Sierra Games

Vengeance of Excalibur

Last updated: October 9, 2026

Overview

Vengeance of Excalibur is the 1991 sequel to Spirit of Excalibur.1 Synergistic Software developed it, and Virgin Games published it for MS-DOS and Macintosh, with Amiga and Atari ST versions following in 1992.23 A demon lord turns King Constantine to stone and carries off Camelot’s treasures. The player then leads a small band of Round Table knights through the Iberian peninsula, which is torn between Christian kingdoms and Muslim caliphates.24 Computer Gaming World’s Stefan Petrucha found the game engine “identical to Spirit’s.”4 It is the third game on the engine that Synergistic called “World Builder.”56

Sierra On-Line did not publish Vengeance of Excalibur. Sierra acquired Synergistic in 1996, and the studio stayed a development group within Sierra until it closed in February 1999.78

Story Summary

The story picks up after Spirit of Excalibur. Constantine rules a reunited Britain, and Excalibur and the recovered Holy Grail rest in Camelot’s treasury.2 On a stormy night a stranger knight is admitted to Camelot. A shadowy companion turns Constantine to stone, and the pair loot the treasury and kidnap Nineve, the court sorceress. Plague and demons then spread across Britain.210 A witness names the knight as Sir Bruce sans Pitié, and the trail leads to Spain. Merlin acts as regent while the knights go after Sir Bruce and his master, the Shadow Master.2

Wikipedia places the setting in Spain around the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries, which moves the Arthurian story forward by about 500 years.2 The CRPG Addict objected that the move contradicts the date given in the first game and the Arthurian tradition. He wrote that Spain “is mentioned maybe 6 times in thousands of Arthurian texts.”11 Computer Gaming World summed up the plot as a “Foozle hunt” for the stolen relics.4

Gameplay

Interface and Controls

Play follows the predecessor. A scrolling map shows the party, rival armies and wandering characters moving in real time. Scene screens handle conversation, trade and combat, and army battles have their own screen.42 Compute!‘s Rebecca Rohan listed the icon set, each with its own job:12

  • Crystal Ball: character status
  • Map: Iberia map
  • Hourglass: game speed
  • Magnifying Glass: scene level
  • Rider: move characters
  • Scroll: save and load
  • Gauntlet: actions such as Pick Up, Search, Trade, Talk, Bribe, Use and Attack

She wrote that “You really need a mouse to navigate the program with any speed.”12

Structure and Progression

The game has seven episodes, each built around recovering one of the stolen artifacts, plus optional quests.21013 Unlike Spirit, the player commands a party of four knights. Nineve and temporary allies who bring troops for large battles join later.2 The starting knights include returning characters such as Lancelot and Bors. Four characters can also be imported from a Spirit of Excalibur save, which raises the roster to sixteen.213 Locations are larger than in the first game and can contain multi-screen mazes.2

Puzzles and Mechanics

Individual combat now pits up to three characters against three, instead of one against one. The player no longer swings the sword directly but sets each fighter to reckless, normal or cautious.2 Knights refuse many evil acts, and Compute! warned that forcing too many unethical acts can kill them.12 Puzzles mostly involve finding the right object or ally. The CRPG Addict found that missing an item in an earlier episode could leave a later one unwinnable.14

Reception

Contemporary Reviews

PublicationVersionScore
Génération 4 #41 (Feb 1992)Amiga89%9
Amiga Power #13 (May 1992)Amiga60%15
Datormagazin #10 (May 1992)Amiga64%9
Amiga Format #35 (Jun 1992)Amiga64%9
Amiga Mania (Jun 1992)Amiga82%9
Amiga Action #33 (Jun 1992)AmigaNegative review; score not legible in the scan16
Computer Gaming World #90 (Jan 1992)MS-DOSMixed review, no score4
Compute! #139 (Apr 1992)MS-DOSMixed review, no score12

Petrucha’s January 1992 Computer Gaming World review, “Spanish Knights,” judged that “Vengeance does not compare well with its predecessor” on story. He found the final battle disappointing.4 He praised the interface as “so extremely well-designed” that it “doesn’t get in the way of game play at all,” and called the soundtrack “a pure delight.” He saw the game’s best feature in its map, a world “constantly in motion” where independent armies and characters create “a sense of immediate, impending doom.”4 Rohan enjoyed the graphics in Compute!, but wrote that characters were “killed too often to sustain a sense of involvement.”12

The UK Amiga press was mostly unimpressed. Amiga Power’s Matthew Squires criticised the slow disk access. He also noted that the game would not run on the Amiga 500 Plus, and summed it up as “Not awful, just uninspiring.”15 Amiga Action called it “a sequel of equally low stature” and “too similar to Spirit for comfort.” Lemon Amiga lists that review at 83%, which does not match the review’s tone, and the score could not be read in the archived scan.169

Modern Assessment

The CRPG Addict gave Vengeance 34 points on his GIMLET scale, one more than Spirit of Excalibur. He praised the graphics as “fantastic” and liked “the concept of a living world in which events happen independent of the party,” but faulted its hidden dependencies and automatic combat.14 MobyGames shows a Moby Score of 6.4.3

Development

Production

Computer Gaming World credited the design to Robert Clardy, Alan Clark and a third designer, and listed Virgin Games of Irvine, California as publisher at $49.99.4 Lemon Amiga’s Amiga credits list:9

  • Design: Alan B. Clark, John Conley and Robert Clardy
  • Coding: John Conley
  • Amiga conversion: James David Walley
  • Graphics: Christopher Barker and Robert Stein III
  • Music: Christopher Barker
  • Script: “Based on a script by” Carol Manley and Ivan Manley

According to MobyGames, the U.S. DOS release also credits Saddleback Graphics for additional graphics and TSCS, Inc. for testing.3

Sources disagree on copy protection. Computer Gaming World listed “PROTECTION: None,” while Compute! described “a very mild form of copy protection” that asks for a word from the manual.412

Technical Achievements

The MS-DOS version supports CGA, EGA, MCGA, VGA and Tandy graphics. Sound options cover AdLib, Roland MT-32, generic MPU-401 MIDI, Covox Sound Master and Tandy, and the game needs 640 KB of RAM.3 Compute! described a 256-colour presentation that “opens with a pan shot of a breathtaking castle.”12 Petrucha noted that the EGA and VGA palettes both lean heavily on red.4

Version History

VersionDatePlatformPublisher / Notes
Original (5.25” and 3.5”)1991MS-DOS (US)Virgin Games, Inc.3
Original1991Macintosh (US)Virgin Games, Inc.3
Port1992AmigaVirgin Games, Inc.; four disks39
Port1992Atari STVirgin Games, Inc.3

Legacy

Vengeance was the last of Synergistic’s Arthurian games. The engine’s next outing was Conan: The Cimmerian, which the CRPG Addict scored higher than either Excalibur game.5 Bob Clardy told Polygon that Synergistic worked as a Sierra subcontractor for a few years before Ken Williams proposed buying the studio in 1996.8

Collections

No compilation releases were found.

Downloads

Purchase / Digital Stores

  • No current digital store release was found.

Download / Preservation

Manuals & Extras

  • No manual scan was confirmed for this page.

See Also

Vengeance of Excalibur is the third of Synergistic Software’s World Builder games and the second of its Arthurian games for Virgin.

References

Footnotes

  1. Wikipedia – Spirit of Excalibur – predecessor; sequel by Synergistic, published by Virgin Games for Amiga, Atari ST, DOS and Macintosh ↩

  2. Wikipedia – Vengeance of Excalibur – developer/publisher, platforms, Spain setting and 500-year shift, plot, seven episodes, four-knight party, character import, 3-vs-3 combat styles, larger locations ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  3. MobyGames – Vengeance of Excalibur – DOS/Mac 1991, Amiga/ST 1992, Virgin Games, Inc.; Saddleback Graphics, TSCS; DOS tech specs; Moby Score 6.4 (read via MobyGames API) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  4. Stefan Petrucha, “Spanish Knights”, Computer Gaming World #90 (January 1992), pp. 20, 22 – review; engine “identical to Spirit’s”; designers; $49.99; protection none; quotes ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  5. The CRPG Addict – Conan: The Summarian – engine named “World Builder”; Conan (42) outscores Vengeance (34) ↩ ↩2

  6. PCGamingWiki – Vengeance of Excalibur – World Builder engine; Synergistic / Virgin Games; DOS and Mac OS 1991 ↩ ↩2

  7. Wikipedia – Synergistic Software – acquired by Sierra On-Line in 1996; closed February 22, 1999 ↩

  8. Polygon – “Diablo: Hellfire” behind-the-scenes feature (2018) – Synergistic as Sierra subcontractor; 1996 takeover offer ↩ ↩2

  9. Lemon Amiga – Vengeance of Excalibur – Amiga credits incl. script by Carol and Ivan Manley; four disks; magazine scores (Génération 4, Amiga Power, Datormagazin, Amiga Format, Amiga Mania, Amiga Action) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  10. Internet Archive – Vengeance of Excalibur (MS-DOS) – Shadowmaster, Nineve kidnapped, seven acts/episodes, Virgin Games, Inc. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. The CRPG Addict – Game 211: Vengeance of Excalibur (1991) – Bruce sans Pitié; Islamic Iberia setting; chronology objections; quote ↩

  12. Rebecca Rohan, “Vengeance of Excalibur”, Compute! #139 (April 1992), p. 120 – icon interface, faith/nobility, manual-word protection, 256-color graphics, difficulty; quotes ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  13. Giant Bomb – Vengeance of Excalibur – seven episodes; four-knight core party; import from Spirit of Excalibur; Reckless/normal/cautious combat styles ↩ ↩2

  14. The CRPG Addict – Vengeance of Excalibur: Won! (with Final Rating) – GIMLET 34; “living world” quote; graphics “fantastic”; hidden item dependencies ↩ ↩2

  15. Matthew Squires, Vengeance of Excalibur review, Amiga Power #13 (May 1992), p. 96 (Everygamegoing) – 60%; A500 Plus incompatibility; disk access; “Not awful, just uninspiring” ↩ ↩2

  16. Amiga Action #33 (June 1992) – Amiga review; Virgin £29.99, team Synergistic; “a sequel of equally low stature”; “too similar to Spirit for comfort” ↩ ↩2

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