Duel of the Games #2 - Knight Lore vs Head Over Heels
Following the Sabre Wulf vs Atic Atac poll, here's another heavyweight "battle":
Knight Lore vs Head Over Heels
My vote goes to Knight Lore, the original and best IMO.
[EDIT]That's not to say that HOH is crap - far from it, it's still a brilliant game.
Knight Lore vs Head Over Heels
My vote goes to Knight Lore, the original and best IMO.
[EDIT]That's not to say that HOH is crap - far from it, it's still a brilliant game.
Post edited by Daren on
Comments
Necros.
I've strong opinions about KL - technically superb on release, but aged terribly. Once you're over the "shock" of seeing isometric 3D graphics you're left with a simple collect-and-avoid-'em-up with plenty of repetitive back-tracking. And for an isometric 3D game, the isometric graphics are poorly presented compared to...
...Head Over Heels. Whilst the game is pretty linear (aside from being able to collect the first four crowns in any order together with a few different routes here and there), the game is slicker, clearer and more fun to play than KL.
Knight Lore was more pioneering (especially as it was actually finished before Underwurlde), but Head Over Heels has a much better control system, much funnier graphics, more interesting puzzles, and has stood the test of time better.
Modern gamers would get a lot more fun out of HoH than KL.
That might be the slight flaw in these kinds of VS threads, a lot of people love both games.
Totally agree with this, Knight Lore was the one which really amazed me when it first came out. Head over Heels i think was a better more advanced version BUT i just prefer the original. Some rooms are slow as anything as you enter but just the sound of that game instantly takes me back 20 odd years when i was first amazed by it.
Still play it a bit now, just like 20+ years ago i'll never complete it but just giving it a few minutes going to several rooms and being amazed by the graphics does it for me ! I know its not the Speccy but Monster Max by Ritman and co on the Gameboy Mono is a brilliant game also, Knight Lore/Head over Heels isometric game.
Indeed. It's not meant to be a speccy vs commode 64 type flame war. I love both games, I'd just like to know which people prefer and why. It's interesting to read why people prefer one game over another. And reading the arguments for HOH that Nick and yourself have put forward will probably lead me to loading up the game and having a right good play on it.
I think once i do a small chunk of it i'll want to keep playing but it just seems a huge huge game. Amazing anyone back in the day completed it without pokes/a map etc
* Get H and H together.
* Get H and H to the Moon.
* Get a single crown.
* Get four crowns.
* Get all five crowns.
It'll take you ages to get good enough to get a couple of crowns before running out of lives, so just concentrate on getting a single crown by going to each planet in turn in separate games.
I completed HoH, and found it thoroughly enjoyable. I really like the puzzles where Head and Heels have to co-operate with each other.
I haven't played Knight Lore yet (well apart from loading it up and having a quick look).
That's the only reason HoH got my vote, although I'm sure I'll really enjoy Knight Lore too if I ever get around to playing it.
I'd also like to play Batman at some point.
https://twitter.com/bobsstuffgames
https://www.facebook.com/bobs.stuff
http://www.bobs-stuff.co.uk
Batman's a great game, definitely worth checking out. It's one of the very rare times that having a licence hasn't discouraged the developers from making a really cracking game in its own right.
Even without the Batman licence, Batman (or whatever it would have been called) would still have been a huge hit, as HoH (with its very similar gameplay style) proved.
In fact I wish the game wasn't called Batman, because it deserves to be famous in its own right.
Yes, I usually shy away from big licence tie-ins myself, as I've been dissapointed with some really awful cash-in games in the past.
I take your point about wishing the game was called something else.
I agree this game remains great despite the licence. I've briefly played it a couple of times so far, but haven't got very far in it yet.
Havent you ever really tried Knight Lore then ? How come ? Were you a late user to the Speccy scene ? Just curious as to why you seem to imply you've never tried Knight Lore before
The 1986 "Batman" game has piss-all to do with the license anyway beyond a few graphical references. It's basically a pure Ritman & Drummond game that happens to have a licensed comic character as the main star. It should really be considered part of the unofficial series of Batman-Head over Heels- Monster Max.
Yes, I was very late to the Speccy scene. I didn't have one when everyone else at school did, as I had a VIC-20 bought cheap from a clearence sale, and then a second hand Acorn Electron and a ZX81. I was very happy with the computers I did have though, as many friends also had the same computers as me, but when the speccy started to eclipse all the others, I missed out on the C-90 copying frenzy of the time.
When I finally got my hands on a second hand Spectrum+ around 1989, unfortunately it had partially faulty RAM, so I could only play about three games on it. I think 16K games were allright on it.
I finally got my hands on a fully working +2 back around 1991, and that was great for a while hooked up to a CRT monitor, but since I already had an Atari ST by then, I'd already started to move over to emulation.
I own about 50 physical speccy cassettes, but 99% of the stuff I have ever played has been via emulation.
So from that point of view, I am very much a latecomer!
I agree, as for late games, Boovie is a personal favourite, although I always get stuck on level 15.
It was actually Sabre Wulf, not Underwurlde.
[/pedant mode]
Yeah, that's probably why Batman is so good for a tie-in game, they concentrated on making a great game and the presence or absence of the licence made no real difference.
Come to think of it, if a Batman fan had bought the game purely because they were expecting something to do with the comics/TV series, I suspect they would have been rather disappointed...
Well, I could be a pedant and say if it was finished before Sabre Wulf then it must also have been finished before Underwurlde... ;)
But you're right, I should have said Sabre Wulf.
How do you start the game ! Keep pressing every button and cant seem to start it !
I'm not sure either what the correct key is to get past that first screen.
So what I did was move the tape to the second program, which is the game itself, and load that.
Use 128K mode of course to get the excellent chip music.
I don't know what emulator you use, but for example on ZX Spin the easiest way to do it is to open the tape browser, and click on the second program before loading.
Anyway once I got to the game start screen, I just saved a snapshot to make it more convenient to play again.
From the game start screen, it is 'S' to start playing level 1, or 'V' to enter a password to the later levels.
EDIT:- The ingame keys are QAOP to move around, and I know you need a fire button for the later levels to fire a pellet, I think that may be 'M', but I haven't played it for a while, so am unsure about that key.
I've just realised, the ingame keys are all listed on the start screen. There are three different sets of keys you can use to play the game.
Necros.
http://pc.sux.org/tomcat/BatComputer.jpg
TC