I’ve been on a bit of a retro gaming bender recently, and have bought (and played!) several games for Game Gear, Genesis and NES. One of these was a favourite of my youth, King’s Bounty.
The game was originally released back in 1990 on PC and Mac but this is the Genesis version from 1991. It’s a turn-based strategy game where you control an ever-increasing army on a quest to find a magic item. It’s a classic, and led to the very popular Heroes Of Might And Magic series.
I loved this one half a life ago but hadn’t played it in years. A couple of weekends ago I hooked up the Genesis and gave my newly repurchased (for $15) cartridge a whirl.
I started with the Crusader, playing at the easiest setting. At first I stumbled around forgetting what to do or how to beat the clock but it didn’t take me that long for it to all start coming back…
Within an hour or so I was fiendishly addicted once again, and as the day went on I advanced through the quest until the fourth continent when I upgraded my army to flying units. If you know the game, you know this is the final step to victory.
And shortly thereafter I did indeed win! My very first game in maybe 25 years and I won handily. Although maybe just because I had used the easiest character at the easiest setting? Couldn’t I do better?
I had enjoyed it so much I immediately restarted on a higher difficulty with the mage, who many say is the hardest character.
This time I min-maxed like crazy and was laser-focused on victory. While the Crusader took me about five (real time) hours to win with, it was less than a single hour before I reached the victory screen with the mage. As you can see I took far fewer days and got a much higher score:
And yet, I could have done better! Three of the boss villains remained alive, and had I killed them before finding the treasure I could have squeezed out a few more points. However I’d spent an entire Sunday playing and ran out of time. But just in case you’d like to ‘load’ my save right before victory so you can kill those bosses yourself, here’s the password:
Let me know if you beat my score 🙂