The Adventures of Robin Hood (video game)
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''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' is a video game released in the autumn of 1991 by Millennium Interactive.


Plot summary

The protagonist, Robin of Loxley, is robbed of his castle by the Sheriff of Nottingham and has to get it back with the help of Maid Marian, Little John, Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck.


Gameplay

The gameplay can be described as an
action RPG An action role-playing game (often abbreviated action RPG or ARPG) is a subgenre of video games that combines core elements from both the action game and role-playing genre. Definition The games emphasize real-time combat where the player h ...
. The player controls Robin as he robs from the rich to give to the poor, adventures through Sherwood Forest, defeats the sheriff's henchmen, gathers special objects and saves peasants. Heroic acts increase Robin's popularity among NPCs; as well as defeating the Sheriff, Robin must ensure that certain stats do not become negative to ensure a successful completion of the game.
Archery Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In m ...
plays an important role in gameplay. Robin is able to collect 7 magic or special items (represented by the icons: habit, ring, feather, toadstool, bolt, horn, crystal ball) by interacting with other characters or the environment. The
isometric The term ''isometric'' comes from the Greek for "having equal measurement". isometric may mean: * Cubic crystal system, also called isometric crystal system * Isometre, a rhythmic technique in music. * "Isometric (Intro)", a song by Madeon from ...
interface developed for ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' by Millennium Interactive is similar to the interface used in '' Populous''. ''Robin Hood's'' interface was later used for '' Rome: Pathway to Power''.


Development

''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' began development in July 1990, and was released in September 1991 for
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
,
Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
, and DOS. British gaming magazine '' The One'' interviewed Steve Grand, ''Robin Hood's'' programmer, for information regarding its development in a pre-release interview. According to Grand, ''Robin Hood'' was initially conceived as a game about
cowboy A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the '' vaquer ...
s, however, he expresses that "We got part way through it though, and feelings changed about where it was going and what it was going to be. Then someone idly suggested Robin Hood and I thought 'Yeah I'll do it." Grand notes adaptations of Robin Hood in
pop culture Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * Pop (Gas al ...
, stating that "Everybody knows the Errol Flynn side of Robin Hood, but not a lot of people realize that a major part of the legend is mythological", and expresses that both '
Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...
' depictions of Robin Hood and the mythological interpretation are incorporated into the game. The icons for spells in ''Robin Hood'' are based upon Anglo-Saxon paganism and
Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern period ...
. A major design aspect of ''Robin Hood'' is making the game 'flexible' towards differing playstyles, and Grand states in regards to this that he "didn't want it to be the kind of adventure where you've got one single fixed sequence and if you cock up one bit of it you've blown the lot. There are any number ways of winning - and hopefully there'll be any number of ways of losing too." ''Robin Hood'' was created using a custom adventure-creation engine created by Grand, titled ''Gulliver'', and formerly titled ''Microcosm''. Grand cites the ''Gulliver'' engine's NPC management as an advantage that it has over other engines, stating that "All the people
n the game N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...
are behaving consistently all the time, they're all there, they're all doing things off stage. It's not like rooms hichdisappear when you're not in them." Grand furthermore notes how NPCs 'notice' other NPCs and interact with one another, expressing that "What's clever about it is that there are 40 people in there who can see or not see, hear or not hear eachother 'sic''- that's proper interaction and the system doesn't cheat." Every sprite in ''Robin Hood'' is marked with AI routines, and Grand states that "The whole system is object oriented, they've all got their own rule bases." At that stage of development, ''Robin Hood'' was stated to be coded with 600 rules, with this number projected to 'about 1,500' when the game was finished. Each of the 'around forty' characters and objects in ''Robin Hood'' have AI routines for different scenarios, and every sprite has 32 attributes. In the case of characters, these attributes are stated by Grand to "make up their soul", and determine factors such as "how hungry they are, how optimistic they're feeling, who they like, ndwhat sort of people they are". The values for these attributes change frequently due to every decision being determined by one or more attributes, and these decisions are impacted by what characters are nearby. Grand expresses that his long-term goal for ''Robin Hood'' was for it feel like an open world game, stating that "Ultimately what I want to do is write a computer game with no plot in it whatsoever. I just want to build the world and put the people in it so that you can do whatever you want to do." ''Robin Hood'' has a total of 64 different locations, and Grand expresses that while "
Isometric The term ''isometric'' comes from the Greek for "having equal measurement". isometric may mean: * Cubic crystal system, also called isometric crystal system * Isometre, a rhythmic technique in music. * "Isometric (Intro)", a song by Madeon from ...
raphics area bit dated", "it's a good way of getting 3D on the cheap. At the moment the system can't do
first person First person or first-person may refer to: * First person (ethnic), indigenous peoples, usually used in the plural * First person, a grammatical person * First person, a gender-neutral, marital-neutral term for titles such as first lady and first ...
3D fast enough - even now about 90 percent of the processing time is just taken up by plotting screens." Memory restrictions were noted as a difficulty in ''Robin Hood's'' development, and an example is given of a
swan Swans are birds of the family (biology), family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the goose, geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form t ...
that 'doubles as' a
coffin A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation. Sometimes referred to as a casket, any box in which the dead are buried is a coffin, and while a casket was originally regarded as a box for jewel ...
; if a character dies and the coffin is loaded into memory, the swan disappears. ''Robin Hood's'' graphics were first drafted by Steve Grand, and then finalized by graphic artist Robin Chapman.


Reception

Reviewer
Gary Whitta Gary Leslie Whitta (born 21 July 1972) is an English screenwriter, author, game designer, and video game journalist. He was editor-in-chief of both the UK and US editions of ''PC Gamer'' magazine and contributor to gaming magazine ''ACE''. Whit ...
gave the PC version 820 out of a possible 1000 points, praising the graphics, controls and sense of involvement. Whitta, Gary (October 1991). ''Robin Hood'' (review of PC version). ACE, p. 64–65. '' The One'' gave the Amiga version of ''Robin Hood'' an overall score of 80%, calling it "atmospheric" and stating that the changing of seasons in-game gives "a sense of urgency", further noting how NPCs "lead independent lives" outside of the player's involvement. ''The One'' praises the game's flavor text and sense of humour, expressing that humour "is very difficult to achieve in a computer game". ''The One'' compares the game's graphics to ''Populous'', but states that the gameplay is dissimilar, as "the map is much smaller and the action is directed towards achieving one specific goal." ''The One'' also praises the amount of content and ''Robin Hood's'' replayability, noting the amount of dialogue with NPCs and the ability to solve puzzles differently. ''The One'' criticizes the amount of time it takes to get to different locations, saying that "it can be annoying waiting for Robin to cross from one side of the map to the other, particularly because he can only walk in four directions."


References

*Upchurch, David (July 1991). ''The new Millennium'' (sic). ACE, p. 60.
Review of Adventures of Robin Hood
by Methat, serve
Revival of DOS Games
22.12.2008


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Adventures of Robin Hood, The 1991 video games Amiga games Atari ST games DOS games Millennium Interactive games Robin Hood video games Role-playing video games U.S. Gold games Video games scored by Richard Joseph Video games with isometric graphics Video games developed in the United Kingdom