April 2, 2011
I should not openly disparage the graphics in early Rare-brand games because some of my earliest bad comics were about guys in armor standing on icicle covered platforms with diamonds floating around them who only didn’t look like Kuros
of Wizards and Warriors because I was incapable of drawing them that way. Also, the sequel Iron Sword heavily influenced how I drew clouds for years and some of that is probably still evident.
It also helped me get through Catholic school because it affirmed, for the time being, my hope that there was fried chicken in heaven.
I can say about Ironsword, however, that it was made by the Plok people and not the Battletoad people so it might not even count.
Also, I consider my ability to complete this game on a real nintendo machine one of my few decent video game accomplishments, and this was before I had useful facks from the internet
I shouldn’t have to make such a choice!
Well sometimes that’s just the way it goes, sonny mah boy!
PurpleSpace sez:
Iron Sword is also known overseas as “The Legend of the Jumping Knight Who Jumps Far Better Than Expected in Full Armor”; however, that name is too long despite being a better representation of what is actually found in the game.
Pines of the Appian Way sez:
Word on the street is that Kuros is a bum.
Ironsword was one of the staples of my childhood, but I never succeeded in completing it. Try as I might, I could never defeat the final boss(es). This was all the more galling considering they were miniature versions of the stage bosses, whose own battles were a complete and utter joke. But that’s old-style video game design for you, I suppose.
Zinkugel sez:
Purp:
It’s a very stupid game, I won’t argue that. And much like other Pickford/Rare games, it is moderately impossible. However, unlike the first Wizards + Warriors outing (which is only completable due to the unlimited, unpenalized “continues”), its impossibility can be learned and worked around. And unlike PLOK, this doesn’t abruptly fall apart halfway through the game when suddenly all the surfaces have spikes or are sloped to make them unpleasant to jump on-to.
Pine:
Kuros IS a bum! You always remember the things that I do not.
Perhaps because there were so many innocuous foes that destroy Kuros in one blow –because the programmer
sforgot to make him momentarily invulnerable after taking damage– that the proper climactic battles decided they didn’t need to be so difficult. Nothing nearly so hard or frightening as the tiny skeleton that grows larger as it is attacked from the first game, certainly.The smallest form is most alarming, because it looks like it is wearing a either a navy cap, which I apparently have a strong aesthetic revulsion to, or worse, the hat of the guy on the Lipton Tea box which I was also terrified of around the same time, though primarily for the contrast of his greyscale portrait with the bright red and yellow box and his facial expression AND the hat and ARRHGHGHGHGHGH I’VE BEEN DRUNKEN. Luckily pausing covers up the sprites so I never noticed until now that the bones which are being thrown (naturally) resemble elongated backward ‘S’es.
I think the final fight music of Ironsword is wonderfully inspiring and matches the scene perfectly, as silly as it is, which is not something I can always say.
Lemon Meringue Pie, PLC of Lemon Meringue Pie Corp. sez:
This month whenever I scrolled down the main page of this internet journal after checking for updates, every time I saw that screenshot of Iron Sword I was convinced the knight was walking around in a yellow cave, the background being the floor of the cave, and the game alternated between Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts style sidescrolling and Zelda style dungeon crawling. However now I have just realised that he is not in a cave at all is in fact standing on a yellow cloud.
Zinkugel sez:
My comment about “fried chicken in heaven” is meant to be justified by the cloud imagery, clouds being what meteorologists have proven heaven exists and is comprised of. It would be a silly comment, otherwise!
Oh dear, it would not become the Jumping Knight to crawl in caves. I have seen a quantity of games with pseudo overhead view hub areas and with corny side view action zones, but never the opposite, and I think I would be disappointed if I did! I can say that I have been unsure of the nature of a 2D game based on screen-shots.
The only one I can think of right just now was some gameboy game reviewed in Nintendo Power magazine, whose name eludes me, but it involved a series of minimally detailed zeld-esque linked rooms for the player to travel through and I guess when a boss foe appeared the floor turned black, like in Blaster Master, so the player figure suddenly appeared to be floating in space, so I thought he must be jumping and that the perspective must have changed. Due to the tiny sprites it wasn’t clear what the figure was doing from one picture to the next nor what the vaguely mechanical boss creature was, and the zelda perspective often takes liberties with how the characters are shown relative to their surroundings anyhow. Strange how rarely it occurs to us that Link seems to be reclining and sliding around on the floor rather than walking. I hope this has been helpful for you!