International Karate +
1987 video game

International Karate +, stylized as IK+, is a fighting game written by Archer Maclean and published in 1987 by System 3 for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum. It is a successor to International Karate (1985). Activision published the Commodore 64 version in the US as Chop N' Drop.
Gameplay
Three karateka fight against each other on a beach, trying to be the first to score six points. After every two rounds, there is a bonus game which is either deflecting bouncing balls or kicking away bombs. The C64 version of the game only has the ball bouncing bonus game, and not the bomb bonus game. The game can be played by one or two human players; at least one fighter is always controlled by the computer. Unlike its predecessor, International Karate, there is only one backdrop, but different parts of the backdrop can be recoloured to several different themes by the players using specific keystrokes. The Amiga, Atari and C64 versions of the game (and possibly other versions, unconfirmed) had a number of "background antics", a Pac-Man would appear, a spider would descend, and a U-boat's periscope would occasionally be seen in the harbour. In addition, pressing a certain key or keys would cause the trousers of all three protagonists to fall down, after which they would do a double-take.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1666678. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1987 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “International Karate +” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.