What is "karnov"

is a 1987 platform arcade game. It is the debut of Data East's mascot of the same name. After Data East became defunct due to bankruptcy in 2003, Paon, a company comprising former Data East staff, acquired the rights to Karnov, along with multiple other Data East games.

In the game, players take control of the title character , or "Karnov" for short. Karnov is a strongman popularly illustrated as being from an unspecified part of the Soviet Union's Central Asian republics as shown on the original arcade flyer and again in Karnov's Revenge.

As Data East's mascot, the title character was reintroduced in many other Data East games, including Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja in which he played a boss in the first level. Karnov later appeared in the 1994 Neo-Geo game Karnov's Revenge. This game, also known as Fighter's History Dynamite, is not a sequel to the original Karnov, but to Fighter's History, a competitive one-on-one fighter in which Karnov was the final boss.