The Legend of Galahad (aka Galahad) is the Sega Megadrive version of the famous Amiga (and Atari ST) action adventure named Leander (developed for both home computers in 1991). Galahad was developed by Psygnosis and published by Electronic Arts for the Sega Megadrive in 1992.
Review
STORY / GAMEPLAY Galahad, a young warrior starts a long journey to save princess Lucanna (his love interest) from the evil Lord Thanatos. His quest is pretty hard because he has to face -and kill- numerous creatures and enemy soldiers, avoid traps and spikes and finally confront Thanatos himself. The quest sounds quite an "action game standard" huh? Well it's not! The levels in this game are not linear at all; You can move your hero in all 8 directions and a lot of exploration and mapping is demanded before you complete each level. The enemies vary in sizes and skills, from elves to dragons and armed soldiers to huge spiders! Galahad carries a sharp sword as his main weapon. He can smash loads of chests found in each level and gather some gold in order to upgrade his sword, his armor and his energy levels. These upgrades can be bought in some shops found along your way. Galahad is definitely a great action adventure game with some nice platform elements, gorgeous presentation and a treat for your ears.
GRAPHICS / SOUND The visuals are great -though we expected more from the Megadrive- and almost identical to the Commodore Amiga title. Sega's version offers a few more backgrounds (like clouds, seas etc) in place of the Amiga's backdrops (which -by the way- look great too, with some cool color-gradients in the skies). The sprites are done well and move fast and smooth, much like the original. In terms of sound, this time the game offers sound FX along with the main music score, a combination that's missing from the Amiga version. The music scores (intro and in-game) though based on the original Amiga themes, they lack Paula's (Amiga's sound chip) impressive instruments quality.
OVERALL Galahad is a candy to the eye and a very playable (with gradual difficulty increase) game that every Megadrive owner should play.
Screenshots
Sounds
Intro/Menu music:
In-game music sample:
Gameplay sample
Amiga (original version)
Hardware information
Megadrive (EU) / Genesis (Jap)
CPU: Motorola 68000 at 7.16 MHz in PAL, 7.67 MHz in NTSC / Secondary Zilog Z80 at 3.55 MHz in PAL, 3.58 MHz in NTSC MEMORY: Main: 64Kb RAM + 8Kb / Video RAM: 64Kb / Audio RAM 8Kb GRAPHICS: VDP Chip: 256x224, 320x224, 256x240, 320x240 / 512 colors (1536 using shadow-highlight mode),64 x 9-bit words of color RAM, 4 lines of 15 colors plus transparent, allowing 61 on-screen colors / Sprites: Up to 64 on-screen, 16/20 per line, 256/320 pixels per line, per-sprite priority / Interlace Mode 1 (no increase in resolution and Mode 2 (2x vertical resolution) SOUND: Main: Yamaha YM2612 @ 7,16MHz with six FM channels, four operators each / Secondary: TI SN76489 with 4-channel PSG + 3 Sq Wave channels.