Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go through the ancient kingdom of Camelot while kicking serious ass as Percival, Lancelot, or even King Arthur? Well in 1991 Capcom helped us figured out how much ass these men could kick with the Arcade game Knights of the Round.
This poster kicks so much ass it instills fear into the hearts of mere mortals…and pussified wizards everywhere.
The story is as simple as possible, basically Arthur pulls out his sword Excalibur out of a rock, which makes him destined to take over as the King of England, so the magician Merlin makes him get two of his most trusted knights to go through killing everything in sight to eventually battle and take King Garibaldi down once and for all.
For the sake of this game I shall provide back-story to these characters too: Arthur being the main fucking man and all does not need any anything else said about him at this particular time. Which leads me to Percival who is the son of a blacksmith, and bigger than the other two selectable characters, and he also does the manliest thing possible for the time….he chooses not to fight with sword…but with a big ass battle axe that would make Gillus Thunderhead jealous. Finally there is Lancelot who has been traveling around all the countrysides trying to find a King that deserves his service…and he meets Arthur…and so let the bloodshed begin.
Like I stated previously, there is the sword in the stone let the bloodshed begin.
Alright this is a classic, beat-em-up and hack and slash with RPG leveling up added to the mix. Your character will obviously start at the level of 1 but you can max him out at 16 and even then that’s a damn hard task to pull off but it is very possible, and you do it by gaining EXP by killing things, collecting gold, and even eating food. Just like every other beat em’ up, each character has their ups and downs when it comes to speed, defense, and strength. You have Arthur who is the middle man of the group, he is level on everything and is the character I always choose to use because, 1:Anyone can dominate with him, because he is the perfect blend of speed, power, and defense. 2: He has a very good variety of attacks that can knock enemies down rather fast. 3: He is King Arthur…he owned the round table….he killed dragons, he is fucking sweet. Then you have Lancelot who is faster than Jesse Owens in his prime, but is pretty weak which can be a problem because it takes several more strikes with him than any other character to take down even the simplest of enemies. Third we have good old Percival, he is the strongest of the group but is slower than The Hulk, running through a puddle of molasses.
There are all three of our valiant warriors destroying everysingle body in the history of Olde England
Now I must admit that a lot of people have never played this game and that’s is a sad sad statement, because this game is easily in my top 10 beat em’ ups ever, hell its possibly good enough to even crack the top 10 of my favorite Capcom games of all time as well. The control to this game is perfect, you attack with a button and jump with a button…pretty standard and classic, and if you want you can proform a desperation move by hitting both at the same time which will knock any normal enemy and most bosses on their sorry asses as soon as it hits. Say you come across a chest and decide to break it open, you will either see food or gold….which you can then hit again to split it up into small portions so you are not such a selfish asshole while you play with your friends. If you are good enough you can actually hit back on the joystick as soon as your getting hit to completely block out, and cancel the hit the CPU tried to destroy you with and this even works on some boss attacks which is very good because without it you will be pumping money into this game constantly.
When it comes to the music, it is perfect as well. I mean honestly every single song from the very beginning select screen to the final credits just fits with what you would picture knights destroying the countryside to sound like. If the music sounded any different it would have taken this game down quite a few pegs in my mind, with a game of this magnitude you have to have music to match, and thank God Capcom always delivers on that aspect. The animation for this game is perfect, they hand drew every single sprite which is phenomenal, you honestly believe what you see would be what it looked like if you were able to time travel back to these times…although I don’t think people would look like cartoons.
Arthur at level 1, will stick fuck Scorn’s world up like there is no tomorrow.
The game has only 7 levels, but you have so many enemies (albeit most of them generic and pretty easy to kill) and magnanimous bosses that if you were to play this in the arcade, you will be pushing quarter after quarter into it. Honestly the boss for the 5th level Bulbars, is probably the hardest and has the best music in the game. He is like 10 feet tall, wears a metal breast plate with a skull on it, and carries a hammer that is basically a fucking anvil on a pole, and all he does is just slam it on the ground destroying your hopes and dreams. If you were to play this game in one sitting I’m going to say probably about 2 hours to 2 1/2 hours to beat it which honestly is not too bad for a beat em’ up. This game was eventually ported to the SNES and I have not played it but it seems from what I have seen that the SNES version is pretty good the only bad thing is that you cannot play with 3 players all at once, and to top that off the music somehow gets completely mangled which is surprising given the fact that its on the SNES which normally means that the music will be pretty damn close to the arcade counterpart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urbhp7u231s
Sadly I cannot find the Arcade version of the song, so I provide you with the SNES to prove to you how much a song that I actually like can sound like someone played it on a fucking keyboard from 1985.
Nevertheless, I would love to say that you would be able to find this in the arcade…but I guarantee that it is damn near impossible to find it anywhere, and if you do you have to play it you will not be dissapointed.
