King's Knight (NES) Walkthrough
2King's Knight is a scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Square for the Nintendo Entertainment System and MSX. The game was released in Japan on September 18, 1986 and in North America in 1989. It was later re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in Japan on November 27, 2007 and in North America on March 24, 2008. This would be followed by a release on the Virtual Console in Japan on February 4, 2015, for 3DS and July 6, 2016, for Wii U.
The game became Square's first North American release under their Redmond subsidiary Squaresoft, and their first release as an independent company. The 1986 release's title screen credits Workss for programming. King's Knight saw a second release in 1987 on the NEC PC-8801mkII SR and the Sharp X1. These versions of the game were retitled King's Knight Special and released exclusively in Japan. It was the first game designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi for the Famicom. Nobuo Uematsu provided the musical score for King's Knight. It was Uematsu's third work of video game music composition.
============================================================
PLOT
============================================================
King's Knight follows a basic storyline similar to many NES-era role-playing video games: Princess Claire of Olthea has been kidnapped in the Kingdom of Izander, and the player must choose one of the four heroes (the knight/warrior "Ray Jack", the wizard "Kaliva", the monster/gigant "Barusa" and the (kid) thief "Toby") to train and set forth to attack Gargatua Castle, defeat the evil dragon Tolfida and rescue the princess.
============================================================
GAMEPLAY
============================================================
King's Knight is a vertically scrolling shooter, where the main objective is to dodge or destroy all onscreen enemies and obstacles. Various items, however, add depth to the game. As any character, the player can collect various power-ups to increase a character's level (maximum of twenty levels per character): as many as seven Jump Increases, seven Speed Increases, three Weapon Increases, and three Shield Increases. There are also Life Ups, which are collected to increase the character's life meter. There are also Life Downs which should be avoided. Other onscreen icons can affect the stage, such as hidden cave entrances/exits and a "secret revealer", which reveals hidden stones that block progress. Finally, there are four types of elements to be collected in each level, which are vital to the completion of the last stage.