Kuro no Ken (AKA: Blade of the Darkness): Small but perfectly formed

It doesn’t take Kuro no Ken very long to confirm that, yep, it’s definitely the ’97 PlayStation remake of an all-ages ’95 PC-98 game by a developer that otherwise specialised in adult games (link goes to Japanese Wikipedia, text only). The frequent event scenes showcase some of the finest pixel art the ’90s could muster. Hand-drawn cloth is always elaborately creased and shaded. The time between starting the adventure and seeing a conventionally attractive woman semi-naked is kept to an absolute minimum. More than a simple transplant, this new CD-based take on the multi-floppy original has been given an exclusive visual overhaul. I am normally very much against this sort of thing. I could quite happily plaster my walls in pixel art made for NEC’s computers and will defend its style to the death, but in all honesty I was consistently impressed with the improvements seen here. The event and battle art has been redrawn at a higher resolution and with less dithering, but is still very…