You're not a wizard - what's this picture for?Here’s the first cassette out of the box of Spectrum tapes that I found. It’s an unremarkable adventure game consisting of lots of walking and a fair bit of shooting things. This being within the era of Robin Hood, the things you shoot are arrows, daggers and swords, although I’m not sure I’d want to throw a sword at someone rather than hold onto it and get down to some limb-severing. You can only carry one weapon at a time as well as three quest objects that help with solving the puzzles. You do have to guess what most of the items are for (and in some cases, what the items actually are) and there’s no dialogue to help. That’s all beyond a game written in 1987! In fact Mr Hood doesn’t even put in an appearance and you, as Friar Tuck, are tasked with ridding the evil that has descended upon Sherwood Forest. Despite its ordinaryness I did bother to finish it back in the day and it was diverting enough. Someone has recorded a complete playthrough on the RZX Archive channel on YouTube if you want to see some of the action.
But that inlay poses more questions than answers. The image is of a scrawny wizard shooting some sort of magic bolt through a skeleton. You definitely don’t play a wizard and magic bolts never put in an appearance. There are skeletons though. Maybe the game changed substantially during development, or maybe the artist was told to ‘draw something magical.’
