A fortune in diamonds awaits an adventurer hardy enough to descend into the depths of the long-lost diamond mine deep inside the foreboding mountain. For those that dare venture into its depths, they may discover more than just diamonds, as in the heart of the mountain is a Temple Chamber. Inside this Temple Chamber rests an artifact beyond price, the Golden Crown, which must be brought to the Perpetual Flame on the mountaintop. But the creatures and spirits that inhabit the mine guard it, and no one that’s ventured into the mountain has ever returned.
At heart, Mountain King‘s objective is simple: get the Golden Crown and bring it to the Perpetual Flame. The controls are simple: left and right to move, up and down to climb ladders, upper left and upper right to jump, and the action button shines your flashlight. However, you can’t use the flashlight and pick up diamonds at the same time. You can explore the entire mountain, without restrictions, with the exception of the Temple Chamber and the bottom level. Why not the bottom level? Because that’s where one of the only things in the game that can kill you, the Giant Spider, lurks. If it touches you once, you’ll be ensnared in its web. You must wiggle the joystick left and right to escape. Fail to do so before the Giant Spider comes back, and you’re dead. You’ll also find yourself falling a lot due to the tricky jumping controls, and when you hit the ground, you’ll be stunned. How fast it takes you to recover depends on what height you fall from.
Once you find the Temple Chamber, you’ll see that there are no ladders to climb to get into it. So at first, it seems that all you have to do is collect the diamonds inside the mountain. You can do this by picking up the loose ones laying around, or by using your flashlight to spot treasure chests, which you need to get in front of and kneel down to claim. However, once you collect enough diamonds, you’ll awaken the Flame Spirit.
Atari 8-bit
The Flame Spirit must be found and picked up to access the Temple Chamber, and this is where, for one of the first times in video game history, music plays a big part in the gameplay. Once you’ve collected over 1000 points, your score will turn yellow. This means the Flame Spirit is now active. If you’re fairly close to it, you’ll hear the Flame Spirit’s theme start to play. The closer you get to it, the louder the music gets, and vice versa. At its loudest, you’ll see a brief flicker of yellow somewhere on the screen. Get close to the flicker, turn on your flashlight, and you’ll see the Flame Spirit dancing around. Go up to it, and kneel. At that point the music stops, and you’ll see what looks like flickers of light around your explorer’s head. If you’re playing on a harder difficulty level, find it as quickly as possible. One the easiest difficulty, you have unlimited time to find the Flame Spirit, but on the higher difficulty levels, you don’t. Then you have to repeat the process to make it appear again. Once you have the Flame Spirit, that’s when the Cave Bats come out. On the easiest difficulty, they’re harmless at this point. But on harder difficulty levels, they will steal the Flame Spirit from you if they touch you.
Once you have the Flame Spirit, bring it to the Temple Chamber. There’s a hole directly beneath the pedestal. Kneel below that hole, and the Skull Spirit will appear. You only have a few seconds to climb the Skull Spirit and get into the Temple Chamber. From there, it’s a quick climb up to the Golden Crown. Kneel beneath it, and it will appear on top of top of your head, and a rendition of Edvard Grieg’s famous classical piece “In the Hall of the Mountain King” will begin to play. That’s your cue to get the Golden Crown up to the Perpetual Flame on the mountaintop. Once the music ends, you’ll have to repeat everything again. At this point, the Cave Bats become aggressive. If they touch you, they will steal the Golden Crown and return it to the the Temple Chamber, and you’ll have to repeat everything again. And just to add a bit more urgency to the game, there is a timer, and the higher the difficulty level you play on, the less time you have to retrieve the Golden Crown and get out. Fail to bring the Golden Crown to the Perpetual Flame before it runs out, and it’s game over.
It’s hard to say which version was released first. The Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit and VIC-20 games was the first version of the game released, in 1983, followed a year later by the Atari 5200 and Colecovision ports. There are minor differences between all of them, notably that in the VIC-20, Atari 8-bit and 5200 ports, your explorer runs, while you just walks at a regular speed in the 2600 and Colecovision versions. As one might expect, the 2600 has the most basic graphics out of all of them, whereas the rest are slightly improved, adding little details like plants growing on the mountaintop and swords decorating the inside of the Temple Chamber. Also, in the non-2600 versions, you can actually die if you collide with the flames surrounding the Temple Chamber (these flames don’t exist in the 2600 version) and the Perpetual Flame (unless you have the Golden Crown). The music sounds about the same in every version, although in all versions except the 2600 version, not only does a short victory fanfare play when you first get the crown, but “In the Hall of the Mountain King” will speed up to let you know you’re close to running out of time to get the Golden Crown to the Perpetual Flame. Also, in every version except the 2600 version, there’s a separate counter that shows you how many points you have to gather before awakening the Flame Spirit, and once it’s been awakened, there’s a little image of the Flame Spirit dancing next to the counter.
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 version does have something that none of the other versions seem to have: a “lost world,” or as it’s more commonly referred to, a hidden level. And contrary to what you might think, it’s not below the mountain, it’s above it. To get there involves jumping to the left off of the smaller mountain peak, bouncing off the taller one, and while continuing to hold the joystick up and left, the explorer will keep soaring into the sky until you reach the entrance. Once you manage to get into it, you’ll see that it’s a mishmash of ladders and platforms. It’s tricky to navigate, but if you manage to make it to the top, you’ll see two ghostly figures. Beyond that, there’s no reward or points given for entering this “lost world.”
Mountain King sits comfortably with Pitfall!, Montezuma’s Revenge, and many other exploration games from that era. Sure, there’s a lot of frustration when the Cave Bats steal the Golden Crown for the seven hundredth time, or the Giant Spider eats you again because you couldn’t get out of its web in time, but like most classics, the challenge is enough to bring you back for more.
Screenshot Comparisons
Atari 2600
Atari 8-bit
Commodore 64
Colecovision
VIC-20
