There's a lot of reasons to like fighting games; stimulating play, intricate mechanics, the colorful characters. I'll always be a fan of the more outrageous elements that have made the genre so memorable and has ingrained itself so much into my personality. Only a handful of times did video games ever take a true simulation approach to martial arts (whatever you consider offerings like Karate Champ), and one of those is the subject of this review. In one of the several major efforts to really make the combat sport kickboxing launch in the United States.

One would think that the United States' love of the chop-socky action movies would put something like Best of the Best: Championship Karate on the map. The problem was, boxing dominated the attractions, and without anything or any ONE star to truly market, kickboxing just never caught on. There was that scrub Bob Sapp, who despite his impressive size and seemingly intimidating presence, absolutely sucked as a pro martial artist in Japan, regularly getting knocked out more than a freshman frat boy after six rum and cokes. With the bombastic personalities, the brutality, and unbridled skills of American boxing, kickboxing was just too vanilla for us Yanks. 

The correlation, Best of the Best: Championship Karate was developed by Futura (which seems to be the only video game they've worked on, to my knowledge), makes an attempt at going for a methodical and respectable approach to martial arts. Unfortunately, unless you're an enthusiast in the sport, there's a good chance that this would have ended up as an accidental rental under the guise of it being something more user-friendly. The disappointment kicked in (rimshot) immediately for me when I realized it was NOT based on the Best of the Best film series. Really? You're just going to leave that money on the table? You have a chance to render Eric Roberts in all 16-bit glory, and you don't take that opportunity? Your day will come, Alex Grady...

The game itself is technically a remake of Panza Kick, which I vaguely remember seeing on TurboGrafx-16. Best of the Best was on a variety of home computers, MS-DOS, Amstrad CPC, and the Amiga. It was also heavily marketed as being one of the flagship pieces of software for the Sega Activator motion sensor controller, and when you look at the control scheme, even on the SNES version, that becomes very apparent, as the button mapping for certain kicks can be assigned to directional inputs. 

It doesn't play too bad, just takes some getting used to, as the properties for attacks, spacing, and defense have such unique properties. There feels like a mild delay and the hit cohesion is iffy. Just like any combat fighter, wail on your opponent until they fall. As mentioned, there's a wide variety of attacks, some acting as better knockdowns while others are best for creating openings throughout the bout. Trying to remember what's assigned to where became a bit of a chore. It's technically sound, and with some practice, the game is not hard to pick up. The training system does an adequate job of trying to sell the nuances of the game's combat. There's just no personality behind it. 

The graphics don't look as smooth as the PC counterparts here on Nintendo's platform, but are pretty good. The low resolution leads to sprites appearing on the grainy side, yet the roto-scoped style animation gives Best of the Best a little bit of style, so credit where it's due there. There aren't "characters", rather this kinda dogshit "create" feature that lets you make a fighter. I use this in the loosest sense of the phrase, as the face options range from criminal sketch artist rendering to half-microwaved Dolph Lundgren. I'll cut it some slack, as there isn't much reason to expect anything robust, but it's still on the sad side. 

While the animation is fluid, it's a jarring contrast to everything and everyone else on screen when the action gets going, because barely anything else actually moves. Aside from the fighters and the ref (the ref himself looks like he was pulled from a Merry Melodies cartoon from the 1950's), the movement is practically non-existent, as most of the game's art is rendered still shots. Every now and then, a crowd member will flicker into the screen, and it's such a burst of motion, it actually distracts me. 

Best of the Best is technically an alright game. It's fascinating to dabble with the mechanics, and the single player isn't too bad. If you're a kickboxing enthusiast, its attention to detail to martial arts may strike a fancy. And to be fair, this was pretty appealing for the time period. The knockdowns look cool, and the fluid animation doesn't really hamper the controls the way it plagues Shaq-Fu. The audio department, it fails in my eyes. The corner store OST jingle doesn't put me in the mind of hand-to-hand combat. May not pull one away from the tournament fighter heavy hitters like Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, Fatal Fury 2, or Mortal Kombat, but a solid contemporary.