Before John Romero became an epic game developer and all around awesome guy, he was a kid.  “A very smart kid,” as Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo puts it.  He was also a gamer who loved what he played and wasn’t afraid to let developers know it.  In this letter from 1985, published yesterday by Kotaku, a young Romero told Jordan Mechner exactly what he thought about Karateka.  Especially cool was Romero’s letterhead:

Em is the former editor-in-chief of A2Central, as well as a blogger and rescuer of classic manuals and books.