Reviews

Beautifully coloured graphics, the sprites too, and pratically without colour clash - in this sword game, but not much of a gameplay, and the way your arm lower the shield makes you character look grotesque or one of the Fantastic Four.
2,5/5

Converted from the Taito coin-op Gladiator, this is a hack-and slash game where your fighter must run from left to right hitting various targets with his sword and defending himself with his shield, and defeat various guardians at the end of each section. Graphically rather interesting, with a good use of color and large sprites; a novelty value is the presence of armor, which will leave you - and your enemies - vulnerable to a deadly hit. Luckily you can restore it if you hit a flying icon with your sword. Otherwise the gameplay is rather shallow, and
as a full price game it would be rather overpriced, but it was part of the Trio compilation - its weaker title although not being so bad after all. And back in the day I was strangely compelled to play it right to the end, where I found an invincible enemy! Many years later I read an interview to David Perry where he explained that it was deliberately so, because there was no memory left for a proper ending. Oh well... 3/5

Gladiator, the arcade game this is based on, was pretty decent, this isn't too bad as well, but you can't finish it as the final boss is intentionally unbeatable. I would have given it a three but the fact that you can't finish it legitimately, that you have to cheat to win, just annoys me enough to make me downgrade its overall score.