You Might Have Missed...
Mountain King, (c) E.F. Dreyer (concept), CBS Software 1982 (Atari 800, various consoles)

Oh, the dreaded crown. The mountain. The spider, and the bats. The treasures and the hidden flame. The flashlight to guide your way. The skull you had to climb to be in the King's Tomb. The nightmares created by this basic adventure.

With a name like Mountain King, what first comes to your mind? Edvard Grieg's 19th century symphonical masterpiece, "In the Hall of the Mountain King?" Probably. What do you think the musical score for the game is? Nothing's original, I guess. At least Gyruss didn't have a point for using Bach's organ barrage; that was simply random, but it worked. This actually had a hall, and a mountain king. The song played when you were crowned. Sure, it was a bastardized version, concocted by the wizards of archaic soundboards for ancient consoles.

Now that you have a little background, let me introduce you to this forgotton piece of video game lore. Mountain King was an adventure game for the early consoles (such as Atari (several editions), ColecoVision, and others), and it was a treasure of a game. I, unfortunately, could not find a plotline for this game anywhere on the internet. I used to have the old booklet for my Atari cart, but I haven't seen it in a few months. With old consoles, who needed plot anyway, right? (I'm not intentionally setting a trend, mind you) The structure of the game was as follows. You were this stick figure guy... and boy, were you slick. You had a flashlight, no map, and a prayer. Your mission: go collect as many 'treasures' (read: WiYt-daahts) as was directed by the cycle-down number count on the screen pertaining to said treasures. Once you had enough treasures, there would be a time counter (apart from the main mission one) that would count down how long you had to search for the hidden flame... that's right, you had to find the hidden flame. In a Wagnerian manner (Grieg and Wagner in the same game... not quite), little bits of the Mountain King theme would play if you neared the hidden flame, and you would be able to see its sillhouette if you shined your flashlight upon it. If you stepped over it, and ducked, you were able to proceed to the hall of the Mountain King. After climbing up the skull (and dodging the frightening spider that would cross your path near the bottom of the playfield), you were to climb the chamber to retrieve the crown. Once you did it, the videogame trumpet would sound (always reminded me of when the kid got crowned in the old Imperial margarine commercials), and it was time to climb to the top of the mountain. Every now and again, bats would swoop by, and if they made contact, your turn was done... time to start over. If you were able to dodge them, and get to the top, you would be awarded bonus points... and then it would all start over again. Silly, huh?

Seems like it would be monotonous, and not a whole lot of fun, right? Well, you're incorrect. This game was quite interesting, and held the attention of some adventure fans more than Pitfall did (how many times can one hear the musical tone of the Tarzan scream? At least the melody of Mountain King was more soothing). It never got any further mention, any update or any recognition that I've been able to see... well, except for a few hobbyist sites on the web still clinging to their Atari 2600.

This "You Might Have Missed..." is for the nostalgic; those folks who like to find the little classic gems of their earlier years that brought them so much delight and joy. Younger video game fans would curse the difficulty of this beast, and discard it faster than dying twice upon spawn in Tribes 2.

Oh, that dreaded spider. How I fear him so.