Summary
- Digital Eclipse has announced The Making of Karateka, coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One later this year.
- The Making of Karateka is an “interactive documentary” about Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner’s debut game. It is the first of the new Gold Master Series.
- Through rare design documents, videos, audio files, photos and more, you can discover the story behind a legendary game – and of course play it!
At Digital Eclipse, we believe that classic games should be treated with more respect. As the developer of last year’s critically acclaimed releases Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection And Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebrationwe have sought to innovate and set the standard for how our industry preserves and enhances the legacy of groundbreaking video games.
Today, on [email protected] Showcase, we introduced the next step in our journey: the Gold Master Series. It’s a new series of independent, self-published games that we think can best be described as “interactive documentaries”. Through videos, digital artifacts, audio, photos, playable games and more, the Gold Master Series releases tell the full story of games that changed the world.
Game number one in the Gold Master Series bears the title The emergence of karateka
In The emergence of karateka, meet Jordan Mechner – not the legendary veteran game designer we know today, but the obscure teenage college student desperate to break into the video game business. Through excerpts from his college journals, galleries of his design documents, and brand new video interviews, you’ll share Jordan’s struggles and triumphs as he creates a video game like no one has seen before.
We also introduce you to Francis Mechner, Jordan’s father and one of the unsung heroes of video game history. When he saw his son struggling to animate lifelike human characters, he suggested Jordan try a classic animation technique called rotoscoping. He even donned his wife’s karate-gi and ran around in the woods behind their home in upstate New York so Jordan could film his performance (so Francis, a celebrated behavioral psychologist, businessman, and concert pianist, became one of the first). Motion Capture Actors in Video Game History!). In our interactive Rotoscope Theater, you can experience Jordan’s design materials up close and see how the footage became in-game sprites—no small feat for 1984 technology.
And of course you can play games – not just the finished retail versions karateka, but also several unfinished prototypes, including the original version that Jordan proposed to publishers. We’ve even included several prototype versions of deathblow
At Digital Eclipse, we’re all about adding quality of life features to legacy game titles. Of course, you can save and load your games anywhere, use Rewind to get out of sub-optimal situations, and choose from a variety of authentic frames and screen filters. With our signature watch mode, you can play through the game and then jump in and start playing at any time. In The emergence of karatekawe’re adding a chapter select feature to Watch Mode, allowing you to instantly jump to key gameplay moments, as well as commentary from Jordan and Francis.
We also love updating classic games for the modern age. Karateka Remastered is a brand new version of the original with updated graphics, music and gameplay. An optional commentary track by Digital Eclipse President Mike Mika explains how he created this new version and what makes Jordan’s original so special.
Last but not least, we even created a completely new version of the unreleased game deathblowcalled Deathbounce: Rebounded, a fast and furious twin stick shooter based on Jordan Mechner’s original ideas, sketches and notes. Both new games are exclusively included in The emergence of karateka.
The emergence of karateka is the most in-depth and exhaustive investigation into the making of a single video game ever undertaken in a video game itself. We believe that video games are the best medium for telling the stories of gaming history, and we hope so The emergence of karateka And the Gold Master Series will convince you of that when it comes to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One later this year.