Blade Warrior, ZX Spectrum

Codemasters‘ Blade Warrior is a late-era ZX Spectrum platform game that has just enough going for it that it’s still worth playing today. Maybe… Take a look and see what you think…

The game’s graphics are very good – they’re imaginative, precise and well-coloured – and the all-important platform game mechanics are also good, with responsive jumping and movement, and seemingly fair collision detection. Where Blade Warrior does trip up, like a lot of similar games, is with the level of difficulty. It’s another one of those incredibly unforgiving platform games that requires precise timing to make your way through dense patterns of insta-kill moving enemies. Not my idea of fun, but some people like that kind of thing…

The aim of Blade Warrior is to explore a series of individual screens and find and collect a sequence of important, named items, without touching anything deadly. The screens are all joined together Jet Set Willy-style, meaning that you can walk out of one screen and into another, if they’re connected. Unfortunately – also Jet Set Willy-style – the way you enter a screen is always remembered when you die, so it’s possible to get caught in an “endless loop of death” if you’re not careful (which happened to me in my first game of Blade Warrior). The item you’ve to collect next is shown in scrolling messages on the information panel, which is useful if you lose track (you will).

Different to Jet Set Willy – and to most other Spectrum platformers – is that there doesn’t seem to be any fall damage in Blade Warrior. As long as you land on something safe in the area below you, you’ll survive a long drop. Which surprised me…

One other memorable part of Blade Warrior is the sampled sound effect that the game plays when you die. The game loudly says: “Rest in peace!” in an English, male voice. It’s a gimmick that makes Blade Warrior stand out, and isn’t too grating that it quickly becomes tiresome.

Once you get over the initial shock of the inevitable series of quick deaths (as you work out how the game works), you’ll probably begin to realise that Blade Warrior is both playable and potentially absorbing. Again: like Jet Set Willy, Blade Warrior does at least provide a world that gives you a reason to want to go out and explore more of it.

One final note about Blade Warrior: the main character doesn’t have a sword; doesn’t find or even see a sword; never mind use a sword, during the entire duration of the game. There are no mentions of swords, nor of any other bladed weapons, in the game’s manual or storyline. You don’t have to re-forge a sword, or pull one out of a rock. So why the hell “Blade Warrior“? You’d be forgiven for expecting some sword action in a game called Blade Warrior… And you’d also be forgiven for being disappointed to discover that you don’t get a single second of sword fighting in this game… Talk about false advertising…

Note that you shouldn’t get this game confused with the 1991 game, also called Blade Warrior, which was created by Jason Kingsley and published by Image Works. This Blade Warrior was coded by Mark Rivers, with graphics by Antony Scott, and was first published by Codemasters in 1988. An Amstrad CPC conversion was put out the following year, in 1989, and that was the only other version of Blade Warrior released.