Source: Amstrad Computer User – October 1987
Solomon’s Key was originally an arcade puzzle game released by Tecmo. In 1987 and 1988, a number of home ports were released. In addition to the NES version, there were ports for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, Sega Master System (Japan only) and others. There are also a couple of other games related to Solomon’s Key. The Game Boy Color game, Monster Rancher Explorer is an updated port of Solomon’s Key. Also, one of the latest NES releases, Fire and Ice, was a prequel to Solomon’s Key. The NES version of Solomon’s Key was released for the Wii Virtual Console in 2006 and in 2013 on both the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U Virtual Consoles. It was also released for the PS4 in 2015.
This particular review features a version that few U.S. players would probably be familiar with. It runs on the Amstrad CPC computer which was a U.K. based line of computers that were popular in Europe in the mid 1980s. The Amstrad CPC 464 was probably the most popular model and was also the first. It was an 8-bit computer with a Z-80 processor and built-in casette drive (which remained more popular than disks throughout the 1980s in Europe becuase of their lower cost).
This review comes from the October 1987 issue of Amstrad Computer User.
