King's Knight

Well, mastered it as much as I'm likely to ever master it, anyway. I beat it years ago, either as a child or a teenager, but generally after beating it, I'd put it away and not play it again for years at a time. Now, lately, I've finished maybe 5 or 6 times within the past couple of weeks.

Again, I don't think it's a bad game. Mediocre, maybe, but not bad. Now, I know a lot of people say things like, "This game is just average" about terrible games, where the only thing you can say in their favor is that they're not like Ikari Warriors on the NES. But I'm serious - I'd say King's Knight is better than, say, Super Mario Land. At the very least, it's somewhat original and challenging.

So, here's some pictures from the game. I didn't get many pictures from the first four stages because there wasn't, imo, much to comment on.

As you can see, I got two characters to level 19, and two to level 20 this time I beat the game. I don't really give a crap about "finding everything" in treasure hunt games, so I probably won't bother trying to find the last things for the other two characters (although I beat the game recently with Barusa at level 20).

This picture shows two enemies which remind me of oatmeal cookies. It also has one of King's Knight's few cases of atmosphere - you can see monster footprints track across the screen.

This pteradactyl is the miniboss for all of the first four stages of King's Knight. It's pretty easy. It can be a pain in the ass to beat it with Barusa IF you haven't yet found the weapon power up that precedes this miniboss, but if you've found it, it's not painful.

This is one of the few parts of legitimate challenge in King's Knight. All of the first four stages have a hidden cave, where you find the B type magic. They share some similarities; in particular, they all end with the same miniboss. But Toby's is probably the most challenging. Those statues that line the walls spit fire out that you have to weave through, and ghosts fly around and shoot those blue circular bullets at you.

Okay, the final stage. This is near the begining, of course. See that lion statue? Well, the various statues in this stage are weak against a particular hero. The lions are weak against Kaliva, the wizard who's in the lead. Just the same, even with the strongest character (and with that character fully powered up!), they take a lot of hits - and King's Knight doesn't have decent autofire. So, I spend most of this stage pounding the fire button with my index finger, because my thumb can't fire rapidly enough.

Also note how big a target the four characters you control make.

Here is where you use the first magic spell - Kaliva's spell to kill the enemies in the water (or lava?). This is, apparently, the only spell you don't need to beat the game.

At this point, walls come up when you come near, forming a maze (Those white jawa-looking things can fly through the walls) At the end of the maze, a solid wall appears. The only way through is to use Toby's magic to destroy the wall.

This is where you use Barusa's magic, to turn yourself into a dragon (it's that white thing in the middle of the screen), which makes you invincible, and allows you to just fly over all the dangers here.

This part (and the part that just precedes it, following using Barusa's magic) is probably the best part in the game. See those little blue guys that kind of look like knights? Well, they can swarm the screen, and then flood the screen with blue bullets. But you can prevent that by shooting them before they pose much of a danger.

We're getting close to the end now. That statue on the far right is weak against Toby, but we won't be killing him - I'm taking the left path. I also need those arrows to flip my party around so Ray Jack is in the lead - I'll be using his magic next.

And this is Ray Jack's magic in action. It turns him into an invulnerable white horse. But, he can fire in this form, unlike Barusa's dragon. Now, after this part, there are some statues which are weak against Kaliva or Toby, not Ray Jack. Well, at first I thought I had to use Ray Jack against them anyways, 'cause I'm a horse, and I actually did beat the game with that method. But it sort of relies on luck to do it that way.

But you CAN switch Toby in the lead, even as a horse! That graphic freak-out of the horse is my party rotating, even though it's a horse!

I personally don't believe it's possible to get through this part without being a horse - there's just way too much fire going between those lines of statues. Of course, it doesn't matter, because you can be a horse here. Once you pass the fire, your magic wears off. You can hang back here and kill two statues on the right side before the magic wears off.

And here we are, King's Knight's final boss! I've cleared the screen of some party-rotating arrows, before the boss became active, to get them out of the way. You have to hit the boss so many times with each character to kill it.

And, as you can see, I've killed it!

Now, revel in the crappiness of this game's ending!