy anime games are still a big thing
The Crane Kick?! Can you do the Crane Kick?!
This was supposed to be Okinawa but they filmed it in Hawaii
A true model gamer lol
This is horrible!
Not even a short invincibility after being hit?
Wiener spears
He winks?!
Toilet Kid!
A nice simple ending
Summary
Sadly there wasn’t much to check out this time around; hopefully not all the LJN games will be like this. This is where the AVGN LJN dynasty begins, so I hope and pray that at least a few of them made it to Japan some way or another.
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