Perhaps one of the games I'm most grateful to see on Nintendo's Switch Online service. Don't get me wrong, I hold no particular love for the source material - the most nostalgia I have for it is seeing marquees for it at, like, Suncoast in the mall, or watching Doug Walker tear into it years after the fact. But I have a soft spot for licensed video game tie-ins, since they were most of what I had access to as a kid. Ever since they announced the Virtual Console for what was then known as the Nintendo Revolution, I've wanted to see licensed games recognized by Nintendo, particularly to satisfy my brother's desire to play the NES port of The Lion King in some official capacity. I dunno if that'll ever happen, but we're one big step closer, bro.
But let's not mince words here, Quest for Camelot GBC is not a very good game. It's easy to see why it's on the service, it trying to be another Link's Awakening-type game (and I guess Ninty owns the rights? Weird). But it fails in a lot of ways that highlight how consistently well-made Zelda tends to be. Case in point, the grid system. 2D Zelda always obeys a loose grid system, where even though Link and other characters can freely move around, all actions they perform are constrained to this grid. If Link makes a jump, he'll always land within the parameters of a tile. If he digs, that will conform to a given tile. So on and so forth. It's a subtle thing that you take for granted, but I found myself thinking about it here trying to jump and dig as Kayley. That jump segment across the scalding lake is particularly dastardly. Kayley jumps just a bit further than two tiles' length, so you're constantly having to orient your sub-position within a tile in order to keep from jumping directly into the boiling water. To say nothing of how inconsistent the game is about where you're able to dig. I wasted a bunch of time in Chapter 2 trying to find the big "turnip" for that ornery horse, enough so that I dug every diggable tile in the village area, and man, did the map not look like I'd dug every tile.
I also have to mention the sword techniques for having one of the weirdest control interactions I've yet run into in a video game. So it's a pretty ambitious idea, having both an RPG leveling system and an expansive moveset with the sword, all on an 8-bit handheld. In most cases, the extra moves aren't worth the trouble, and I found myself leaning into the standard slash and that dash attack (since it's stronger and faster). But that input on the dash attack is deceptively weird! So you have to double tap a direction, then hit the sword button to pull it off - seems straightforward. Only, you don't have to do all that at once. It turns out any time you press the same directional button twice, you "chamber" the input for a dash attack, which gets executed when you hit the sword button. So, for example, if you're trying to chase down a boss and happen to hit right, pause for a moment, then hit right again - it doesn't matter how long it takes for you to hit that sword button, it WILL be a dash attack, even if you hit other directional buttons beforehand! I even tested it out by waiting a good couple seconds between directional inputs, and it still does that! I've never ever run into that! Naturally this means you end up doing the dash attack when you want to do the slash attack, which is an issue because the dash attack doesn't have much knockback. Not a big issue on NSO since you're able to rewind the emulator, but I'm glad I didn't play on original hardware.
Just to touch on bosses really quickly, they all kinda suck. They tend to follow the same pattern of wandering around aimlessly, occasionally throwing out an attack to spice things up. If the arena allows for it, it's pretty easy to cheese their AI. This was particularly funny with the final Ruder fight, where I trapped him in a corner and just eroded two(!) health meters by slapping him with my sword like I was some irritated cat.
So I'm giving this game the same rating I gave Conker's Pocket Tales, but I'll confess I feel way more fondly about this game overall. Quest for Camelot isn't very good, but it's very charming and has a surprising amount of ideas for such a modest release. It experiments a lot with its game design, making each chapter feel very different. Even if these experiments don't always work out (that "Key Dilemma" gauntlet is just mean of the game), that the game's willing to try is honestly pretty cool.
But let's not mince words here, Quest for Camelot GBC is not a very good game. It's easy to see why it's on the service, it trying to be another Link's Awakening-type game (and I guess Ninty owns the rights? Weird). But it fails in a lot of ways that highlight how consistently well-made Zelda tends to be. Case in point, the grid system. 2D Zelda always obeys a loose grid system, where even though Link and other characters can freely move around, all actions they perform are constrained to this grid. If Link makes a jump, he'll always land within the parameters of a tile. If he digs, that will conform to a given tile. So on and so forth. It's a subtle thing that you take for granted, but I found myself thinking about it here trying to jump and dig as Kayley. That jump segment across the scalding lake is particularly dastardly. Kayley jumps just a bit further than two tiles' length, so you're constantly having to orient your sub-position within a tile in order to keep from jumping directly into the boiling water. To say nothing of how inconsistent the game is about where you're able to dig. I wasted a bunch of time in Chapter 2 trying to find the big "turnip" for that ornery horse, enough so that I dug every diggable tile in the village area, and man, did the map not look like I'd dug every tile.
I also have to mention the sword techniques for having one of the weirdest control interactions I've yet run into in a video game. So it's a pretty ambitious idea, having both an RPG leveling system and an expansive moveset with the sword, all on an 8-bit handheld. In most cases, the extra moves aren't worth the trouble, and I found myself leaning into the standard slash and that dash attack (since it's stronger and faster). But that input on the dash attack is deceptively weird! So you have to double tap a direction, then hit the sword button to pull it off - seems straightforward. Only, you don't have to do all that at once. It turns out any time you press the same directional button twice, you "chamber" the input for a dash attack, which gets executed when you hit the sword button. So, for example, if you're trying to chase down a boss and happen to hit right, pause for a moment, then hit right again - it doesn't matter how long it takes for you to hit that sword button, it WILL be a dash attack, even if you hit other directional buttons beforehand! I even tested it out by waiting a good couple seconds between directional inputs, and it still does that! I've never ever run into that! Naturally this means you end up doing the dash attack when you want to do the slash attack, which is an issue because the dash attack doesn't have much knockback. Not a big issue on NSO since you're able to rewind the emulator, but I'm glad I didn't play on original hardware.
Just to touch on bosses really quickly, they all kinda suck. They tend to follow the same pattern of wandering around aimlessly, occasionally throwing out an attack to spice things up. If the arena allows for it, it's pretty easy to cheese their AI. This was particularly funny with the final Ruder fight, where I trapped him in a corner and just eroded two(!) health meters by slapping him with my sword like I was some irritated cat.
So I'm giving this game the same rating I gave Conker's Pocket Tales, but I'll confess I feel way more fondly about this game overall. Quest for Camelot isn't very good, but it's very charming and has a surprising amount of ideas for such a modest release. It experiments a lot with its game design, making each chapter feel very different. Even if these experiments don't always work out (that "Key Dilemma" gauntlet is just mean of the game), that the game's willing to try is honestly pretty cool.