the player loses a life if Kuros' life force runs out or if he falls off the screen, and the game ends if all lives are lost. However, players can collect food and ale to help replenish Kuros' life force, and they can collect miniature versions of Kuros for extra lives. If the game ends, and a high enough score is obtained, players can register their initials and high score in "The Scroll of Honor", where, according to the game's manual, "the scores of the greatest warriors ever to enter the Fortress of Fear are recorded". However, the players' high scores are erased once the device is turned off. The game does not offer continues, so players must restart the game from the beginning every time the game ends. Plot The events in Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear take place after the events in Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II. The game features the knight warrior Kuros, "one of the bravest warriors ever to wield the IronSword" as well as the only person to defeat the evil wizard Malkil. After Malkil's defeat in Ironsword, he went into seclusion for more than 17 years, in which nobody was heard from him during that time. Then, Princess Elaine disappears without a trace, in which Kuros believes that Malkil has captured her and imprisoned her in the dreaded Fortress of Fear, located in the woods of Zanifer. Kuros then ventures into the Fortress of Fear to stop Malkil from furthering his evil plans. However, many people have gone inside the Fortress of Fear, but none of them survived. Reception Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear was developed by UK-based video game company Rare, and was published by Acclaim Entertainment in January 1990 in North America. It was briefly covered in Nintendo Power magazine in its May–June 1990 issue. There, the staff was questioning as to why Acclaim titled the game Chapter X, saying that "if we find out what happened to Chapters III through IX, we'll let you know". It was also reviewed in UK-based gaming magazine Mean Machines, where they praised the game overall, but they criticized the level of blurring caused on the Game Boy by the scrolling. According to reviewer Julian Rignall: "It's a shame that this features such blurry scrolling, because otherwise it's a great game." In a retrospective of the entire Wizards & Warriors