Defender of the Crown

aka: Conquering England, DOTC, Defender of the Crown: Obrońca Korony
Moby ID: 181
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Description official descriptions

Defender of the Crown puts the player in the role of one of four Saxon knights in medieval England, in a time where the land is in turmoil as the King is dead and his crown was stolen. The Saxons and the Normans blame each other and fight for control of England.

After a short introduction by Robin of Locksley himself, the game starts with a single castle and 10 soldiers at your command. From there, you have to build your army, take control of additional territories and fight and defeat the three Norman lords - and sometimes your Saxon friends as well.

In addition to the basic 'build your army and conquer your opponents' the game offers several events and options that can be used to fine tune your play style: You may engage in a jousting contest where you have to knock your opponent off his horse, gaining either fame or land, or you can go raid a castle for loot or the hand of a princess, joining your houses and territories.

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Credits (Amiga version)

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Computography and Mical Game System by
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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 49 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 235 ratings with 10 reviews)

My favorite game ever.

The Good
This is indeed a favorite of mine. I remember playing the Amiga version on a neighbour's computer, then getting the PC game and (a month ago) getting the EGA version (which I frankly like a lot less). This game has simply amazing graphics, beautiful and memorable music and incredibly addictive levels of gameplay. With many subgames and versions for just about every platform in existance, how can one go wrong?

The Bad
Nothing! It's amazing!

The Bottom Line
One of the best games you'll ever play (if you like old games, that is).

PC Booter · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2000

It's everything you hate about the original, plus nothing you love.

The Good
I... guess? the fact that they put a couple extra minigames (the morningstar fight and the castle defense with crossbow). Not the minigames themselves, but the fact that they thought to include them.

And the fact that it was published by Ultra Games, who also published the NES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which is actually one of my favorite games on the console, so as far as I'm concerned, that's a positive for me...

And... that's about it.

The Bad
Everything else.

To begin with, the original Defender of the Crown, from 1986, was largely a "playable" tech demo for the Amiga computer's graphical capabilities -way, way beyond those of any other computer, console, or even arcade system of its day-, but not much else; the gameplay itself, what little of it there was, was extremely difficult to the point of being almost completely impossible -a common tactic to hide that a game is really very short and/or on around the same level of complexity as the original Pong; see also Dragon's Lair or Shadow of the Beast-. Unfortunately, this NES version is no different.

The controls, like in all the Amiga versions of all the Cinemaware games I've played, are slow, clumsy, and unresponsive. Trying to aim your lance in the joust or walk forward in the swordfights is like playing arm wrestling with the control pad. These are not controls fit for action minigames, which is a problem, because your success in this game depends on your success at the minigames.

Which ties into problem number two; the money balance and AI. You are supposed to conquer territories to collect gold and use that gold to hire an army. But the enemies start right next to the most valuable lands (between six and eight gold every month), allowing them to get bigger armies than yours, more quickly than you can. Once they do, they go into a frenzy and start crushing everyone who gets in their way. Your only hope of success is to get to the southern lands before they do -leaving your castle completely unprotected while you're at it, because in the first few fights you won't get anywhere with less than twenty guys- and hope they don't inconvenience you too much before you can raise enough money; hardly a sensible idea for a "strategy" game. Also doing well at the minigames so you won't have to worry about conquering lands or collecting taxes (just joust/steal the other guy), but that's its own hurdle, as detailed above.

Finally, the graphics and audio are, to say the least, atrocious. The NES was capable of excellent graphics and audio, but it was simply not up to the task of looking like even a Commodore 64 port of an Amiga game, which is the reason this version should have never been even attempted in the first place. And that's about as much as I can say about it.

The Bottom Line
Beam Software, the actual developers of this port, essentially made the same mistake Elite Systems made when they ported Dragon's Lair to the NES. Since they could never recreate the original graphics, they thought they could compensate by recreating the original gameplay, either not knowing, not realizing, or not caring that the original gameplay was barely there and what was there was unreachable. So what they have left us with is a game named after the original that possesses all the flaws of the original and none of its virtues. If you really like turn-based strategy games with action minigames and you must have one for NES, I recommend North and South instead.

NES · by Ognimod Zeta (11) · 2022

The classic of classics.

The Good
Defender of the Crown has, for years, defined for me what a game should be: simple, challenging, beautiful, and most of all - memorable. I have first seen this game at the age of 5 or 6 on a neighbour's Amiga 1000; seeing as what I had 'till then was a Spectrum ZX80 and an IBM PC-clone (with CGA graphics), this was leaps and bounds beyond everything I've ever seen, and the experience has left its mark in me. Even today I can't help but gawk at the graphics, a piece of genuine art by James D. Sachs, and get bleary-eyed at the sound of the game theme, written by the brilliant musician .

Defender of the Crown brings a genre-defying mix of strategy and action; dubbed an "interactive movie," though this may now sound corny it was definitely a novel concept when the game came out; Cinemaware's impressive knack for pulling the impossible has coined a legendary remark from one of the spectators where the game was on display, who has said: "So where is the laserdisc?" The game really is that good.

Starting with an overview of the map of England, you must proceed to build your army and use it to take over as much territory as possible. Five computer opponents (two Saxons, three Normans) will not miss an opportunity to hinder your advancement; they will attack and take over your territories, steal your taxes (check out the screenshots), call you out to a jousting match to demonstrate their superiourity. You will definitely want to strike back! Aided by Robin of Locksley (who will aid you up to three times), you can launch raides to steal gold from other Lords, attack their territories and lay siege to their own castles. There is always the possibility that a distressed Saxon Lord will send you to raid an enemy castle to rescue his beautiful daughter (and you will be rewarded with one of the most memorable scenes in computer gaming history).

Defender of the Crown looks and plays much like a movie, and the atmosphere of this game is simply astounding, as is its technical marvel. It is a piece of gaming history that for me will always define gameplay for the rest of my life.

The Bad
An old game though Defender of the Crown is, it is easy to forgive its various shortcomings (most of which were addressed on the PC version, but are overstated in the other versions).

To begin with, the jousting scene is ruthlessly difficult. I can manage one out of maybe ten jousts on a lucky day; on the PC it's more like one of three (and on the PC, it's not only a matter of luck). The battle options are few and far between, and I sorely lack the warfaring characters of the PC's battle interface. The greek fire and disease options are missing from the Amiga version, which is unfortunate; also, there are two major problems in the battles: the larger army wins 99% of the time with ridiculously low casualties (even if the winner's is only 2 soldiers more than the loser's), and as for the other 1%, you can attack a 10 soldier garrison with 200 soldiers and lose. Last but not least, the swordplay scenes are generally ridiculously easy - just pick Geoffery Longsword, point your mouse to the right side of the screen and click away.

Defender of the Crown on the Amiga is also notorious for its loading times; I've never had a hard drive or an extra floppy drive for any Amiga I've used (none of mine [2x A1000 and 1x A500+] have any and neither does my neighbour's) and the constant disk switching and loading do get annoying after a little while. Also the game runs differently on the various machines; the music timing is vastly different between my A1000s (Kickstart 1.3), the A500+ with its default 2.04 ROM and the A500+ softkicked to 1.3. Still, seeing as I have the exact machine this game was meant to be run on (A1000 with 512k memory) I guess it's alright.

The Bottom Line
A game like no other, an amazing ride for those who have been in the right place at the right time. I only wish people nowadays would be able to have this almost religious experience, but unfortunately Cinemaware's "new and improved" Defender of the Crown just didn't deliver. I still play this game in its various incarnations over 15 years after it first came out, and I don't think I'll ever stop.

Amiga · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2002

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
PC CDROM version got released in the 90s abstauber Oct 11, 2018
Screenshots at the wrong entry? ZeTomes (36296) Jul 19, 2017
Links Cavalary (11445) Sep 20, 2014
Interview with Bob Jacob St. Martyne (3648) Dec 13, 2009

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Defender of the Crown appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

CGA version

The CGA version "tweaks" the screen during the joust; the furious riding on your horse makes the screen "shake". This locks up the game on VGA cards, but if you can avoid this if you play it under a pseudo-emulator like Windows or OS/2 (or just don't joust during the game).

EGA version

There was bootable version released that supported EGA/Tandy graphics and Tandy 3-voice sound, which greatly enhanced the PC version of the game. Unfortunately, this version is extremely rare and most people only have the CGA/PC Speaker version.

Freeware release

A full version of this game is available online at Cinemaware.com (the full link is in the links section). The game plays in any browser.

Version differences

  • The C64 version of the game has three Saxon ladies that can be kidnapped, and the NES version only has one lady while every other version has four.
  • The Commodore 64 version of Defender of the Crown was also released on tape in Europe, as disk drives were expensive in Europe at the time and most people still used tape drives. The tape version is trimmed down to fit on the smaller storage of tape, and is missing several pictures found on the disk version. Some of the missing pictures are Robin Hood at the start of the game, and the closeup views of the Saxon damsels after you rescued them.
  • The DOS and the NES version have inferior graphics and audio quality compared to other systems. However, these ports feature more in-depth strategic elements - most of the strategic movements of the Saxons and Normans are not determined but randomized.
  • The Amiga version does not contain some features like Greek fire and disease attack options, which were include in other ports. According to Bob Jacob (Cinemaware founder) the most complete version of "Defender of the Crown" was the Atari ST release (interview in "Your Amiga" magazine issued in, June 1988 on page 16).

CD audio version

In 1988 Rick Levine programmed a CD quality audio version of Defender of the Crown. The Defender of the Crown code still resided on and ran from the PC, but hooks were placed in the code to play the CD quality audio off the CD -- on a Hitachi CD-ROM player. David Riordan had the CD quality audio created. That special CD-ROM version was demonstrated at a conference (might have been the Game Developers Conference that year), but it was never released to the public. However in 1991 the Amiga CDTV version of the game was released and next to minor graphical improvements contains major sound enhancements including two CDDA soundtracks.

Awards

  • ACE
    • October 1988 (issue #13) - Included in the Top-100 list of 1987/1988 (editorial staff selection)
  • Commodore Format
    • February 1991 (Issue 5) - listed in the A to Z of Classic Games article (Great)
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #17 The All-Time Top 50 C64 Games
  • Computer and Video Games
    • May 1988 (Issue #79) - Golden Joystick 1988 Award: Runner up in category Strategy Game of the Year
  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #92 in the “150 Best Games of All Time" list
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #2 Most Rewarding Ending of All Time
  • Gamespy
    • March 2000 - Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • ST Fomat
    • May 1990 (Issue #10) - Included in the list "ST Format's 30 Kick-Ass Classics"

Information also contributed by PCGamer77, Ricky Derocher; Terrence Bosky and Tomer Gabel

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Tomer Gabel.

Browser added by Picard. NES, Commodore 64 added by PCGamer77. Jaguar added by Indus. ZX Spectrum added by twitek. Macintosh added by Dragom. Android, CDTV added by Kabushi. Atari ST added by ZZip. Apple IIgs added by Eli Tomlinson. iPhone, iPad added by Pseudo_Intellectual. Windows added by Alexander Schaefer. Game Boy Advance added by Xa4. Amstrad CPC added by cafeine. CD-i added by Geoffrey Palmer.

Additional contributors: JRK, Ricky Derocher, RodeoInTheGreatWhiteNorth, Richard Levine, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Jo ST, FatherJack, ZeTomes.

Game added August 4, 1999. Last modified March 19, 2024.