Krull: A Decent Early Movie Tie-In

KrullFilm to videogame tie-ins have been a part of the industry since the early years of the arcades. One such example which was actually a pretty decent arcade game was Krull. Released in 1983 Krull was an original sci-fi fantasy film about a heroic prince trying to rescue his princess from an evil alien called The Beast and his army of Slayers. His bride is swept away on their wedding day, his family is murdered and he sets out for vengeance. He has to find the Black Fortress which teleports around the place each morning. To help him defeat the forces of evil he also collects a magical weapon which looks like an oversized shuriken, it is a big bladed star which they confusingly called a Glaive.

Plenty of material for the game to draw on and it did attempt to follow the plot of the movie. It was developed and published by Atari in 1983 and they released a version for their Atari 2600 machine as well as the standing arcade cabinet. The controls consisted of a simple eight way joystick and there were two but the two player game was just alternating turns, you could only really play one at a time.

The first level challenged you to collect the pieces of your magical weapon, the Glaive. Boulders rolled down the screen at you and the longer you took the more boulders would spawn in. You could actually score extra points by running close to boulders. The second level was a Slayer attack and the aim was to shoot them and rescue your own army in a maze like environment. You could fire your limited glaives and they would bounce off the outer edge of the screen allowing you to catch them again. Once you had gathered your army together you had to find the Black Fortress and there were plenty more Slayers to fight along the way.

Once you reached the teleporting Black Fortress, which was actually just a big hexagon, you had to break down the front wall and then inside you faced The Beast. He would lob fireballs at you as you replied with your Glaive and if you managed to reach the Princess at the top of the screen without being killed she would be freed and your triumphant army would run in.

They only produced a couple of thousand Krull machines probably because the film failed to live up to expectations. The game was developed by Matt Householder, Chris Krubel and Jeff Lee. The console version was a lot more popular despite being shorter and a bit more basic than the arcade adventure and it was one of the first movie tie-ins that didn’t totally suck unlike such horrors as E.T.

The sound was mono but it was pretty cool as well and definitely captured a sci-fi synth feeling. If you got killed you’d let out a comical little ouch sound and spin around. I don’t know why so many old arcade games had a spinning animation upon death but it seems to have been a common idea. Anyway here is footage of the game.