Kung Fu Knights

Sinclair User

Overall 30%

Chris Jenkins 30%

Label: Top Ten Price: £1.99 Memory: 48K/128K Joystick: various Reviewer: Chris Jenkins It's an absolute natural for a game idea; combine the swords and sorcery of something like Magic Knight with kick-'em-up action of a martial arts game. It's a pity Kung-Fu Knights didn't turn out anything like it. Basically we're talking colourless backgrounds, poor sprite masking and lousy collision detection. Your knight minces from left to right across a scrolling background consisting of battlements, portculises, embrasures (slitty windows to you or me) and enemy knights. From the battlements pour down arrows featuring the worst sprite masking I've ever seen (see picture for the horrible details). You don't have much chance to avoid them, but since all that happens when you lose a life is that your sprite flickers a little, you won't really know when you've been killed. You can launch arrows with a peculiar twist of the arm (but only if you're standing still). The arrows seem to peter out before they hit anything half the time, but if you're lucky you might stick a soldier or a big woofy hound. A pretty nothing game, then, because while the backgrounds are reasonably nice, the animation and gamepiay are pooh.

Your Sinclair

Overall 4/10

Nat Pryce 4/10

BARGAIN BASEMENT And down in the basement this month, it's Nat Pryce - himself available at 20% discount on alternate Thursdays. Any offers? KUNG FU KNIGHTS Top Ten Software £1.99 Reviewer: Nat Pryce I wasn't given any instructions with this game, so I won't be able to waffle on about the plot and saving the world single handedly, as I am wont to do. But I'll tell you what you must do in the game instead. You play a knight in a suit of armour who runs rightwards along a castle, shooting animals and dodging arrows. Where the Kung Fu bit comes in is beyond me! It looks quite good in the screenshot, doesn't it? Well, in practice it doesn't quite come off. I think that's because it is a little too difficult; the arrows are hard to dodge and hardly anything happens when you lose a life, so you don't notice until the game ends. I cannot recommend this. It is unplayable and unaddictive.