THE GOOD:Plenty of weapons
Magic armour, which gives every weapon a special attack
Great music
THE BAD:
Nothing
SUMMARY:
This game was the sequel to Ghosts 'N goblins and was originally an arcade game. You play as Arthur (as in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table) and you have to rescue a damsel in distress. Fighting through 5 levels of side scrolling action you have to fight your way past dragons, skeletons and wizards.
When you start the game off you are in silver armour and have a sword. You can throw your sword left, right, up and down (if you jump up first) and you can throw from a standing, crouching or jumping position. You can throw up to two swords on screen at once and only when one disappears, either by hitting an enemy or going off screen, can you throw another. There is no ammunition limit in this game. There are magical chests dotted around the levels. When you break these open with a weapon they can contain either a wizard, armour or a weapon. The wizard will cast a spell and turn you into a duck if you're wearing armour or an old man if you aren't.
One hit will cause your armour to fall off and you have to run around in your boxers, which is pretty funny. While like this, if you break a chest open it will usually contain silver armour. But when you are wearing this armour and you break open a chest, it might contain golden armour. While wearing this armour your weapon has a special attack, different for each weapon. To use it, press and hold the B button and when the bar at the bottom of the screen is full you release the B button and the special attack will happen. This attack can come in very handy.
There are 6 weapons for you to use in this game – the sword, power sword, fire water, axe, discs and daggers. The axe will travel through enemies but you can only throw one at a time. Unlike the others, this weapon goes diagonally up as well as across in the direction you've thrown it. The fire water is so named because it possesses properties of both. It's blue and when you throw it in front of you it spreads like fire. The discs are unique because when thrown from a crouching position it will skim along the ground. The daggers are the best weapon in the game because you can throw 3 of them at a time instead of 2. The special ability produces a duplicate of yourself, which effectively doubles your offensive power momentarily.
Each level is basically divided into three parts. Depending on where you get to in the level will determine which part you start from if you lose a life. You will restart at the start of the level, the middle of the level or at the boss. Once you defeat the boss of the level you get a key to enable you to open the door to get to the next level. You start the next level with what you had at the end of the previous one. If you have no armour then you get silver armour. There is also a time limit for each section and if you run out of time then you lose a life. Although one thing about this game which I think is fairly unique is that you have infinite continues. Given enough time anyone can beat this game. I don't recall seeing this in many other games from the time that I played.
The music and sound effects in this game suit it very well. You can listen to them from the options menu where you can also change the difficulty. There is also the option to have two people play this in a hot seat fashion. Once you beat all 5 levels your mission is not quite over. For reasons I won't say there's more to the game as you are not able to go behind the final door and face the end boss. During a speech in the game there is a typo in what is written on the screen where the person says "goodess" instead of "goddess" which is something that has always stuck in my mind somehow.
This game was my favourite for this console because of its medieval arcade action and good music. I can't think of anything bad about this game because I can play it at any time no matter what mood I'm in, which signifies that I think the game is almost flawless.
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