Let's Play... International Karate

International Karate+
1987, System 3 Software

originally played on Commodore 64

Sometimes you just have to beat a person down. Punches in the face, kicks to the ribs, whatever. We can tell each other that we shouldn’t, but the reality is that we love the pleasure of overcoming our own weaknesses by overcoming the weaknesses of some other fuck. Especially through punches to the face, in fact. Of course, with most respectable elements of society thoroughly frowning upon violence – unless it gets ritualised for financial gain through military conquest and sports, or is hidden as slave wages within industrial society – there are only a few outlets for the realisation of this pleasure. Mainly, there’s the whole ‘trying to be a civilised person’ thing that most people won’t shut the fuck up about. And so we have violent films and videogames and aren’t we all so much better for them. Surely.

One reason for the goodness of violent media is that they let my brother and I punch each other in the head without damaging our future cognition-oriented careers. My own enjoyment from mediated martial arts was provoked by an unsuccessful attempt to learn aikido, a failure caused not by lack of discipline or coordination but by my inability to pay for classes. From grades four through eight the school board subsidised a month-long period of phys ed lessons (called ‘options’) in activities expensive for kids such as hockey, football, skiing, dancing, and one or two martial arts. For a lot of us, this was the only time we could do some of those kinds of things. Equipment rentals were a cost I couldn’t afford, so martial arts and dancing were my choices. The military industrial toy complex which ascended with Star Wars and patterned masculinities into rigid forms of consumption and behaviour rested its guiding hand on my shoulder – aikido it was. Four weeks of twelve lessons and I was hooked and like a junkie I couldn’t afford to continue.

Martial arts culture was everywhere in the 1980s and early ‘90s, the west having rejected pop trends for pacifist and spiritual elements of eastern culture in the ‘60s and ‘70s in favour of a mythologized culture of violence and discipline anachronically appropriated from the aristocratic warrior class, and which was more easily commodified than Indian ragas and Buddhist meditation, Beatles be damned. Toy weapons and war-themed action figures were best-sellers in major department stores, ninjas made cameo appearances on late-night television, and the philosophy of the samurai code was adopted by Wall Street wolves. Right-wing teenage male power fantasies such as American Ninja, Lone Wolf McQuaid, Big Trouble in Little China, and The Karate Kid linked the libertarian elevation of individual agency with the conservative desire for social order, deference to authority and tradition, and personal discipline, all captured in the symbol of the ninja superhero.

New martial-arts action superstars emerged, as Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Stephen Segal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Jackie Chan replaced the gun-toting Dad types of the previous generation such as Charles Bronson, Gene Hackman, Charlton Heston, and Clint Eastwood. ‘Martial Arts’ was its own section in video rental stores, often next to the horror section as gloriously shitty (and often quasi-amateur) b-movie and direct-to-video releases like Enter the Ninja, Miami Connection, and Ninja III: The Domination as well as badly-dubbed Asian imports like Ten Tigers of Kwangtung, Five Element Ninjas and Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky were much more violent and weird than the Hollywood mainstream. It wasn’t long before every action hero and pretty much anyone involved in a fight on television and in the movies was able to break out top-drawer fighting techniques without breaking a sweat or ever appearing to train. Of course Van Damme and Segal can turn every encounter with a bad guy into a death ballet; that’s fine and no one has a problem accepting that. But the sheer absurdity of a non-stop stream of anachronistic ninja clans proliferating in contemporary crime syndicates and police departments quickly overstayed its welcome, and guns once again emerged as the cinematic death tools of choice, mainly because any idiot can shoot ninjas dead without much hassle. Action film and television retreated from action stars being preternatural jujitsu masters with convenient helicopter piloting skills to their mastering an amorphous, generic, rapid-edit fighting style suitable for exploitation within a broad range of distinctive genres: witness the culturally-indistinct fight styles presented in modern James Bond films, superhero franchises, revenge films like Taken, or the Jason Bourne series. Suddenly, every IRL wimpy non-fighter from Matt Damon to Scarlett Johansson to the old man version of Harrison Ford can be made to look like a kickass fighter. Perhaps it’s even more ludicrous to cast Liam Neeson as a Dad assassin than it is to use ninjas in a bank heist, but fuck it. For big-budget entertainment, production efficiencies have always punched logic in the head.

stellar power lines

Wimpy white people kicking ass on screen is one legacy of 1980s martial arts culture. Another was its influence on hiphop, figuring not among the fashion trends of street culture and the videotape fetishism of mainstream ‘90s rap, but also in the ritualised emcee battles which replicate ninjitsu agility and Shinto philosophies in language. And of course, a videogame genre emerged focused on martial combat, staring with traditional martial arts before exploring more fantastic, cartoon-like themes, and this is where my virtual fist most often struck my brother’s virtual face.

stay down

International Karate is a one- or two-player arcade-style fighting game which came out for most home computer platforms in 1987, the same year that the first Street Fighter game hit arcades. Unlike that most famous of videogames, IK does not provide a health meter for fighters. Action follows the rules of tournament karate, in which two fighters (three in the updated International Karate+) score points adjudicated by referees who halt the fight after each strike. Animations for the original 8-bit releases are detailed and evocative, and hit-boxes are pixel-accurate. Bonus rounds between fights allow players to defend themselves from balls and bombs. Button mashing will work to some degree, but players will have to strategically place and time their attacks and defences in order to defeat more challenging opponents. Punches and kicks which land are awarded either half or a full point, with three points winning the match. Being an early fighter which adheres to The Karate Kid rules, there aren’t any combos or advanced moves to learn. To strike your opponent or defend yourself, you press the only button and move the joystick in one of its eight directions. Someone has to go down before the timer runs out, you know the drill.

IK+ motivates everyone to greatness

The 1987 UK release from System 3 on Commodore 64 (released the following year as Chop N Drop by Activision in North America) is perhaps the most well-known version of the game, thanks to pirating but more importantly because of Rob Hubbard’s fantastic score, which fully exploited the famously idiosyncratic SID chip in the C64. The 1988 releases for 16-bit Atari and Amiga computers feature significantly upgraded sound, graphics, and animation, with detailed character sprites and very fluid motion, although Hubbard’s score was replaced with the kind of percussion-heavy ‘80s midi funk which soundtracked movies plotted around Kawasaki ninja attacks. 

Two-player videogame duels are the oldest form of digital games, with the earliest games relying on human players to provide gameplay when artificial intelligence and enemy strategy algorithms were non-existent or in their infancy as processor and storage requirements for artificial opponents were too high. (For comparison, IBM’s Deep Blue chess machine – the first to beat a grandmaster human opponent in 1997 – used 30 central processors and 480 specialised chips). Once artificial opponents did start to appear in digital games, intelligence routines were often simulated rather than actually computed in real time, leading to the necessity for pattern recognition of enemy behaviour to succeed in games (and infinite play once the patterns are learned). Of course, games which were not played in real time but were instead turn based, such as many strategy and role-playing games, could more readily implement intelligence routines. The inevitable progression of computational capability has allowed for the utilization of increasingly complex intelligence routines. The first digital game – 1962 mainframe-based Spacewar – predated arcades and was an academic marvel of violent destruction as grad students and professors took turns lasering the living shit out of each other. Spacewar came to arcades in the form of 1971’s Galaxy Game and Computer Space. Many of the early and mid-70s arcade games such as 1972’s Pong, 1975’s Gun Fight, and 1976’s Barricade required two players to operate, as did Atari VCS launch title Combat. As computer hardware continues to develop, digital game players have continued to engage in multiplayer mayhem, although in the 1980s and early ‘90s competitive social gaming occurred more often in arcades than in the home. The release of Doom in 1993 and Warcraft in 1994 inaugurated a new era of competitive multiplayer gaming, a phenomenon centred on networked digital computers and thus unavailable to consoles, which were limited to fight games until the release of Halo on the Xbox in 2001. For most people, multiplayer digital gunplay is a 2000's thing. Social gaming in the ‘80s and ‘90s was dominated by fight games.

Not every threeway goes according to plan

So you kick and punch your friends to beat and humiliate them for hours of joyful play. Most everyone likes that. My brother and I certainly did, at least a few thousand rounds in International Karate+. We never did fight all that much IRL, at least in the ‘punch that bastard’ kind of way, or more accurately we stopped fighting once my little brother got big enough to punch me back. “Just hit him, he’ll stop,” my Dad always told him when he cried about me bullying him for toys or the TV remote or just because teenage boys try being assholes before hopefully figuring out other strategies. And so one day at the age of twelve and a height over six feet he did punch me back and it hurt so I stopped being a low-level dickneck bully. Fights became verbal, markers of quick wit with a touch of emotional abuse, more like the verbal swordplay of the Monkey Island games than anything approaching real violence.

the sound effect is pain

Videogame fighting was a good release for us, and so we moved on from International Karate to Palace Software’s amazing Barbarian and Barbarian II (which uses the two-player combat style for a one-player game), published by Epyx as Death Sword and Axe of Rage respectively in North America, but nobody bought or pirated those versions because everyone in North America was apeshit Nintendo and the most widely-pirated software came from European cracking groups. Barbarian was amazing not only because of the amazingly cheesy mid-80s fantasy cosplay box art (cleaned up for America, of course), but also because you could decapitate your opponent at any time, bypassing their health meter. A grumpy lizard would then swear at you before cleaning up the corpse and kicking the head off-screen. Slick shit. Somehow I could destroy my brother at this game, which gave me an unfounded confidence betrayed by the next decade of fighting each other.

With occasional diversions into Thai Boxing (which was amazing because between rounds your trainer would clean up your bloody, broken face like a window washer), Knight Games, and the brutally hilarious Blood ‘N’ Guts, my brother and I chopped off each other’s heads well into 1991 before the Street Fighter II arcade machine came out and everybody lost their collective shit for the next decade of game design clones. There was a very brief interest in Tongue of the Fatman, largely because of the box art and surreal fighters, but the game itself was kind of shit. After SF2 every fight game used combo moves, hopefully dozens of them, and allowed for character selection from a collection of mutant cartoon weirdos and psychopaths. Of course, as consoles began to totally dominate the digital game market by the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, computers suddenly weren’t the best place for fighters. Other than decent SF2 and Mortal Kombat ports, the only decent fighting game to come out for computer systems in the ‘90s was the excellent manga-inspired giant robot fighter One Must Fall 2097, a shareware title which thoroughly outclassed its big-budget corporate competition by incorporating equipment upgrades and RPG-style skill system elements.

It was with the robots that my fights with my brother ended: a Tuesday in September 1995, just back from school, and my brother challenged me in OMF2097 with a new joystick he picked up. Overconfident from almost a decade of punching my brother’s virtual face really murdered, distracted from videogames by a bullshit sixteen-month attempt at being a musician in a string of unheard weirdo bands, I took up his $10 challenge that he could beat me left-handed with his eyes closed and turned away from the screen. Of course you can’t win, fucker. I’ll destroy you in 90 seconds or less you dumb... and I lost without landing a punch in slightly more than thirty-one seconds. Pay me, bitch! was the last thing I remember before figuring out that in addition to being blind and handicapped my brother was also drunk and realizing suddenly that I actually hate motherfucker fight games.

politics is not the time for team sports

For a game with such grand significance, politics sure is complicated isn’t it? Here we are with another election and our five teams have taken the field. Do you support red, orange, green, french, or blue?

In the various media, we hear opinions about who we should support and how doing so will serve the greater good of the country. Most of what is expressed avoids rational argument in favour of emotional commitment. However, one message particular to this election is often discussed in the popular media, although the significance remains debatable. In this capacity, I join the chorus of dissent against the governance of the Progressive Conservative party. Under Harper’s leadership, the foundation of the Conservative ideology has shifted. The party has gone from attempting to maintain the fiscal and operational integrity of Canadian institutions to one which in attempting to pass ideologically-motivated legislation seeks to undermine those very same institutions.

Despite the numerous controversies which Conservative actions have created, I have noticed a disturbing rhetorical trend in conversations with friends and acquaintances who are planning to support the Conservatives on May 2. Usually the debate will begin when I question them as to why they want to vote for their Conservative MP. The answer they provide is always about Stephen Harper. He’s better than the other leaders, they say. I’ll point out that Conservative policies have entirely betrayed the fiscal responsibility which the Conservatives unwaveringly champion. Some of the Conservative supporters to whom I speak recognize this problem. They also frequently disagree with the social, environmental, foreign-affairs, law enforcement, and human rights policies which the Conservatives have promoted or legislated for over the last five years.

Invariably, I am saddened at the end of our chat. After I have presented – to the best of my graduate-school-trained abilities – rational, empirical data which proves with little doubt that what the Conservatives say about their position on the economy or health care or crime is wrong, supporters will respond “Ya, I know. But I can vote Conservative without supporting all of their beliefs. It’s important to show your support. And anyway, our leader is better than yours.” Fuck, here we go.

Politics is different from sports, where faith unsupported by reason has no consequence. Let’s say that you are a Leafs fan. Year after year you pour money, time, and tears into your team they still end up one of the worst teams in the league. Fans are clearly being gouged with high ticket prices while the owners and management enjoy the massive financial success of the team. Regardless of data which clearly demonstrates the futility your remaining a fan, you will likely continue to support the team. Frankly, nothing really that bad happen in the world when a shitty sports team being supported. After all, at the end of the day it’s just a game on TV. Even when the Leafs play terribly year after year and show little interest in improving their game in order to provide their cheering fans with actual results, you can hold your head up high and say “The Leafs are the best team in the league.” No harm, no foul.

With politics, another game is being played, even though like hockey it is largely a phenomenon of television. If a shitty political party maintains its support, then harm will in fact be done. Under the Conservatives, for example, institutions will likely disappear in the name of “cutting the fat” and “reducing taxes”. The cost of living will raise for the poor and the middle-class, while the services available to them decline or disappear. Pubic wealth represented by institutions such as education and health care will be diminished while private wealth will be enriched as corporations take over governmental services and raise prices to generate profits.

It is a predictable irony that a government in the age of transparency demands the privilege to conceal itself from the public, and one which should not be tolerated. History has taught that such privacy is the endgame for morality in governance. Frankly, it’s time to stop supporting the notion of a singular prime minister leading the country to greatness. Canada is a Parliamentary democracy, not a Prime Ministerial one. By this I certainly don’t mean to diminish the office of the Prime Minister. I mean to suggest that there is an element to Quebec politics that all of Canada needs to learn. Quebec tends to elect strong parliamentary representatives to represent their interests in parliament. It is time for Canadians across this country to support their parliamentary officials, and not listen to any Prime Minister who views parliament with contempt. If this means that you honestly vote Conservative, fine. But know that the Conservatives have demonstrated that won’t play with parliament and that they find the opinions of Canadians as represented by the politicians to be irreleant to governance.

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats are running scared

I am a regular supporter of the TiCats, and dreamed of playing on the team through my football-playing youth. I plan on attending this Saturday's game, and look forward to a Cats victory.

However, I am deeply saddened by the manner in which the TiCats organization is bullying the city over the new stadium. I have lived for most of my life in this city, and have worked diligently in the arts and education communities to help the city to succeed. The East Mountain stadium is a step in the wrong direction, for numerous reasons having to do with the quality of life in the city, the continuation of the revitalisation of businesses downtown, and the need for our social infrastructure and development plans to move away from the 'sprawl' mentality which is completely unsustainable.

I noticed that a 'rally' is being held today at Carmen's banquet centre (who would be the only beneficiaries from East Mountain outside of the TiCats). However, it seems that this is a limited seating event which required an RSVP. Such does not a rally make, but rather an instance of people agreeing with each other without having to face opponents. The East Mountain plan was pushed through at the last minute to sideswipe City Council and avoid debating the severe shortcomings of the proposal relative to the City's interests. Furthermore, the TiCats have not provided empirical figures demonstrating that West Harbour will fail. Consequently, the only conclusion a reasonable person can reach is that the TiCats are scared of allowing the benefits of East Mountain to speak for themselves. Instead, they use bully tactics to get their way in the face of concerted grassroots opposition. Their way IS the highway in this instance.

Personally, I feel that the Stadium would be best located near Confederation Park. Given the options of East Mountain or West Harbour, the residents and city of Hamilton will only benefit from West Harbour. The reason that the TiCats want East Mountain is so that they can monopolize the incidental profits from games -- parking, concessions, merchandise, etc. Public money will be spent on the stadium, and it should not be used to support private industry in this manner. Public money needs to be spent in the interests of the public. The public is interested in West Harbour.

Our City Our Future

Hammer City Roller Girls

Note: this article was not published by View magazine on or around July 20, 2006.



Sometimes you just have to hit a girl.

Or, at the very least you have to make sure that if she’s jamming for the other team in a bout, you give her a solid check to keep her from coming straight up the outside lane.

If that last statement is foreign to you, then obviously you missed the February issue of View which introduced Hamilton’s rapidly growing Rollerderby scene. To catch up: two teams of rollerskaters jostle for position within a scrum to allow a lead skater who scores for one team or the other by passing blockers and lapping the whole pack as many times as they can within a two-minute jam.

At its core, the sport combines elements of hockey, rugby, 70s kitsch burlesque, a little roll-bounce, and the bitchslapped soul of rock. Which means a quickly paced game in which some people might get hurt. And that will only make them angrier, since all of the athletes will be wearing really cute uniforms that bring out the best in a roller skater.

Currently, the burgeoning Hammer City Roller Girls league contains the Hamilton Harlots and the Steeltown Tank Girls. While two teams might seem a limitation, the proximity of teams in other leagues along with the half-dozen new faces seen at each practise suggest a bright future for the sport. If you consider that two teams emerged for this relatively new sport in half a year, the promise for an eight or ten team southern Ontario league cannot be too distantly realized.

This Saturday night at Central Arena in Burlington, the Harlots and the Tanks will go head to head for the first time with their holds no-barred. Practises have so far been rowdy affairs, with injuries and retribution equally meted out. With sponsorship from the Steamwhistle brewery and local bands Sons of Butcher, The Orphans, and The Sam Lawerence 5, you can be sure that your beer and rock needs will be met.

Tickets are $10 ($15 if you want to catch the bus from Corktown), and are available at Reigning Sound, the Corktown, or online. The ticket price includes admission to the after-party at Corktown featuring Toronto punks The Screwed.

Hammer City Slam
Saturday July 22, 7pm
Central Arena, Burlington.

women: good fundamentals, bad show(man)ship

It seems that women's rights are becoming more of an issue internationally. In a nod to the Christian fundamentalism that is sweeping the United States like a Manitoba brush fire, Japan seems poised to introduce legislation which would restrict a woman's right over her own reproductive capacity. The neat thing is that in order to accomplish this, the Japanese constitution has to be changed to get around that whole human equality thing that plagues every good fascist. Now that sounds a little familiar, doesn't it? Unlike the US however, in this case there's no religious dogmatism, but rather nationalistic pride. A good woman is a good country, they say.

Are certain men in power really that scared of the genetic information that is missing on the Y-chromosome? I know it doesn't produce like the X does, but should we really be scared of two little Xs cohabiting the same body? [Christians who learn a bit of dimestore science quickly point out that XX is really really close to XXX, while XY cannot be turned into anything so rude]

Maybe that Jim O'Rourke song was more prophetic than once I thought. "Women of the world, take over. Cuz if you don't the world will come to an end. And it won't take long."

Forget Middle-Eastern oil dependency, the true battleground of the 21st century will be internal. The "seed of creation" (such a scary scary place for fundies...) will be Ground Zero.



It doesn't help the cause that so many otherwise progressive women's research and health groups appeal either to frilly, soft, Victorian symbolism of purity and innocence like this:


"Women's Wellness Program" @ the Stanford School of Medicine

or Hellenic stoicism (good women are supposed to silently bear the burdens of their sex)

"Defining Women's Health" @ Harvard University, 2002
or the flakey, Earth-Goddess imagery made popular in the 1960s

"The Everychick"

I myself prefer a more militant approach, and maybe we should all co-opt a Herstory logo to demonstrate to these scared bigots that women do not actually go quietly into the night.

Print the .jpeg below and put it on a t-shirt, then punch a dude in the face. Or better yet, hit him where he's hitting you, right in the junkpile.