In this traditional roleplaying video game (much like The Legend of Zelda), designed by Capcom for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Willow must journey to Nockmaar castle to defeat the evil Queen Bavmorda. This is where any similarities to the movie stop. From the games' opening sequence, great liberties are taken with the Willow storyline: Bavmorda, messenger of the Spirit of the Sky, has banished Fin Raziel, messenger of the Spirit of the Earth, and is attempting conquer the world. Only Willow can stop her! Madmartigan, Sorsha, Fin Raziel, and Franjean and Rool make brief appearances along the way, but only to offer advice to our hero. Dozens of new characters and scenarios were added to make the game more interesting. Check out the FAQ for more info, or click the thumbnail above for a larger image of the cartridge box.
If you have the game, check out these cheat codes.
Now you can play the Willow NES game on your PC! Click
here.
Note: It is illegal to download and/or use any games that you do not own
the cartridge for. I take no responsibility for illegal downloads.
You will also need a NESTicle emulator to play the game. Get one at
Dave's Classics (it's about halfway down the page).
Capcom also released a somewhat rare arcade game based on the movie. The arcade version boasted sophisticated graphics, strict adherence to the movie's storyline, and gameplay much like Lucasfilm Games' later release for the SNES, Super Star Wars. Click on either of the above thumbnails for full-sized screen shots from the game.
A big thanks to David Tayman for bringing this game to my attention.
You can play the Willow arcade game on your PC! All you need is the Willow arcade ROM and the Callus emulator. Both are available at Callus Central.
Ken Walczak, a friend of mine, introduced me to the official boardgame of the movie. Designed by the creator of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game and manufactured by Tor Books, the game originally retailed for about $30. Players divide into two teams: Good (Willow, Madmartigan, Airk, and Franjean and Rool) vs Evil (General Kael and Sorsha). The good guys try to get the Elora to Tir Asleen while the bad guys try to steal the baby away to Nockmaar castle. Note: the bad guys always win.
Click here for the complete game manual, or click the thumbnail above right to see the full-sized cover art from the game's box.
Created by Parker Bros, this was a simple boardgame intended for kids ages 6 to 12. The basic idea was to roll dice and move your player around the board, picking up cards (either Villains or Heroes) as instructed by the space you landed on. You could discard matching Villain cards in pairs, and play matching Hero cards, also in pairs. If you played three pairs of Heroes in the course of the game, and had no Villains in your hand, you won. Though it lacked the intricacy of the Tor game, it did feature some killer artwork. More info on this to come. Click the thumbnail above for a larger image of the box art.
There was also apparently a PC game based on the movie released by Mindscape. (Click the thumbnail right for full-sized screenshot from the game, taken from Games Magazine, January 1989.) According to the game's creator, Peter Oakley:
"It was a cutting-edge game at the time it was released. We used state-of-the-art compression techniques to squeeze loads of 16-color (EGA) graphics onto the disk. EGA was a new arrival on the computer display scene at the time. This was the first Mindscape game to be optimized for EGA. Before that, game graphics had been 'dumbed-down' to 4-color CGA graphics.
"The menu for the game was a foreshadowing of the World Wide Web -- a scrolling window of text and graphics introduced the storyline, and certain words were HYPERTEXT; clicking on them dropped you into game mode.
"Game play was actually a collection of several 'mini' games. Two different mazes, a forest chase, three spellcastings, the fork in the road, the swordfight with General Kael, and the final battle spellcasting.
"The game was released in stores the same week the movie came out, so we caught the wave and sales were brisk. I spent several days in the warehouse, shrinkwrapping thousands of copies of the game to be shipped out to retailers. Willow was the 4th best selling game for Mindscape in 1988, outsold only by Gauntlet, Paperboy, and Outrun."
Check out Mindscape's game manual.
