Spellbound, ZX Spectrum

The second Magic Knight game by David Jones, released by Mastertronic Added Dimension at the budget price of £2.99 in 1985.

The screenshots shown here are from the enhanced 128K version, released in 1986.

Unlike its predecessor, Finders Keepers, Spellbound goes for a completely different approach to gameplay. You’re playing an adventure, basically, and the aim is to talk to characters, collect items, and use them to rescue your friend Gimbal the wizard.

You do all this via the ‘magic’ of a text-based menu system, which is not particularly intuitive, but works reasonably well.

The puzzles are infuriatingly obscure on the whole, but the character dialogue is sometimes quite funny and helps alleviate the frustration.

Music in Spellbound was provided by famed C64 musician Rob Hubbard.

The change in gameplay – to a menu-driven game – was kept for the remainder of the series. Two more Magic Knight games were to come: Knight Tyme and Stormbringer.

Magic Knight on The King of Grabs:
ZX Spectrum: Finders Keepers, Spellbound, Knight Tyme, Stormbringer,
Stormbringer Atari ST version