48 - Knight Tyme (Spectrum)

David Jones's Magic Knight adventures were all excellent, but the sci-fi theme of Knight Tyme appealed to me the most, and indeed it's the only one I ever completed. I even went so far as to create my own guidebook for it. I mapped all the locations, made a star chart with all the flight routes, compiled inventories and character profiles from everything within the game, and of course wrote out a full solution. My Knight Tyme guidebook is one of those classic childhood items lost to multiple house moves and clearouts, but it's a testament to this game's greatness that I've often pondered doing the whole thing over again.

The Windimation system of interaction was a stroke of genius which allowed the game to still have a limited set of controls, making it feel more like an arcade game than the fairly hardcore adventure it is. Even though the NPCs did little more than move from screen to screen it still felt like you were part of a busy, living environment. It's also a very visually attractive game, making good use of the Spectrum's limited palette with bold, cartoony environments and characters, but not trying to go overboard with detail.

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