King's Valley II

King's Valley II
Cover art
Developer(s)	Konami
Publisher(s)	Konami
Composer(s)	Kazuhiko Uehara Masahiro Ikariko Kinuyo Yamashita Motoaki Furukawa Michiru Yamane
Series	King's Valley
Platform(s)	MSX
Release date(s)	1988
Genre(s)	Action/Puzzle
Mode(s)	Single-player

King's Valley II: The Seal of El Giza is a computer game for the MSX platform by Konami. It is a sequel to the popular puzzle/action game King's Valley.

The game was released both for the MSX1 and MSX2 systems. The MSX2 version only saw a release in Japan. The same goes for a very rare "contest" version. The contest was about making levels with the games' built-in level editor, held by four Japanese MSX magazines,two of theme are MSX.FAN and Beep.The winners of this contest received a gold cartridge with the twenty custom stages on it. As for normal level-editing, custom levels can be saved to either a disk or tape, and the levels are interchangeable between both the MSX1 and MSX2 versions. For the regular game, a quite ingenious password system is used, that allows for a lot of combinations. Some managed to find a pattern in this system, and once you find that out it's fairly easy to create passwords to go to any stage in the game.

Story

Far, far into the future, inter-planetary archaeologist Vick XIII, makes a choking discovery. The pyramids on earth are malfunctioning devices of alien origin with enough energy to destroy earth. And it's up to Vick to switch off the core functions of El Giza.

Gameplay

The game consists of six pyramids each with its own wall engravings and color pattern; every pyramid contains 10 levels. The idea of the game is to collect crystals called soul stones in each level by solving the different puzzles and evading or killing the enemies using the many tools and weapons available to unlock the exit door that will take you to the next level.

Versions

The later Konami game Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the Nintendo DS reuses the stage musics "In Search of the Secret Spell" and "Sandfall" for the Egyptian area of the game.^[1]

The MSX 2 version was the same game except minor changes like the music was remixed and some of the items and backgrounds recolored.

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair uses a remix of the Stage Clear theme as the Stage Clear theme for Chapter 7: Beauty, Desire, Situation Dire (not found on the OST).

References