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Finnish developer Pasi Hytonen has recently uncovered (and made available) his long-lost C64 platformer Little Knight Arthur (http://www.pasisbitstuff.net/). He has also, rather thoughtfully, made available Little Knight Arthur (Cheat Version). Neither is, alas, much to write home about.

The idea of the game is to navigate little knight Arthur around a succession of seven caverns. The mission for each cavern varies from simply making it through the room in one piece to rescuing one of your kidnapped comrades by taking an item in one part of the cavern to another.

The overall layout of the game is fairly pleasing, with some basic sprites set against a black background. There is also music on interrupt which is reasonably tuneful. Little Knight Arthur also reacts instantly to joystick or keyboard movement.

Unfortunately, however, the game is one of almost complete randomness - the spiders, rivers, bats and crab-bat things that inhabit each room don't follow any set pattern. This makes the game nigh on infuriating, as you need both pixel-perfect positioning and for the Gods of Retrogaming to move your adversary in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time (and keep him moving in that direction throughout your jump over him).

This is just too ridiculous; it doesn't even allow for any kind of increasing difficulty as you venture further into the game. From the very start, it's just ridiculously unfair. More irritatingly still, the third cavern - if you ever get that far! - is not quite as random as the first or second. Put this cavern first and players might be at least encouraged for a while...!

This game was written in 1985, which is when the Commodore 64 was coming of age. Nevertheless, in that era of Beach Head and Crystal Castles, it's difficult to imagine Little Knight Arthur would have competed well. At best, it would've been a budget title. This is more or less acknowledged by the author himself, who seems to have released the Cheat Version almost entirely to counter that criticism.

The Cheat Version includes an intro "trainer" where all manner of cheats (infinite lives, invulnerability, always have sword, etc) may be enabled, allowing you to at least see the later caverns. I've never been a big fan of such options and here they seem to be an admission that few will get far with the original version.

Do I recommend you download and play either of them? What do you think?