Tecmo Knight Longplay (Arcade) [QHD]
850Game Info
---------------------------------------------------
Developer: Tecmo
Publisher: Tecmo
Year of Release: 1989
Game Review & Impressions
---------------------------------------------------
Also known as Wild Fang, Tecmo Knight is a side-scrolling fighting game created by, as the name implies, Tecmo. The gameplay is based very closely on Shadow Warriors/Ninja Gaiden, which Tecmo released a year or so earlier, but is no where near as entertaining. In fact, the only thing I can say that is really memorable about this is the level of gore - you literally punch heads clean off the enemies, which is rather amusing for the first 10 minutes or so, and the intro is rather shocking for its time.
The player has the ability to transform between a guy mounted on the shoulders of an even bigger guy, who pummels enemies with his oversized ham-like fists, and a mounted on the back of a tiger. The tiger is certainly the more agile of the two modes, and your attack -- a spiked ball on the end of a chain -- has extended reach, but does less damage. Each transformation consumes a number of stars, shown above the character bar in the bottom left of the screen, and must be topped up by collecting the skulls of defeated opponents. The third and final form, a fire-breathing wyvern, can only be activated by collecting a specific power-up dropped by enemies, something that appears so rarely that it might as well have been removed from the game altogether.
Tecmo Knight's worst crime is that it's simply too dull. The combat isn't rewarding and the difficulty too punishing to really recommend this, certainly when compared to Shadow Warriors. The initial novelty of the bestial enemies and gore wear thin before too long, and I doubt anyone will bother to continue beyond their initial credit.
Chapters
---------------------------------------------------
00:00 Attract mode
00:30 Stage 1
04:05 Stage 2
08:20 Stage 3
11:20 Stage 4
15:19 Stage 5
19:37 Final boss & ending
23:38 Bonus: Continue screen