Knight Move(FDS) FAQ/Walkthrough version 1.0.0 by schultw.andrez@sbcglobal.net Please do not reproduce for profit without my consent. You won't be getting much profit anyway, but that's not the point. This took time and effort, and I just wanted to save a memory of an old game and the odd solutions any way I could. Please send me an email referring to me and this guide by name if you'd like to post it on your site. ================================ OUTLINE 1. INTRODUCTION 2. CONTROLS 3. STRATEGIES 4. VERSIONS 5. CREDITS ================================ 1. INTRODUCTION Knight Move is quite frankly a rather bad game for the Famicom Disk System that misses the mark when placed with others that have a simple concept. In it you play a knight that hops across an 8x4 chessboard to find hearts. Chessboard colors turn light blue, then dark blue, then disappear. After getting a heart(game A) or many(game B,) you get to replace the disappearing squares. Then the fun starts over, a little faster and (in game B) with a few more hearts. Unfortunately the best strategy to get through this game is simply to pile up points on level 1 and then charge through the other levels as you can, until you have to use the corners too much and you peg out. Also, the game starts so slowly that you will get tired of it, then it goes too fast, and you'll get frustrated. So the real game-within-the-game is to be able to make as much of a knight tour as possible without grabbing the heart on the board, then being able to flip backwards and forwards in order to get the maximum points. This leads to a random number of maximum points from any one position and a great chance something random and bad will happen to you. In fact, the game may require detailed planning to get the maximum points, and breaking a problem like this down with math or with a computer program winds up being more interesting than the game itself(ie maximizing the jumps before you get the heart.) The best part about this game was that I looked into the general 64-move knight tour, and apparently there is a general extension onto a 4x by 4x board. However, there is no way to hit all 32 squares with your knight, unless I goofed with my simple program. 2. CONTROLS The controls are rather bad. Left moves counterclockwise, right clockwise. If you stay put, the knight tries to go to the square you were on before. So you always have to be flipping the controls, or you will fall through. Your knight kind of teleports through the air as you move, which is trippy and the sign of bad design. You get 50 points for the first square you cause to fall out, 100 for the next, 150, etc. If you jump on a square that doesn't disappear, the bonus resets. Because you can't cover all squares, but you can get close, the best you can practically hope for is to clear a path for all but two squares(you can journey to all but one if you are lucky, but the game decides where you start/stop) and then go from square 1 to 30 and back and forward. Squares 2- 29 will net 100 + ... + 1450 points, or 22100. You may and probably will get less depending on where you start and how good your reasoning is. I'd say you should just loop around the side squares, cover the corners, go to the other side and back. Note it is possible to clear many levels without scoring, and later on you'll probably find you'll score a lot by accident. The trick is to know when you can sneak in and bounce back and forth for a few points. In game A you can do it at any time. In game B you may have to wait til the last heart, and you want to make sure you won't leave it on an island. 3. STRATEGIES You should always be able to get through a level in game A safely. Getting a bunch of points is another deal. To do that, use the strategy mentioned above of plotting a path out. After level 6 it is really impossible to do much more than just go back and forth and scramble for a few points, and on level 15 you are jumping for survival and the controls will mess up before you actually make a logic error. For game B, try the same thing. Don't even worry about where the heart pops up. Try to avoid it as long as possible before running into it, and use the same strategy as in A except run through all but one heart. Then jump around blank squares and clear everything off, then run backwards and forwards to complete the level. You may run into the heart by accident, which is a problem, but you should be able to clear off a lot before then. Getting a super score will depend on the heart not appearing until there are only a few places it can go. Beware of the corners and note that you shouldn't use them unless you have to. It may be possible to eliminate trouble squares in game B, but it is risky. If you zap a square and it does not reappear, then a heart cannot be on it. You can get rid of the corners this way. The problem is, you may have nothing left to land on! So you are best off just clearing squares as they appear. If you just want to play for survival, any square touching a corner square should be avoided if possible--use the edges instead. End of FAQ Proper ================================ 4. VERSIONS 1.0.0: sent to GameFAQs 12/24/2007, complete. 5. CREDITS Thanks to the usual GameFAQs gang, current and emeritus. They know who they are, and you should, too, because they get/got some SERIOUS writing done. Good people too--bloomer, falsehead, Sashanan, Masters, Retro, Snow Dragon/Brui5ed Ego, ZoopSoul, War Doc, Brian Sulpher, AdamL, odino, JDog and others I forgot. OK, even Hydrophant in his current not-yet-banned message board incarnation. I am not part of his gang, but I want him to be part of mine. Thanks to odino for suggesting this game to me. While the questions it spawned were more fun than the game itself, it's good to have these simple games to look and poke at. Thanks to the NES completion project people for keeping it going strong enough that I could explore these side passages like the FDS and still know there was a project to go back to.