Knights Of The Round

There are three characters: Lancelot speed, Arthur medium and Perceval strength. Each character can gain levels after reaching a certain number of points and this will increase his offensive and defensive power.

During the demo, there is a storyline that shows and tells how Arthur proved himself to be the rightful heir to the throne of England and destined to be the first King of all the Britons when he managed to pull the sword Excalibur from the stone followed by him being joined by Lancelot and Perceval and then Merlin telling all three that they must find The Holy Grail and attain it's power in order for justice to be brought forth into the kingdom and for Arthur to become the first King of all the Britons.

In this game, the players must help Arthur, Lancelot and/or Perceval recover The Holy Grail and bring justice forth into the kingdom. To do this, the players must fight an assortment of different common enemies and a different boss enemy at the end of each stage.

The game has seven different stages and each of them has a different boss enemy to overcome in order for the stage to be completed.

The stages and boss enemies are as follows:

1. Village On Fire The First Challenge-Scorn
2. Confused Fight The Sword Master-Braford
3. Battle At The Castle Fort The Silver Emporer-Arlon
4. Knights Festival The Nightshade-Phantom
5. Expedition The Hammer-Balbars
6. Knights In The Strange Land The Blood Armor-Muramasa

7. Decisive Battle At The King's Castle The Final Conflict-Garibaldi.

   The multiple common enemies who the players must fight throughout the game each carry a unique name including Soldier, Sword Man, Fat Man, Mask Man, Sky Walker, Bird Man, Tall Man, Buster, Magician, Barbarian, Mad Tiger and Bad Falcon.

   Each player must have his or her character smash barrels, barriers and torches to find food for extra health and extra points too, if the player's health meter is full, silver or gold for extra points, red crystal balls that turn all enemies on the screen into treasure, green crystal balls that turn all enemies on the screen into food, giant chessmen of knights that make horses appear or enchanted staves that can make the character instantly advance to a higher level. If the food or treasure are struck with any player character's weapon, they will be reduced to smaller portions for smaller amounts of health or fewer points. Players can also gain food or treasure by saving a knight who is being attacked by an enemy. Knights will also occasionally appear on the screen to bring food to help the player characters. Players can also gain treasure by defeating the enemies.

   Players can also mount horses to ride on and make their weapons more effective against the enemies. The horses can only be mounted by jumping onto them. Players can mount an enemy's horse after knocking him off or a horse can be gained if the player finds and gets a giant chessman of a knight. While on a horse, the Attack button is used for the player character to strike his weapon just like on foot while the Jump button is used for the horse to change directions from right to left and vice versa.

   Throughout the game, any player can press both buttons for a power attack to fight off all enemies but it will use up a portion of the player character's health and if his health is too low, a power attack cannot be used again.

   On some stages, the player charcters must break through barriers or capture a flag to make it through boundaries and into castles

   In the seventh and final stage, the player must face two other formidible foes like Iron Golem followed by Phantom before facing Garibaldi at the end of the stage.

   After Garibaldi is defeated at the end of the final stage, The Holy Grail is recovered. Afterwards, there will be a sequence where Merlin will ask one of the player characters to come forward to The Holy Grail. This is done by simply pushing either of the buttons. If Lancelot or Perceval get it, one or the other will tell Merlin that it is not his destiny to become King of all the Brtions and tell him that it will have to be Arthur. But if Arthur gets it, he will tell Merlin himself that it is his sworn destiny to become King of all the Britons. Regardless of who gets The Holy Grail, the game ends afterwards followed by a unique storyline telling the entire legend.

   Throughout the game, the more points a player scores, the higher the character's level becomes which recovers all health and awards him greater powers.

Sometimes you can pick up treasure chests for points, but if you smash them once they will break into smaller piles of loot which will yield more points.

This game uses a "suicide battery", located on the c-board of the PCB. When this battery dies, the game will no longer operate. You will be greeted with a blank screen upon power-up. A hack exists to revive the game, involving burning one or more new EPROMs and using the c-board from a different CPS-1 game one that does not have a suicide battery.