They just can't leave any franchise alone can they. The Karate Kid is one of the most frustrating games ever made. I'd say who programmed this broken ass game but I already know the culprit is once again LJN. Otherwise known for the factory that produces nothing but horrible games. This game stinks so bad manure would be offended to be within 10 feet of it. This is one of those sort of sidescroller beat em up games but that's not entirely accurate but it doesn't matter because this game has no accuracy itself. There's only 4 levels in this game. The first level is this karate tournament, it's simple enough but when you get to the final you begin to realise how broken the face to face combat is. If you try and kick or punch someone it's 50/50 if you are gonna get hit first and lose a third of your lifebar.

The 2nd level starts the sidescrolling and this is where you realise how bad the controls and game is. There's a million ninjas or ?cronies after you and they can hit you from any angle but you have to be specific for them. If you pick up these weird little c letters you can your life back and if you touch a floating person who i think is mr miyagi and sometimes some girl you get your life mostly back. You'll need every bit of health to get through these levels. Oh and if you get caught between two cronies consider it an unavoidable death because the bastards punch you back and forth without reply like a damn beach ball. If you are lucky in between stages you can get to bonus stages for more points and health i guess, i've only gotten to this weird chop ice with your hand segment twice. The third stage is like superman for the commodore 64 level 3's get hit and fly back terrible feature mixed between ninja gaiden 2's stage hazards on level 2 where you get blown back. You get hit by a flying object or bird you fly back and this is incredibly annoying and means it takes forever to get by. ?You are also getting blown back so if you are trying to jump over a little pit you will most likely fall to your death. Oh and to jump you press up not A like a good game would program. This makes it very hard to jump across anything while directing where you want to jump. You only start with 3 lives too so if you die 3 times it's back to the damn start which is not even close to being fair. When you get to the end of the levels you fight somewhat of a boss but really it's just more henchman you can kill.

Now for the fourth and thankfully final stage. On this one we have the worst enemies and landscape of the game. How do you like using broken jump controls to constantly go up and down mountains while enemies chase and hit you from below and come at you from above. Getting caught between people is very easy in this level too and it's usually instant death. To make matters worse there are boulders on the ground you have to dodge as well. And the worst part about the stage is the henchman with the spears, you have to attack them for above or below or else you will just get poked to death you cant attack him from head on. My best advice to beat this level and game is to simply just run away from every enemy when you get the chance. But is that you want to do in a karate Kid game? Am I playing as Daniel San or as Lester the unlikely ? The final boss is just some orange shirt henchman you have to kill after beating a few henchman but you can't let the lady fall off the ledge either. And for all that you get a lousy ending by Mr Miyagi saying you are now martial arts master even though I have been studying martial arts for years and I never have had to go through random enemies with spears and boulders and birds hitting me back 100 feet.

Overall this game is really bad but because it's so short and there are ways around the many flaws to make it quick i'll be super lenient and give it a 3.5, if you see a LJN logo on a cart chances are you've got a plastic turd.

this review seems like rehashed avgn stuff.  I rented this game as a kid and I had some fun with it.

fightorace : Not really I just played the game before I reviewed it and Ii uploaded screenshots to the page, also i've seen his review. This game is garbage and the controls and enemies are cheap. And even if it was remotely fair there is only 4 levels and a crappy ending. It's not the worst game I have played but it does suck.   

This is extremely late but I felt like I needed to clear this up once and for all. LJN has never made a video game at all. Not once. They are solely a publishing company. As for the actual developer of Karate Kid, it was done by Atlus. 

UFC : this is a good review. Nice job dude