As The Klutz knight Sir Eric the Unready, you must embark on a quest to end all quests — save the princess from an evil plot to take over the kingdom! And, of course, earn some respect for yourself, you unlucky buffoon, you.
Boris Vallejo provided the awesome cover art.
This game contains examples of the following tropes:
- Affectionate Parody: Of knighthood in general and every fantasy trope even remotely applicable to it.
- All There in the Manual: The authors' preferred form of Copy Protection.
- Anachronism Stew: Bud the Wizard watches satellite TV in his tower. Hey, he's a wizard!
- And Now You Must Marry Me: Princess Lorealle's fate if you fail to rescue her in time.
- Batman Cold Open: The game's actual gameplay starts off with a short story about a Curse Escape Clause, see below.
- Black Knight: The Dreaded Knight of the Black Pauldron.
- Bland-Name Product: Quite a few of these."Welcome to Baskin Bobbin's!"
- Butt-Monkey: Eric The Unready himself and, by proxy, the player.
- Copy Protection: You have to buy a new suit of armour once the game starts proper, and the copy protection codes are your armour element sizes, which is All There in the Manual.
- Curse Escape Clause: A farmer applies for a knight's help in invoking this for his daughter, whom the local witch has apparently turned into a pig. Sir Eric steps up to the challenge. Averted when it turns out the girl was gone shopping. The pig enjoyed the kiss, at least.
- Distressed Damsel: The princess Lorealle The Worthy, who Eric is supposed to be saving.
- Double Entendre: Used repeatedly."She's a typical farmer's daughter with great-looking apples."
- Doomy Dooms of Doom: One of the many McGuffins Eric has to procure are The Bolt Cutters Of Doom!
- Edible Bludgeon: How Sir Eric (unwittingly) wins his fight against the dreaded Knight Of the Black Pauldron.
- Game Show: Eric will have to go through one during his adventures. As tradition holds, it's a mini-game!
- Grumpy Old Man: There are several old knights in the Knight Hall indulging in this."In our day we didn't have lances. We had long sticks that we sharpened with our teeth!"
- Holy Grail: Parodied with the Holy Grill.
- Knight Errant: Eric would very much like to consider himself one.
- "Knock Knock" Joke: There are several to be heard, all of them equally cringe-worthy.
- Love Goddess: You can meet the Goddess of Beauty among the many other expies of the Greek gods and goddesses you encounter. Good luck actually getting her to make love to you!
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: Used as a Running Gag, Eric ends up losing consciousness at the end of every day/chapter.
- Noodle Implements: Until you get around to using them, the McGuffins Eric is supposed to collect feel like a pointless assortment of random (if awesome) items. A pitchfork, a steak, a pair of bolt cutters, a crowbar and a crescent wrench? What?
- Only the Chosen May Wield: Parodied with the Banana In The Stone.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Follows the Western version of the dragon, obviously, with the simple addition of Attack Its Weak Point, which conveniently takes shape of a huge target visible on the dragon's body.
- Physical God: The Greek mythology is present in the setting, except that, well, it's an obstructive bureaucracy.
- Poor Man's Porn: There are some tittilating woodcuts of the famous singer Lily on sale at the fair.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: One of the examples from Grumpy Old Man talk."...so the rest of us could rush in to kill all the livestock and rape the women. Or was it the other way around?"
- Red Herring: The Wavenous Waven of Wangoon is set up as a monster you might have to defeat in your adventures. It's never mentioned again after the first time.
- Robe and Wizard Hat: Every wizard in the game has these. It's a fantasy parody, what did you expect?
- Shoulder-Sized Dragon: Eric slays a dragon, who then deflates to the size of a cigarette lighter and can be obtained as an item.
- Shout-Out: As usual with Legend games, these are numerous.
- Star Trek gets parodied with a mini-game: Swamp Trek has you leading a raft through swamps. Your crew includes Scottie the Scotsman, Speck the Vulcan, Bones the Skeleton and other caricatures of the original series' crew. Your mission? Free the Kirk expy from the Khan expy... except that Khan is also the split personality of Roarke, the proprietor of Fantasy Island, in a brilliant Actor Allusion for Ricardo Montalban.
- You get mistaken for the famous missing bard Elvis Priestley during your adventures.
- One of the chapters replicates the setting of Zork... in a Theme Park Version of its setting.
- Look out, a four-headed monkey!
- During the Swamp Trek sequence, you also visit Milligan's Island. Complete with a hefty supply of Funny Background Events based on the Gilligan Cut.
- The local knights are called the Knights of the Rhomboid Table. One of the game's bards also sings a song about "a knight's chaste love for the wife of the king".
- The entire library in the Agora sequence is full of literary Shout-Out material, though the main offender is The Joy Of Hex.
- A subtle one: the guy running Baskin Bobbin's is called Bobbin. One of the things Eric can say to him is that he "saw his mother out on the duck pond."
- There is a reference to Rich the Copy Guy.
- The Classifieds section of the newspapers is devoted entirely to this:
- Speech Impediment: Zig-Zagging Trope. The famous singer Lily sings normally, but slurs her Rs into Ws when speaking, which is responsible for the Wavenous Waven of Wangoon being... mispronounced. The game later hangs a lampshade on this with one of its many moments."As Lily may have sung, "Hit the woad, Jack, and don't you come back no mow!"
- Spinning Paper: Readable newspaper issues covering the publicized (and grossly misrepresented) events of the previous chapter serve as chapter breaks.
- Twisting the Prophecy: It is prophesied that Old King Fudd will die in seven days. When the time arrives Fudd faints, but later awakes and declares that he's free of the villain's mind control and thus it's his old self that died, not his true himself.
- Unicorn: Played straight, there are unicorns and they only tolerate the presence of female virgins. And therefore it's used as a non-virgin detector.
- World of Pun: Especially in the Swamp Trek section, with "Injuns" who proper the raft and the Captain's log being a literaly log of wood.
- Worst News Judgement Ever: Used in conjunction with Spinning Paper, see above.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Almost everyone speaks like this and this is used to provide the occasional No Celebrities Were Harmed name switch.
