Wizards & Warriors

[Anonymous No.8020361]

I absolutely love these games despite their obvious flaws. When I was a kid I traded my NES Tetris for Ironsword and Castlevania without regret (back then I used to think Ironsword would be a huge franchise and Castlevania not so much, weird huh?)
I never did manage to get my hands on the 3rd one so I have no opinion on that one.

[Anonymous No.8020368]

>For the game's cover, Acclaim hired Italian male model Fabio Lanzoni to pose as Kuros; Fabio was presented on the cover bare-chested and without armor. When Zippo Games saw the image of the cover a week prior to its release, they were perplexed. According to Ste Pickford, "Our jaws hit the floor when we first saw this image (which was, being merely the developers, probably about a week before the game's release). Why on earth did they choose a photograph of a bare-chested barbarian to promote a game starring a knight in shining armour?". Pickford added that "We used it as an example of the lack of imagination of Americans", while suggesting that having an actual suit or armor would be too costly to use for a photo shoot.

[Anonymous No.8020392]

I have the Game Boy game (Fortress of Fear), it's pretty interesting in how abolutely nothing in the game reacts to Kuros' positioning at all, but just moves in whatever predetermined pattern it has. Especially bosses just circle the room in a specific and very simple loop, so all you have to do is identify two spots you can stand in to avoid the boss as it passes you while still being able to hit it, then sswap back and forth between these every time the boss passes you.

Once you learn where enemies are going to be it's piss easy to beat the entire game without getting hit once.

[Anonymous No.8020403]

The 3rd game is the most kino blend of platforming, action/adventure, and rpg elements of all time.

[Anonymous No.8020410]

>>8020403
As someone who fucking adores W&W3 and it being a huge inspiration for a lot of my own creative shit, take that into consideration when I say that this game plays like utter dogshit. Combat serves no purpose and can be totally avoided altogether if you wear the right costume in the right area, and a lot of the upgrades you get only serve a single purpose of killing some nuclear creature blocking your path, or getting past the nuclear waterfall.

It frustrates me to no end because I love how the game looks, I love how the game sounds, and the premise of switching between three tiered forms on the fly is awesome, but holy fuck they screwed up the gameplay so hard.

[Anonymous No.8020413]

>>8020368
Who drew the first one? The Castlevania IV/Bayou Billy dude?

[Anonymous No.8020417]

The animation of the eagle (the "Eagle King") that transports Kuros to the Wind Elemental was one of Ste Pickford's first graphics which he drew for the NES. It was done in Deluxe Paint for the Amiga with sketching done by mouse - without assistance from graphics tablets or other scanners. He took eagle drawings from a book on animals in motion by Eadweard Muybridge. Pickford wanted to show off the possible graphical capabilities of the NES; he said, "I wanted to do something 'flashy' early in the game, trying to show off my amazing graphic art skills on the rather primitive NES. We were working on Amiga and ST games at the same time, so were always trying to push the NES with bigger and better graphics, right from the start of our work on the machine." The eagle consisted of only three colors and between 11 and 17 sprites per frame of animation. There was a smaller version of the same eagle, which was used as a regular enemy in that level.

[Anonymous No.8020418]

>>8020410
the real problem is that there's no save. the game more than any of the others in the series deserves a save, it's basically an RPG.

[Anonymous No.8020424]

>>8020418
Saving isn't the problem, just the act of playing the game isn't fun. It's a real dick flattener that engaging with combat is a case of everything to lose and nothing to gain. Enemies don't drop anything from being killed so you're strongly encouraged to avoid combat to save your HP for boss fights which are cheesed by the Wizard's first form, or those platforming challenges to get class upgrades.

Combat itself with holding the B button to make a stance and point the D-pad to do directional attacks is a fun idea on paper but unless you're playing as the wizard you're better off just crouching and mashing the B button to beat the shit out of the shins of your opponent.

[Anonymous No.8021793]

>In developing the game's graphics, Ste Pickford translated black and white sketches into the character maps in the game. For the bosses, the plan was to use the entire screen while involving as few moving sprites as possible "to fool the player into thinking the whole thing was alive".[6] The same was done with the "Dragon King", which was not one of the game's bosses; the dragon's head and neck were composed of sprites, while the rest of the body was considered part of the background. The dragon's neck stretched out vertically due to NES hardware sprite limitations horizontally.

[Anonymous No.8022416]

>>8020417

See the eagle at about 5:36:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QhyvEI_rbg#t=5m36s

[Anonymous No.8022425]

1 is something really special, the others are pretty interesting but 1 is magic

[Anonymous No.8022442]

>>8020368
I can't believe it's not butter

[Anonymous No.8023103]

>>8022425
I grew up playing 2 and I played the first one recently. I liked the straight forward gameplay a lot, it felt like I was playing some DnD dungeon crawling adventure.