Defender of the Crown [GBA]

It's been more that a decade since Cinemaware released Defender of the Crown on the several varying computer formats of the late 80s. This title not only featured a stunning, movie-like presentation (which was a rare treat during the days of floppy disc-based gaming), the actual game itself was a charming, addictive medieval version of Risk, complete with mini-games that involved the gamer beyond simply managing resources. Cinemaware as a company didn't live many years past this computer classic, but its revival in this new century means a revisit to some of the top games in the company's library. And even though the game's design is almost 15 years old, Defender of the Crown definitely works as a great GBA title.

Features

• Four playable characters
• Cartridge save (one slot)
• Only for Game Boy Advance

Defender of the Crown takes place in the dark ages, during a time when the King of England is slain and all the territories are fighting to conquer the land...to become the new ruler of England. It's not going to give anyone in a Western Civilization course a hard lesson in history, since all of these events are loosely based on happenings during the medieval times. In the game, players assume the role of a leader of one of five different factions set out to conquer England...one territory at a time. It's all about learning to manage resources, as in each of the player's turn they'll have to choose to either spend their hard-earned gold on soldiers, knights, and catapult, or move a mobile campaign into a neighboring territory in order to capture and take control of it. By capturing territories, players will earn more gold per turn, which can be converted into the army necessary to conquer territories controlled by one of the four opposing factions. By taking over all the territories, you will become the new King of England.

In a sense, it really is a more micro-managed version of Risk. But there's a lot more to it than that. Between turns, players will be asked to participate in a jousting tournament between the factions, and they can fight for either fame which will increase your leadership skills, or land which can easily cause an upset in the balance of the factions in Britain. During a turn, you can even raid the castle of a neighboring faction in order to snag a large sum of gold, or to rescue a maiden in distress.

This Game Boy Advance version is exactly the same game that appeared on the Amiga, Atari ST, Apple IIGS, and the other umpteen systems back in the day. The GBA version uses most of the same art and sound assets used in the original title, tweaked ever so slightly. But because of the GBA's powerful gaming hardware, the jousting, mace combat, and storming-the-castle mini-games are much better tuned on the handheld. The GBA edition even records progress to the cartridge after every turn, which is an absolute godsend since a campaign can last more than an hour or two. The entire game design is well implemented on the handheld, and it shows that the GBA is a perfect platform for the classic, more straightforward game designs of the past gaming decades.

But one can't play Defender of the Crown on the Game Boy Advance and not wonder one thing: why didn't the designers of the handheld version implement link-cable support? Defender of the Crown would make for a great link game for at least two players, especially with all of the one-on-one mini-games in the design. The original game didn't feature any multiplayer support because the game relied on hiding the enemies' army count in each territory; if players sat next to each other during a turn they'd see exactly what the other players were up to. But the GBA and its link support would give each person his or her own screen that would hide the other players' moves from their view. This was proven successful in Advance Wars, and it honestly should have been implemented in Defender of the Crown for the Game Boy Advance.

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