Defender of the Crown Amiga 1986 Cinemaware Kellyn Beeck

Defender of the Crown Original Version

Master Designer Software and Cinemaware released Defender of the Crown for the Amiga on November 1 of 1986. Defender of the Crown was designed by Kellyn Beeck and programmed by Kellyn Beeck and RJ Mical of Amiga Intuition fame. Defender of the Crown graphics were drawn by James Sachs, and its audio was composed by Jim Cuomo and Bill Williams.

Producer Bob Jacob first communicated the concept of Defender of the Crown to Kellyn Beeck in February of 1986. Thus, the game was developed quickly.

The first game to be released by Cinemaware, Defender of the Crown is a cinematized wargame featuring arcade-action sequences (e.g., jousting, raiding and battles).

Of the strategy game genre, Defender of the Crown (DotC) is set in Medieval Britain (1149); the time of heroes and conquerors: Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, King Arthur, William the Conqueror, Richard the Lionheart -- you get the picture.

In assuming the role of one of four Saxons the object of Defender of the Crown is to fend off the Norman invasion and conquer the territories of England by way of conventional battles, siege warfare and jousting tournaments. In order to undertake conquest the player builds a campaign army comprised of soldiers, knights and catapults. The army is then moved across the map, turn by turn, annexing territory by winning battles and besieging castles. In turn, the territories generate income that funds more forces. The player also garrisons their castles and builds new castles in annexed territories in order to prevent the territories from getting overrun.

Defender of the Crown displays in 32-color 320x200 and features smooth hardware mouse-cursor movement.

In terms of graphics and sound, if some computer games can be said to have "soul", Defender of the Crown is one of them. From its spartan color scheme to its scene-composition and narrative-panels, Defender of the Crown's presentation is immaculate.

You only need to view the above infographic to be convinced of that. And as you gaze upon the infographic, remember the year of release: 1986.

However, Defender of the Crown is lacking in strategy mechanics and interpretable interaction. Indeed, its gameplay was primitive 38 years ago if not practically non-existent.

Cinemaware derives its inspiration from the movies, not computer games ... our interactive movies combine sophisticated computer graphics with classic movie themes and characters. -- Cinemaware, 1986.

Having read the above quote, is it any wonder that Cinemaware's computer games lacked gameplay? The jousting, raiding, battle and siege segments of Defender of the Crown are quite lame indeed, even for 1986.

Palette range, number of on-screen colors and 1.5 megs of art assets aside, Defender of the Crown did not tap into the Amiga's custom chipset all that much, nor did it push the Amiga's sound chip, Paula.

Defender of the Crown did not push around a ton of sprites or bobs, it did not have per pixel hardware screen-scrolling at 50 FPS, and it did not employ a satisfying wargame command and control scheme or interesting kingdom-management mechanics.

One of the reasons Impressions Games created Lords of the Realm of 1994 was because Defender of the Crown was a disappointment to medieval wargame and kingdom-management aficionada. However, Warlords of 1989 was an excellent medieval wargame as well.

Based on in-store demonstrations and static screencaps in magazine reviews and advertisements, Defender of the Crown sold a lot of Amigas for Commodore; it was the Amiga's Killer App before the advent of Shadow of the Beast of 1989.

But it was not a good computer game. Nor was Shadow of the Beast a good computer game.

That said, Defender of the Crown has a special place in every Amigan's heart; a least for those us who were early adopters of the Amiga 1000 of 1985. It is a game I load up every five years or so in order to remember how far ahead of the competition the Amiga's palette and presentation were in 1986.

If nothing else, Defender of the Crown showed the industry of 1986 what could be achieved in terms of graphics and presentation on an Amiga, years before the vast majority caught on. In that sense, Defender of the Crown is historically significant.

The Amiga version of Defender of the Crown was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes. It was not hard disk drive-installable.

Defender of the Crown Atari ST 1987

Master Designer Software converted Defender of the Crown to Atari ST in 1987. The Atari ST version of Defender of the Crown displays in 16-color 320x200 and was distributed on 2x 3.5" DD 720kB diskettes.

In terms of gameplay and features, the Atari ST version of Defender of the Crown is superior to the original Amiga one since the ST version contains features that were excluded from the rushed Amiga release, such as the Battle scene that allows players to select from basic tactics, such as charging, outflanking and catapult barrage. In addition, right-clicking is supported, there is an ability to seek safe passage through enemy-occupied territories, turns can be ended manually, and there is more on-screen information that facilitates player-interpretable interaction.

Naturally, the 16 from 512 palette of the ST cannot compete with the Amiga's 32 from 4096, but the ST version still looks good enough. The ST version lacks some of the presentation of the Amiga version as well, such as the map of England and the depiction of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest. However, better gameplay outweighs better audiovisuals.

Defender of the Crown IBM PC 1987

Master Designer Software converted Defender of the Crown to IBM PC MS-DOS 2.0 in 1987. The IBM PC version of Defender of the Crown displays in 16-color EGA 320x200 and was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB diskette or 2x 5.25" 360kB floppy disks (self-booters). As with the Atari ST version of 1987, the IBM PC version also includes the content excluded from the original Amiga one.

If you click the image and mouse-wheel up and down, the yawning gulf between 1986 Amiga graphics and pre-VGA IBM PC graphics becomes crystal clear.

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