By AJ Johnson

Attention, Axe Heads of Earth and beyond. We greet you from a realm where it is commonplace to punch a 50-gallon drum in half with our bare fists, and eat the fully cooked chicken (and plate) held within. That’s right, we hail from the realm of 2D. This week’s edition of EpicBattleAxe’s ongoing 8 Bit Horse feature will focus on a plump mustachioed platforming star from another country. And no, it’s not Mario…

Back in the day, you didn’t really need a story. Games didn’t have hours of cutscenes with overblown and overacted dialogue to explain your backstory, your mission, and the ramifications of your actions on mankind, the universe, or the fabric of reality. No, instead you got a couple of paragraphs in the instruction manual that you never read (and subsequently lost). All you really needed to know were the basics: Where is the JUMP button, and how do I kill stuff?

That’s all well and good, until you see a character like Karnov. He’s a shirtless, overweight circus performer with a huge mustache, red pants, and the ability to launch fireballs from his mouth. That ought to get you wondering what this guy’s all about, at the very least.

And Karnov has more to him than acting as some trumped-up box art jockey; he also has a few interesting mechanics and a robust inventory system, which set him apart from the other action stars of his time. Hit the jump to learn a bit more about the adventures of Jinborov “Karnov” Karnovski.

Karnov was originally an arcade game, and it was ported to a number of home systems, but it is probably best remembered from the NES port.

At the beginning of the game, Karnov is capable of shooting a single fireball in a straight line across the screen, and through walls. Three fireballs are allowed on the screen at once, and they move quickly, so the player can pretty much fire a steady stream of them by simply mashing the Shoot button. Additional fireballs can be gained by picking up a hovering sphere powerup, and the player is introduced to these at the outset of the game.

The player has 10 slots at the bottom of the screen, showing the inventory spaces that are each dedicated to a particular item. The ladder is the very first pickup available to the player, and it is far and away the most useful. Ladders can be placed anywhere in the environment in order to reach a higher area. While only one ladder can be carried, it will be returned to your inventory if you stand on the bottom rung and press down on the D-pad, essentially making it an infinite-use item.

Some of the additional items that can be collected include boots that increase your jump height, screen-clearing super bombs, a mask that allows you to see hidden items, and even wings that let you fly through the level and over obstacles. These items can be selected live in the game by bumping the D-pad left or right (which also controls your movement), or you can pause the game to use the item without fear of being attacked.

All of this firepower would turn Karnov into mobile pain-distribution center, but for an important weakness: he cannot walk and fire at the same time. Yes, just as Karnov’s contemporary, Mega Man, could not operate his knee joints to duck under danger (yet somehow he could bend his knees to run), Karnov’s fire-breathing ability seems to be limited to standing still. Unless, of course, Karnov is jumping, in which case he can soar through the air and hurl fireballs at will.

This odd logic pushes the player into a couple of different directions: Either the player walks Karnov forward and stops every few steps to take out the surrounding enemies, or he sends Karnov bounding through the levels in jump after jump, raining down fire on all he surveys. Fortunately, for players who choose this second course of action, Karnov goes into a glide just after the peak of his jump, allowing him go fall slowly to the ground whilst picking off surrounding enemies.

Aside from a few control quirks and the re-use of some boring bosses, the game is pretty solid, and the inventory system definitely makes it stand out amongst its contemporaries. You can learn more about the items, bosses, and Bastard Class Enemies right here over on 8 Bit Horse.

So how about it, Axe Heads? Have you ever seen a character so odd that you had to pick up the game and check it out for yourself? Did the game end up being something special, or was it just a standard action game with a strange character pasted on to entice potential players? Hit us with some comments and we’ll see ya next time as EpicBattleAxe.com presents another edition of 8 Bit Horse!