Game Review: Spellbound (ZX Spectrum, MAD)

Background to The Magic Knight Series

In case you aren’t aware of the Magic Knight series of four games, Spellbound is the sequel to Finders Keepers.  Once you play the game, Magic Knight is holding an Advert and upon reading it, this is advertising that Finders Keepers is available also available to purchase! A bit of a plug there and why not?  If you’ve got it, flaunt it as they say!

Opening Menu

Once Spellbound has loaded you’re presented with a menu upon where you can choose from a selection of joysticks or keyboard.  In addition to this, there is an option to read the instructions.  Although the inlay card gives you the background to the story about Gimbal The Wizard casting incorrectly translated old spells, it is worth reading these from the menu.

It mentions the other characters who are now also trapped with you in the Castle of Karn.  These are Gimbal The Wizard, Thor, Florin The Dwarf, Orik The Cleric, Samsun The Strong, Elrand Halfelven, Lady Rosmar and The Banshee.

Presentation

The loading screen is one to be admired with Magic Knight at the front and a fantastic drawn ghoul in the background.  These characters of large so it looks good.  It is very colourful with a too with good use of brightness in some areas too.  Spellbound is written across the top.

Printed on one side of the cassette tape is the MAD logo and a man with a speech bubble saying: “Ok Kid – You’ve Bought The Game Now PLAY IT!”  In the bottom right in a rectangle it reads SPECTRUM.

Sound Effects Only

Throughout the game, it purely sounds effects only.  This is when clicking the fire button, picking up and dropping objects.

Graphics

The games characters and background details are far bigger than its predecessor, Finders Keepers.  The objects scattered around the castle are now visual objects, so for example, you can clearly tell it’s a red herring rather than having to examine it.

There is plenty of colour and the flickering candle flames do look rather good.  Simple but very effective!

Playability

Magic Knight moves rather quickly and when he jumps, it is very quick.  It’s a slightly oval style jump which is around half the size of the screen.  This can look rather bouncy at times as if like jumping on a springboard!

Being that this is an arcade adventure style game, there are a lot of objects around the castle (which contains 50 screens) which will help you solve the clues.  This is unfortunately where the game gets a bit rather tedious as once you press the fire button, you start seeing window driven menus appearing over most of the screen.  Within each window, you move your hand up (or press the relevant key) to select what you want to do.  Options can include (but not limited to) picking up, dropping and examining items as well as casting a spell or calling the lift.  Magic Knight can also command the other characters do things such as fall asleep, eat and drink, be happy or wake up.

The most useful area of the game was in the lift room and putting the teleport pad there was the handiest thing to do, saving going through lots of screens to get back there.

Most of the screens are named which I like giving the game that bit of extra depth and sense of progress.  The top level is all called The Roof Garden once you leave The Lift.

Make Mine a Double!

Spellbound is available in an enhanced 128K version.  The 48K and 128K aren’t on opposite sides of the same tape so if you want to play the 128K version, you’ll need to buy the other tape.  That one is marked with Mastertronic 128 on the front inlay and catalogued as MAD 23 on the spine of the cassette inlay.

Other 8-Bit Systems

As well as the two Spectrum versions, Spellbound was also released for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and Atari XL/XE.

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