About King's Knight

King's Knight is one of the pre Final Fantasy games and looking at screenshots you might get the opinion that this is a typical action-adventure in Legend of Zelda style. But it is not. It is a vertical scrolling shooting game and a bit unusual. That's because you are controlling four different characters. The first four levels are training stages for each of the characters. In these training stages you have to upgrade your characters by collecting powerups which give you better defense, shooting, speed or jumping abilities as well as extra magical abilities. Nearly everything is hidden beneath rocks, buildings or trees, which can all be shot down. As more powerups you collect as easier will be the fifth and final stage. In the fifth stage you control all of the surviving characters simultaneously, being able to switch the lead character at some points. For a shooting game this feels very strange and ends up less interesting as it might sound. Graphics, music and controls are average and must have felt rather unimpressive when it was released three years after the initial Japanese release in the US in 1989.