• Completed & Reviewed by Rio Baan
Thanks to Rio for supplying us with this game ending and review. Without further a do, it's over to Rio ...

The game is huge and has many frustrating "go-back-to-the-beginning-when-you-die" levels which require pixel perfect collision detection to get through...needless to say level 5 was nigh impossible. No, I've never played this one through to the end and I'm not sorry!

Here is the final battle ...

... and here is the end sequence!! DOH!

HOW WAS IT COMPLETED?: By cheating... the choice of champions.

SO WHAT HAPPENS?: Well, finally you reach this pit with the dragon you are supposed to kill (see 1st screen shot). Swing away at him enough and he dies. What happens after that is a true 'W.T.F.' moment: you get a black screen and the words, 'THIS GAME RE-ENACTMENTS ONE GREAT EXPLOIT OF PAUL, ALIAS RASTAN THE BARBARIAN. ENJOY HIS NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE IN THE ALL FICTIONAL.... 'PAUL DEVELOPS THE COBRA SCROLL'.

COMMENTS: Hard to know what to make of the ending, other than the fact that it's bleeding ridiculous. Maybe it was a bad translation from the Japanese arcade version ending? (which wouldn't surprise me at all). Feeling ripped off, I did some research into the actual arcade version ending. Obviously, the C64 programmers cut some major corners because the arcade version had a graphical sequence of Rastan walking past a castle and raising his sword. Plus the arcade ending has the more logical epilogue 'THIS IS ONLY A PART OF MY LONG STORY - ONLY A PART TO BECOME A KING. IF I HAVE ANOTHER CHANCE, I'LL TELL YOU MY OTHER ADVENTUROUS STORIES.'

FINAL SAY FROM RIO: The C64 programmers probably wrote some tripe assuming nobody would ever get to the end... and if it weren't for the cheats, they'd be right.

FINAL SAY FROM THE WEB MASTER: The music is cool but the rest is total drivel!

RIO'S RATING: 1 / 10
G.E. RATING: 1 / 10