The Single Button Joystick

2. Spirit of Excalibur (1990)

This game was one of my unresearched purchases of the early 90s. I got it purely because of the subject matter and a pretty badass box cover.

It wasn’t remarkable in any of the traditional departments. Average graphics that ran at a pretty choppy frame rate, clearly synthesised music that betrayed the game’s PC origins and a pretty average and unresponsive control system didn’t make the action parts of the game much fun to play. Set after the death of King Arthur, you play Constantine, a knight named his successor. It is up to you to get England working again.

I remember the manual was good at explaining how to play the game, but not what it wanted you to be doing. Because of the game being vague and perhaps my lack of thoroughness, I became stuck very early in the game and stayed stuck.

In the second episode of the game, the first being merely a tutorial, you must track down Sir Lancelot after he has gone into hiding. Before vast Saxon armies led by Morgan Le Fey’s children arrive and destroy London and Camelot, you must track him down and defeat the invaders with his help.

I couldn’t *#&^%$@ find him.

After three years of on and off playing, probably 50 hrs all up, I NEVER had a clue where to look. Because the game was pretty slow at loading and was unforgiving when it comes to losing a character even I gave up.  I found a walkthrough on the internet many years later; apparently you had to use a charm spell on some priest dude who tells you where Lancelot can be found. Pretty obscure!

This probably isn’t so much a case of me not understanding how to play a game, but understanding what the game wants from me. So demanding for so many years! I think it’s time to get WinUAE up and running and finish this old bastard.

It wasn’t the best game by any stretch of imagination.

But it had heart.

Spirit of Excalibur