Defender of the Crown (1986)
I dug out the legendary Amiga game Defender of the Crown, in which the player seeks to conquer Britain in the early Middle Ages. It was the first release from the renowned Cinemaware, and it occupies a special place in Amiga history as a showcase for the computer’s groundbreaking multimedia capabilities. Audiences accustomed to 8-bit machines were astonished by such impressive graphics in the mid-1980s. The music was equally novel, based on samples and making use of four-channel sound. Defender of the Crown, like Cinemaware’s other productions, was guided by the idea of interactive movies. There are no video sequences, which only became common in games during the 1990s, but the concept is reflected in the scene-by-scene narrative and the game’s dramatic atmosphere. Defender of the Crown is a strategy game, although its strategic depth is fairly limited. The game relies heavily on randomness, and victory is by no means guaranteed.