Atari’s Warlords got Medieval on the old Breakout formula. Instead of chipping away at coloured walls for your own amusement, Warlords gave a more sinister objective: castle-to-castle warfare.
In each of the four corners of the Warlords playfield, castle walls guarded either a crown (player-controlled) or a Black Knight (computer-controlled). At the start of the game, a dragon lumbered onto the screen, spit out a fireball, and the melee began.
Each time the fireball hit a castle wall, bricks were chipped away, leaving that castle’s resident more and more exposed. Once the ball got through, it was “Game Over” for that castle, and the remaining warlords continued the fray.
To keep your walls protected (and to strike out at your foes), a moving shield moved across the two sides of your castle, controlled by a rotary paddle. The fireball would bounce off your shield if you intercepted it, keeping your walls intact and sending it off in a new direction, but the shield also had an offensive capability.
By holding the ‘Power Stone’ button, players could actually catch the fireball, move into position, and launch an even more powerful attack on an enemy castle. If you held the fireball too long, however, the flames would flicker off and damage your own castle.For every castle destroyed in a blinding flash, a new fireball would be launched, making the
For every castle destroyed in a blinding flash, a new fireball would be launched, making the battle even more hectic.
Extra fireballs also flared up if a match took too long, allowing up to a total of four flaming projectiles to menace your walls at once.
The war raged on until only one crown or knight survived, but as long as a human player owned the last castle remaining, a new warlord showdown would begin.
Warlords was available as a two-player upright, complete with overlay graphics and a faux 3-D backdrop, or as a four-player cocktail with colour graphics.
The four-player version drew gamers in for a little one-on-one-on-one-on-one mayhem, but unfortunately, with more than two players, the game ended after a single round.
Related Posts
Tank Into a world of Pong clones rolled a pair of tanks, firing artillery shells that rocked the arcade game world.…
Pong The first successful computer game was a video version of ping-pong, whose "ball" was a blip that bounced back and…
Odyssey Before there was Atari, before there was even Pong, there was the Odyssey. We take it for granted now, of…
Video Pinball Despite some industry fears, video didn’t kill the pinball star. Flipper-fuelled action had been an arcade mainstay since long before…
Toobin' Years before Extreme Sports hit the mainstream, there was Atari’s Toobin’, one of the oddest and most dangerous sports to…
Computer Space The history of coin-operated video arcade games began not with a whimper, but with several explosive bangs, rendered in simple…
Avalanche This early Atari title wasn’t exactly the black-and-white equivalent of a Swiss Alps nightmare, but it was the closest a…
Xevious A classic vertically-scrolling shoot-em-up Namco arcade game (distributed by Atari), Xevious sent your 'Solvalou' craft into solo battle against the…
Each time the fireball hit a castle wall, bricks were chipped away, leaving that castle’s resident more and more exposed. Once the ball got through, it was “Game Over” for that castle, and the remaining warlords continued the fray.
For every castle destroyed in a blinding flash, a new fireball would be launched, making the battle even more hectic.
