Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
461A playthrough of Acclaim's 1990 platformer for the Nintendo Game Boy, Wizards & Warriors X: Fortress of Fear.
The NES Wizards & Warriors games were pretty good platform/adventure games. They were fairly simple, but jumping into stuff with your sword searching for boots, diamonds, or whatever else was pretty entertaining. The Game Boy version, Fortress of Fear, changes the formula up a bit, though.
We still play as Kuros, who still looks completely not like the Fabio stand-in that always graced the box art, but rather, like a medieval knight. I'm assuming he's a English knight, because (1) The game was developed by Rare, a British development house, and (2) Even with as low-detail as the Game Boy graphics tend to be, it looks like he's got St. George's cross on his shield (and it's hanging on a wall in the FORTRESS OF FEAR - scary!). Not that it matters, but I've always thought of him as a Brit.
That digression aside, just how is the game different from the NES trilogy? It's not an adventure/exploration game anymore. It's a straight and simple platforming game, and (for the most part) you walk left-to-right, slashing and stabbing at anything that moves and picking up goodies. There are some secrets treasure nooks to be found, but the goal is always far more direct here than in the NES titles. The graphics have been simplified, but they are all nice and big, and stand out fairly well during the action bits where the screen tends to blur. What little music there is is great, but it doesn't take long to reach for the volume after you've heard the same 15-second loop play for the seventeenth time during a stage.
What I think will be the most deciding factor for most people with Fortress of Fear is the difficulty level. There's nothing particularly thought-provoking going on, but it is absolutely relentless with the platforming demands it puts on you. Many of the jumps are just *barely* makeable if leap at the last possible second, which wouldn't be so bad on its own except that in the later stages, these leaps have to be made while dodging around swarms of enemies that'll kill Kuros in just a hit or two, and you often can't even see them until you're halfway through the jump. Practice, memorize, hone reflexes - the OG gaming formula is truer here than it is in most Game Boy platformers.
Some people will instantly be turned off by that, while others will appreciate the stiff challenge. If you enjoy games that make you fight tooth-and-nail every step of the way, it's hard to imagine many other Game Boy titles that feel 'real' Dark Souls from the 8-bit era. If you keep practicing, though, it's totally doable, just so long as you don't get bored and give up first!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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