King’s Knight
System: NES
Release Date: September 1989
Developer: Square
Publisher: Square
Genre: Shoot ‘em Up
Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuatsu Uematsu team together on King’s Knight, a vertical scrolling shoot ‘em up with light role-playing elements. The princess Claire has been kidnapped by a dragon and it’s up to four heroes to come together to save her. When you start the game, you take the role of Ray Jack, the knight. He’s strong and has a nice weapon. The weak wizard, Kaliva, is next. He shoots and moves slowly. The monster, Barusa is tough defensively, and relatively strong. Finally, Toby, the thief, is quick, but weak.
In each stage, you need to destroy the terrain to uncover powerups to raise your level. Up arrows and down arrows will increase and decrease your health. White spheres increase the power of your weapon. Boots increase your speed. Springs increase your jumping ability. Shields increase your defensive power. The pokeball looking thing reveals hidden obstacles. Each stage contains four elements that you want to collect in order to use a magic spell in the final stage. There are also hidden caves, which hold special items.
As long as you make it to the end of the stage with one of the characters, you’re fine. You need to have all four alive in order to beat the game, but when you die in the final castle, you can continue on the title screen by pressing the Select Button. There you can choose whichever characters you want to try again with. Keep playing until you have all four characters ready to challenge the dragon.
All four characters move as one in the final stage. The lead character is the only one who attacks and you can rotate whoever is in front by stepping on the different arrow squares. As long as you collected all four elements with the character, you can cast a spell one time. Only one seems to be absolutely necessary, but having them all makes your task a bit easier. Kaliva clears the lava of enemies, which I used early. Toby must have his magic, as he erases the monoliths that you can’t otherwise get past. Barusa turns into a dragon, which helps you clear an area of fire spitting statues. Ray Jack turns into a Pegasus, which is used to move past a difficult area, as well.
When you make it to the end of the castle, which will take you a million tries, or liberal use of rewind, you face off against the dragon. A dozen squares to spin you await, and they freeze you when you step on them, leaving you vulnerable to projectiles. Hopefully, you’ve collected all of the sword icons in the stage, because you need them all to slay the dragon. Shoot him enough with each character and you run him through and save the princess.
Graphics: 2.0
The graphical fidelity is fine, but starting to show its age.
Sound: 1.0
There’s little music to enjoy, and the sound effects are nothing special.
Gameplay: 1.5
The powerups don’t feel like they do anything, though there are some marginal improvements as you collect them.
Difficulty: 2.0
This is an incredibly difficult game to get through, but not particularly fair. Health recovery items become incredibly rare in the castle and bullets are everywhere.
Fun Factor: 1.0
I didn’t find this particularly fun as a kid and I didn’t like playing it very much today.
Overall Grade: 1.5
King’s Knight earns a C-. I don’t know why I had this game as a kid, but I did. I don’t recommend that you have it, though.