
Finders Keepers, ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic – IS 0059
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8/10
Summary
Finders Keepers is an entertaining, arcade, puzzle adventure game all rolled into one. It’ll give you many hours of entertainment and does have some addictive qualities to want to come back to and delve deeper into what other rooms you can explore. The change between the flip screen rooms and scrolling mazes gives it a nice sense of variety.
As far as value for money goes, this was an outstanding purchase at the £1.99 asking price. It just goes to show that budget games didn’t always lack quality and rate this right up there as one of the best. I recommend the game, so if you haven’t played it, have a go and don’t miss out!
User Review
( votes)Controls and Instructions Included
Starting at the main menu, there is a nice logo at the top with a castle symbol in the top-hand corner of the words Finders Keepers. You will be given options to play using the keyboard (keys can be re-defined) and a range of joysticks. Should you wish, you can also read the instructions too.
Lives and Strength
You begin with five lives and with each life, Magic Knight has a set amount of strength. Collision with an enemy doesn’t therefore result in an instant loss of a life but strength is depleted whilst in contact with an enemy. You will also hear a short tapping type noise. When your strength is being depleted, the green bar shrinks as a red bar will start to move from left to right. Once covered in red, you’ll lose a life.
Let the Adventure Being!
The King is on his throne with Magic Knight near to a teleporter. Approaching The King doesn’t do anything, so you must use the teleporter to be beamed up out of there to then be beamed down onto the second screen.
Room and Maze Names
Being a fan of games which have names, I’m pleased to say that Finders Keepers is no exception. This gives a sense of adventure and progress giving it that one more go factor to see what else you can also discover. A big tick in my book.
Haunted Hedges!
Once you have entered a maze, the game changes into a scrolling screen mechanism. The scrolling works both horizontally and vertically and shifts along at a nice pace when Magic Knight moves around. As you can imagine, along the way, various enemies move around the mazes too.
Unlike the static screens, Magic Knight cannot jump when in the mazes (so no leaping over the ledges ha-ha!). Obviously, it’s best to avoid them altogether by either moving down different passages or waiting until they turn back on themselves and quickly following them. If you do have enough strength though, you can run through them.
Playability
The controls are responsive and work surprisingly well, even in the scrolling mazes.
My main frustration was jumping onto platforms. Jumping is a 45-degree upwards movement and if you don’t land on anything, you fall move vertically downwards. Although that sounds reasonable enough, it can mean falling a bit too frequently for my liking.
Picking up or examining the objects nearby to Magic Knight required being slightly to the side of the object. It will say it’s not nearby unless you move a bit. When you do get to do this, a window screen appears, listing what you are carrying. Pressing the relevant numbered key listed next to the item allows you to do what you want with it.
Wheeler Dealers!
You’ll be able to see what a trader stocks by walking up to them and pressing the trade key. The traders’ names that you will come across are Gordon and Anna. As you can imagine, when you collect the gold bar, it is valuable and makes a special sound (as if you have collected two objects in one.)
Puzzles
The items that you come across can be wide and varied. Collecting the right ones and using them at the correct time is key to solving the game as you adventure further into it. Without spoiling it, there is a large cat so using a few items can make it disappear allowing you through an escape route.
Graphics and Animation
Finders Keepers has plenty of colourful graphics and minimal colour clash considering the amount on the screens. The enemies are nicely animated. Although the vast majority move horizontally and vertically, on some screens they do move diagonally. Magic Knight’s feet smoothly walk along, so neat animation there.
My favourite screen is The Big Puss Without Boots and the cat’s tail is nicely animated. The cyan (blue) cat looks menacing, and he must be got rid of to escape.
On the right-hand side of the screen is the percentage of rooms that you have explored, the amount of cash that you have and how much the objects in your possession are worth.
Sound Effects Only
There is no music in Finders Keepers so therefore it is purely simple sound effects only when you go to pick up and drop, examine or trade items. Re-defining the keys also makes a sound effect too. It would have been nice to have had a simple short tune on the main opening screen, but there isn’t one.
The Magic Knight Series
Magic Knight appeared in a series of four games with the first being Finders Keepers. This was followed by Spellbound, Knight Tyme and Stormbringer. All games were available in 48K, but the latter three were also available on in enhanced 128K versions too.
Spectrum +3 owners were treated to a Magic Knight Trilogy release on disc. On side A was Finders Keepers / Spellbound with side B on the flipside of the same disc having Knight Tyme. Note however that Stormbringer is not on the +3 Trilogy but was available on cassette tape.
Points of Interest
Finders Keepers came out on a variety of 8-bit computer formats. Although the these had two endings, the Commodore C16/Plus 4 version was purely to escape from the castle.
The game has even been released on the Nintendo Gameboy as a limited physical release based around the C16/Plus 4 version and more can be found about this on our website here.
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