So many enemies and no easy way to face them... (Amstrad CPC screenshot)
Camelot Warriors is a Spanish 1986 8-bit Platform Game produced by Dinamic Software and released for ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and MSX, where an unnamed hero has to find different objects from other time that have been scattered around the land of Camelot and return them to their custodies before they can do any harm. These objects are known as: The fire that doesn't burn, The Mirror of Wisdom, The Elixir of Life and The Voice from Another World. The hero will have to travel through the forest, the lake, the caves, and the castle of Camelot to bring these objects to their custodies so that they can destroy them.
Tropes
- Advanced Movement Technique: There's a bug in the scrolled screens in the Amstrad CPC version. If you put the warrior in the center and start shaking him left-right-left-right a few times, you can go to the next screen skipping all the way through the scroll.
- All There in the Manual: The name of the guardians you need to reach are only featured in the manual. The druid's name is Aznaht, the Neptune-like man is actually his brother Kindo, the dragon's name is Azornik, and of course the king of the castle is Arthur. The names of the lands are also featured in the manual. Averted with the names of the different objects to retrieve, which are actually featured in-game.
- Bewitched Amphibians: When the hero brings the Light that Doesn't Burn to the druid Aznaht, he transforms the hero into a frog, so that he can enter into the lake without drowning. As a frog, he'll have to go through the obstacles in the lake, retrieve the Mirror of Wisdom and return it to Kindo, the merman king. Kindo will then transform the hero back into a human and teleport him to his next destination, the caves.
- Denial of Diagonal Attack: The hero can only use his sword straight forwards for enemies in his line of vision. Short enemies out of his reach are therefore indestructible unless he can find a nearby platform on a lower level that makes that enemy reachable to the sword.
- "Instant Death" Radius: If the hero takes too long to give the elixir of life to the dragon, the dragon will throw a deadly flame of fire impossible to avoid.
- Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Several obstacles, like a lonely tree in the beginning, or a low lamp in the end, prevent the hero to move forward, even though similar obstacles are easily evadable in other locations.
- Malevolent Architecture: Some chandeliers are placed absurdly low so that if you make a bad jump and fall on the candles you lose a life on contact with the fire.
- Medium Blending: Most of the video game takes place in the form of static screens you must leave through any available exit (up, down, left or right) to get to the next screen, but there are some locations that feature a scrolled path the hero must walk until getting to the end and to the next screen.
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Nintendo Hard: Make one bad jump or get surrounded by two enemies coming from oposite directions at the same time, many times too small to be hit by your sword, and you're screwed up. Imagine this dynamic screen after screen, sometimes having to evade enemies or tramps calculating a jump by the pixel. Five lives are just not enough. - One-Hit-Point Wonder: If any enemy touches the hero, he'll lose one life immediately.
- Product Placement: The Elixir of Life is none other thing but a can of Coca Cola with the brand clearly visible. The cryptid name is a reference to Coca Cola's then famous slogan in Spain, "La chispa de la vida", "The spark of life".
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Scarborough Fair serves as soundtrack in the options screen for the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum. (The Commodore 64 and MSX versions feature an original soundtrack which reminds of ''Scarborough Fair'' too, nonetheless). The game itself has no music whatsoever, only sound effects.
- Twist Ending: Once the hero gives the last object to King Arthur in the Castle of Camelot to win the game... he wakes up in his bedroom to someone off-screen telling him it was all "a horrible nightmare", all the objects collected were actually pieces of furniture in the room, and to top it all, the hero really was Johny Jones, from Dinamic Software's Johny Jones trilogy of video games, Saimazoom, Babaliba and Abu Simbel Profanation.
- Video-Game Lives: The game gives you five lives, and there's no way to get extra lives anywhere, so you have to complete the whole game with these five lives only, and it's not easy.
