From our other sites
The story
King’s Knight, the Famicom game released by Square (as it was known then) on September 18, 1986, celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. An article spotlighting retro games sparked a wave of nostalgia on 5ch, but opinions split sharply down the middle: harsh takes like “the controls were the absolute worst, total garbage, boring” versus high praise like “as much fun as Super Mario.” Many recalled picking it up expecting an RPG based on the box art, only to be thrown off when it turned out to be more of a shooter-style action game, and there was also a stream of posts mixing it up with similarly named but unrelated titles like King of Kings and King’s Field.
[September 18] Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Famicom release of King’s Knight!
2026-09-18 06:00:00
Retro Game Spotlight for September 18!
Source: gamedrive.jp / Original article here
What people said
It was so much fun
Square really ought to remake this
The controls were the absolute worst, total garbage, boring.
I actually bought this one
Looked like it'd be fun but wasn't really, so I don't think it needs a remake
Though compared to Zunou Senkan Galu (a shmup, 'Cerebral Boost Battleship'), it does have a bit of an RPG flavor
Ah, the handy catch-all genre known as 'action RPG'
No way you'd guess this box art hides a shooter
All I remember is that it was fun — I don't remember a single thing about what it was actually like
is asking a bit much
Is it any good?
I always wonder this, but 40th anniversary of what, exactly?
If they were still selling this game, and it was still selling well, sure, I'd get it
But that's not really the case
Once the internet caught on I looked up info online and remember finally clearing it
Pretty sure it was Square's best-selling game!
so it's brutally hard
Though back then that was just normal
Apparently at the time, Dragon Quest hadn't yet proven itself a hit, so Square wasn't in a position to fully commit to a proper RPG.
That said, the soundtrack was unmistakably Uematsu's work — it sounded a lot like FF1.
Maybe I'm mixing it up with something else
That's probably King of Kings you're thinking of
Isn't that King of Kings?
That's King's Field you're thinking of, not this
Yeah, exactly
Everyone has to collect the item needed to break through the wall zone before taking on the last stage
Otherwise you're guaranteed to get crushed by the walls partway through the final stage and wiped out
Though I only learned that once I was an adult
At first they had the same image as Enix — a PC game maker
Was it 'Tobidase Daisakusen' ('Operation Jump Out')?
The one you could use 3D glasses with
Well, Space Harrier itself already has that thing where the enemies look like Gundam's Dom mobile suit standing up like a tortoise
Pretty much every game that shows up on those retro-game walkthrough channels on YouTube is a bad game, honestly.
Most people probably saw a clear video of this on YouTube for the first time too.
Background and Discussion Points
King’s Knight was one of the early titles Square put out in 1986, years before it would go on to create Final Fantasy, with music composed by Nobuo Uematsu. At the time, Square was still mostly known for porting PC games and putting out titles that resembled other companies’ work — this release predates the studio’s full pivot to RPGs. As a result, despite its fantasy-style box art, the game itself leaned heavily toward shooting-style action, and the thread kept circling back to the same disconnect: “I rented it expecting an RPG and it turned out to be a shooter.” The thread also pointed out a mechanic where the final stage can’t be cleared unless all the characters have been gathered together, suggesting this was a game that was genuinely hard to fully grasp without a manual or strategy guide back then. Note that despite the similar name, it’s unrelated to King’s Field (from From Software).
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[September 18] The 40th Anniversary of the Famicom Release of King’s Knight!“
Leave a Reply