Crossed Swords

Synopsis

by Kyle Knight

Evil is afoot, and monsters are appearing everywhere! You are a wandering errant knight, and you've stumbled on a village under attack by monsters. Like all errant knights, you feel an irresistible urge to help the downtrodden and kill some monsters.

Crossed Swords is one of the most unique games developed for the Neo Geo. It's a pseudo first-person hack-and-slash game with RPG elements for one or two players. The player's persona in this game is a knight with a shield and a weapon. The game is viewed from a modified first-person perspective, much like games of the first-person shooter genre except that the camera is located behind the knight. To accommodate the camera's position as well as having two simultaneous players on the same screen, each player's knight is actually a wireframe model.

While the view is first-person, the gameplay isn't. The player can only move the knight left or right. Monsters approach the knight one or two at a time and attack. The knight can defend against high and low attacks, and can attack in return. Knights can also unleash various magic attacks from their weapons if they're charged. When all the monsters are defeated, the knight moves to the next scene and the process repeats.

To aid in the quest to rid the land of all monsters, players can pick up gold, medicine, and magic charges from defeated monsters. The gold can be used to buy health restoring meat or weapons. A variety of weapons are available to knights, each with different handling properties and magic attacks. Knights also gain experience from defeating monsters; when a certain amount of experience is gained the knight's level is raised and his statistics are increased.

Extra Credits

by Kyle Knight

The Super Spy was one of the most original games on the Neo Geo. Crossed swords is a reworking of the ideas from The Super Spy in a different setting.

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