Throughout the history of videogames, various consoles have served as one of the many pulpits for the gospel of film marketing. Videogame adaptations of movies are a strange breed. Motion Pixels will examine one such game each week, dissecting the basic gameplay, the graphics, and how faithfully it adapts the film on which it is based. Some are good, some are awful, and some are just down right weird, but they are all interesting experiments. We will also take a look at other cogs in a given film’s marketing machine. Grab some popcorn and a joystick and let the games begin!
Game/Movie: Krull
System: Atari 2600
Developer: Atari
Year of Release: 1983
Graphics and Mechanics
Picking on the Atarti 2600 for featuring less-than-stellar graphics...
...is sort of akin to ripping on cavemen for not having Twitter accounts. The Atari was among the very first video game systems available for home use and, as it was conceived at the dawn of this industry, draws from a very limited technological well. So yes, the hero of the game and his abducted princess are both bald and blockheaded, giving them a striking resemblance to Lego people. And there is no arguing that the pixilated representation of the beast in the dark fortress smacks more of the walking shit demon from Dogma than it does Krull’s iconic villain.
But truth be told there are other aspects of the game that demonstrate, if not great graphics, an ingenious application of what limited graphical capabilities were available. The rolling color striations on the dark fortress itself are kind of awesome and lend well to a game based on a fantasy film. It is impossible for me to talk about any incarnation of Krull without paying homage to its signature piece of weaponry. The glaive, that gilded, star-shaped throwing blade of highest badassery, is your main (read solitary) weapon in the game. And while the glaive too-eerily resembles a swastika on your menu bar, I do appreciate the look and sound of it when it is thrown. Also, you can actually control the path of the glaive with the joystick, which is a handy feature.
The only thing that really irks me about the mechanics of the game, and especially given how basic a system we’re talking about, is how maddeningly difficult it was to collect items on the ground. The Atari joystick has but one button so when your horse rides over an item and you press the aforementioned solitary button, it stands to reason that you would acquire that item; not so. Apparently your horse is traveling faster than the speed of light and your rider has two clumsy stone dildos for hands because it is damn near impossible to grab anything. You will take what the game deigns to give you and like it!
Playing Before Instructions
I was a very small child when I first played this game on my father’s Atari. I can’t honestly say I remembered too much about it but when I got back into classic game collecting a few years ago, I purchased it more for the novelty than anything else. Plus, I love the film Krull for all its flaws and missteps, so it was sort of a no-brainer. I sat down to play the game recently and realized I didn’t have the instruction booklet. “No matter,” I told myself haughtily, “how hard could it really be?” It was about seventy minutes later, when I had ground my teeth to powder and my hair was in a discarded pile on the floor, that I opted to look up the instructions online. You see, if you aren’t clued in on how the Widow of the Web level works, you’d think Krull was one of history’s most mean-spirited games. You finally get past that difficult task and ride off to your next challenge only to be greeted with an error tone and watch your horses do an about-face and head right back to the Widow of the Web. It’s the complete opposite of Mario 3’s warp whistle as it magically whisks you away to…levels you’ve already beaten.
Playing After Instructions
So after vomiting obscenities and shaking with rage, I researched and found out that the Widow of the Web level is the crux of the entire game.
When you reach “the widow,” and by that I of course mean “the ugly gray box at the top of the web,” an arrow pops up to tell you which of the six potential exits from the screen you must take to get to the dark fortress. The other rub, because apparently we need two, is that you must exit this level and reach the area wherein the fortress is to be before sunrise. If you do not accomplish both these feats, you will hear that heart-lifting failure alarm, be stricken of a life, and begin your gallop of shame back to the web.
Mission Accomplished?
It took three days of on and off playing, the off times being spent catching snatches of sleep and drinking heavily to cope with my repeated failures, but I finally beat Krull. It got to the point where reaching the dark fortress was simple enough, but that’s where I was continually thwarted. Your task is to use the glaive to rip a hole in the wall that surrounds the princess whilst avoiding the glimmering light turds being hurled at you by the monster. But even after making a hole big enough for Kirstie Alley after a trip to Golden Corral, that petulant bitch would not leave her pixel prison. I wondered if maybe she had developed some strange form of Stockholm syndrome, at which point I was prepared to set the console on fire for wasting my time.
Finally, I found that throwing the glaive through the gap I’d fashioned was what drove her out of the dungeon. She then gave me a glowing weapon that I used to destroy the monster. Triumph! And what was my reward for finally besting this bastard of a game? Having to play all of the levels again…at a higher difficulty level! When you expend all this time and energy on Atari’s Krull only to find out you are playing at the easiest difficulty setting, it’s enough to make your eyes cross and foam to pour from your mouth.
Faithful to its Source?
As rudimentary as the game is, it is one of the most faithful game adaptations of a film I’ve ever seen, and in some ways that I don’t believe it was intending. In the first level, the Slayers besiege your castle in an effort to steal your bride just as they did in the film. Now, you can fight these Slayers to your little heart’s content and waste a few lives in the process, but the fact of the matter is that they will take her. In fact, the game cannot progress until they do. So it actually behooves you to run up into the top left corner of the screen and allow her to be taken so you can enter the next level with all your lives intact. Basically, the game preaches the virtues and advantages of being a complete coward. While I wouldn’t necessarily call the film’s hero Colwyn a coward, if you adopt this strategy for the first level the game echoes his complete worthlessness in the film’s opening action sequence.
The other elements of the film that are well represented in the game include the Widow of the Web’s guidance and the glaive. In the film, it’s established that the dark fortress moves and is never in the same place twice. Therefore it makes sense that the player, should he fail to reach the fortress in one location before sunrise, would have to return to the widow and be shown the fortress’ new location. Sensible? Yes. Enjoyable? Hell no! Also, the fact that the player can lose his glaive should it hit the monster instead of the princess containment wall behind him is painfully apt. In the film, as cool as the glaive was, it was among the most ineffectual weapons of fantasy cinema. Homeboy breaks down a wall with it and then manages to get it stuck in the villain and loses it forever. This would be a worthy sacrifice if it actually killed the monster but instead it only pisses him off. In the game, getting the glaive stuck in the monster, and the subsequent return to the web, was well suited to piss me off so again…apt.
Final Thoughts
I tried playing the game with both the Atari joystick and the Sega Genesis controller and neither offered much assistance in the gathering of items task. That’s one of the cooler things about the Atari that is kind of spooky in its inexplicableness; it has a port on the back into which the Sega Genesis controller fits. This makes the Atari the most prescient, forward-thinking console on earth. It would be akin to the NES offering a switch to accommodate its being played on a 3D television. I’m kidding of course, the Sega Genesis just happened to use the same controller port setup as the Atari, but the Twilight Zone angle is more fun to contemplate.
Licensed to Sell
Like many fantasy films, Krull had no meager marketing campaign. In addition to this videogame, and among many other promotional artifacts, Krull managed to snag its own board game!
I haven’t had the chance to play it yet but I would imagine you win the game by hiding your token in the box for the first turn, traversing the board 87 times, and then taking the super cool weapon card you were fortunate enough to draw on your third turn and tossing it decisively out the kitchen window.
