King’s Field IV was developed and published by FromSoftware in Japan in 2001 for the PlayStation 2. It was later released as King’s Field: The Ancient City in North America in 2002, and in Europe (as simply King’s Field IV) in 2003. It is another first-person RPG and is the fourth and final game in the King’s Field series.
Tag Archives: maze
King’s Field III, PlayStation
King’s Field III is the second sequel in FromSoftware‘s classic first-person RPG series and was first released in Japan in 1996. It was published in North America by ASCII Entertainment under the title of “King’s Field II” (because the original King’s Field was only released in Japan).
For my money, King’s Field III is the best of the three PlayStation King’s Field games, with larger, more interesting environments, and a bigger scope than the previous two games. The graphics are still borderline laughable, and the controls are still cumbersome, but the gameplay has evolved reasonably well in the space of a couple of years.
King’s Field II, PlayStation
FromSoftware‘s King’s Field II was initially released in Japan in 1995 and it is another first-person RPG with open world exploration, dodgy graphics and challenging combat. It was later published under the title “King’s Field” by ASCII Entertainment in North America and Sony in Europe in 1996, which does cause some confusion as the western titling ignores the actual first game in the series. For clarity: the official English language “King’s Field” is actually King’s Field II – the sequel.
King’s Field, PlayStation
With Elden Ring currently wowing gamers I thought I’d take a look at the series that began FromSoftware‘s journey into the action RPG genre, and that would be King’s Field – released in Japan only in 1994 for the Sony PlayStation – and, to be honest, it couldn’t be any further removed from Elden Ring in terms of presentation…
I’ve played a lot of RPGs in my time, and I would go so far as to say that it’s my favourite genre of video game, but King’s Field came as a bit of a shock to me. Yes, King’s Field was an early 3D RPG on the PlayStation, releasing the same year as the PS1 was launched, but it post-dates Ultima Underworld by two years and is archaic in comparison.
Fred, ZX Spectrum
Written by famous Spanish software house Indescomp, Fred is a scrolling platform/maze game where you control a cartoon Indiana Jones-type character plundering treasures from an Egyptian tomb, while avoiding contact with ghosts and mummies.
Fred was first released in 1984. In its native Spain the game was published by Investronica, while in the UK and other parts of Europe the game was published by Quicksilva.
Dark Chambers, Atari 7800
Dark Chambers is a one or two-player maze/action game that was directly influenced by Dandy, in that it was originally written by John Howard Palevich – the creator Dandy – to further expand (or in this case: simplify) the concept of a multiplayer fantasy action game.
Gauntlet, Apple II
Before playing this game I’d read that the Apple II conversion of Atari‘s classic arcade game Gauntlet was a bit of a mess, but that didn’t quite prepare me for quite how bad it actually is…
Gauntlet, PC
The MS-DOS version of Gauntlet was published by Mindscape in 1988 and I’m not entirely sure who developed it, but it isn’t very good, the truth be told.
Gauntlet, Sega Master System
The Sega Master System conversion of Atari‘s classic arcade game Gauntlet is surprisingly good. For starters: it’s got the fastest fire rate of any of the home versions available, and it plays with a high intensity. This does, however, make the game especially challenging because the health of your heroes does tend to go down rather quickly.
Gauntlet, Atari ST
This 16-bit conversion of the classic arcade game Gauntlet was developed by Atari Games and was first published in October 1987 by Mindscape.
While, graphically, it’s not quite as lush as the original arcade game, it is very close to it and Atari obviously took care with how it looked and played when they translated it to the ST.
The King of Grabs 