Robin of the Wood

Robin of the Wood
Game No.	186
Voting	6.50 points, 26 votes
Developer	Marc Dawson
Company	Odin
Publisher	System 3
Musician	Fred Gray
Release	1985
Platform	C64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Genre	Adventure, Arcade 2D
Gamemode	Single player
Operation
Media
Language

Description

Take over the role of Robin Hood, Son of Aleric. Robin's father, keeper of the silver arrow, was killed by the Sheriff of Nottingham and the silver arrow was stolen. This silver arrow has now been offered by the Sheriff as a price for the winner of an archer contest to lure Robin into a trap. Your aim is to get the arrow back and avenge the death of your father. For this you need to search the Sherwood Forest, get three magic arrows and thwart the plans of the Sheriff. But beware! The men of the Sheriff are in the whole forest and chase Robin. A labyrinth-action-adventure with nice background graphics and atmospheric music.

Design

... a short animation from the game ...

... Robin in front of the castle walls ...

The very well-made 2D design of the surroundings (forest, castle, etc.) is switched only screen by screen (size: 16 x 20 screens). The sprites are well-animated and the whole thing is accompanied by adequate music, which on the long run can be a bit unnerving.

Hints

Controls

Keyboard controls:

• They can be set arbitrarily.

Joystick controls

• The controls are done by joystick in port 1:

Walk:

• / = Robin walks left or right.
• / = Robin walks up or down the path

Fight:

• = prepares Robin for the fight
• / = and he starts to fight (Robin attacks into the corresponding direction with his weapon)

Other:

• Enter  = activate pause mode (to continue press Enter  once again very fast)
• CRTL  = restart game

Main aim

• Get the three "magic arrows" from the Ent (magic tree).
• After you have bought them, walk into the most southern part of the (yellow-red) castle.
• The end screen with statistics is shown...

Enemies

• Soldiers - They are everywhere in the forest and shoot. They even appear again after your have defeated them.
• Hedgehog - they can subtract life points when you walk over them.

Persons

• The Druid: Stand in front of his hut and let yourself get healed as soon as he passes the hut.
• The King: Appears randomly in the game and "moves" you back to the blue castle.
• The Bishop: Walks (guarded by a soldier) around in the forest/castle. You get gold, if you kill his guard.
• The Witch: Takes away the flowers from your inventory and puts you to a (sometimes important) place in the forest. If you have no/too little flowers in the inventory, she transports you to the castle as a punishment.
• The Ent: You get the sword, arrows and bow from him and at last the three magic arrows (for each 3 sacks of gold).

Orientation in the forest

• The (blue) castle is utterly northwest
• The (yellow-read) castle is in the southern part of the forest
• The "hut of the Druid" can be found southwest
• The position of the Ent (=tree) varies. Either a bit south of the blue castle or east of the druid's hut.
• The King, Bishop and the Witch appear randomly

Solution

The labyrinth

• The whole forest is a rather big maze, one does lose one's way very fast without a map.
• For everybody who wants to know it: The labyrinth is 20 vertical "sections" (single screens of the forest) long and 16 horizontal sections wide, which you can walk through completely in some places, so you quasi walk a circle.

Tips

• Collect every item on the way through the forest (gold sacks, flowers, rings, arrows...).
• The soldiers always walk in the middle of the path on the same height, same as the hedgehog. So Robin should always walk a bit higher to avoid getting caught.
• Do not experiment by walking deliberately into the bushes, it can happen that you cannot move any more due to a "clipping" bug.
• Let yourself get healed by the druid (or use the cheat), so that you do not lose a life.
• If you play the game on an emulator, raise the speed to more than 100%, so you can play a bit faster (the music, however, gets nerve-wrecking).

Short walkthrough

First create a map and mark the natives hut, the Ent (tree with face) and the two castle entrances. Then find the bishop and kill his guard (you get two sacks of gold from him). When you have three sacks of gold, go to the Ent (tree). He takes three sacks of gold and gives you an item for it. For the first three sacks you get a sword (not really useful as it works like the rod). For the next three sacks you get a bow, which can be used well, if you have collected the quivers with arrows in the wood. At the next visits at the Ent you get for three sacks each a magical red arrow. After having received three magical arrows, go to the castle to enter the archer competition. Here the game ends and you get the evaluation.
The most important thing in the game is to meet the bishop as often as possible. As this can partially take a long time, the search for him can sometimes turn into an extended tour through the wood...

Cheats

• For endless lives enter the following after loading (and before the RUN command): POKE 23587,197

Voting

Voting of the C64-Wiki users (10=the best vote):
6.50 points at 26 votes (rank 636). You need to be logged in to cast a vote.
C64Games	6	17th July 2005 - "good" - 2023 downs
Lemon64	6,53	6th October 2006 - 19 votes
ZZap64	92%	Issue 86/01

Reviews

Tokaier: "The game has always had a special effect on me. I could spend hours and hours in front of it without losing the motivation. Armed with a notepad and a pen, the whole labyrinth was drawn meticulously. The path to the castle, the old tree or the jail was searched for hours (although the latter did not have to be searched essentially, as a meeting with the sheriff was followed by a stop there). The music is not very diversified but nevertheless beautiful and not as with other games nerve-cracking enough to set the volume to '0'. A game for long winter evenings (or long summer nights ;) ). Recommended from my point of view."

Dirty-Genius: "I do not want to hold forth about the plot of the game (its on the internet), although the history is probably much more exciting than the game itself..."

Sledgie: "Nice action-adventure. The soldiers are "stupid" and always run back and forth. The sound is not that good. It is worth having a look at. Unfortunately, my motivation has not lasted for very long, despite the solution by Dirty-Genius. I vote 6 out of 10 points."

blubarju: "A nicely designed action-adventure. And thanks to the internet I know after so many years now, what the aim of the game is. I surely will load it into the emu again. 7 points from me."

Miscellaneous

Cover

... front cover of the game ...

Highscore

1. Blubarju - overall 88 / area 90 / arrows 3 - solved (14.11.2010)
2. Equinoxe - overall 88 / area 90 / arrows 3 - solved (17.10.2011)
3. Camailleon - overall 84 / area 85 / arrows 3 - solved (08.10.2011)
4. Sledgie - overall 03 / area 15 / arrows 0 (02.11.2003)

	#2 Equinoxe		#3 Camailleon

• 

  #4 Sledgie

Links

• C64Games.de - Game No. 1580
• Lemon64 - Game No. 2155
• Gamebase64.com - Game No. 6409
• ZZap64 test report

Videos

• Video at Archive.org
• Video at YouTube