You like the concept, but medieval England is getting a bit tiring? Then head over to medieval Japan! This is how Lords of the Rising Sun is best described. Oh, you don't have a clue what I'm talking about? Then you probably haven't played Defender of the Crown by the same company! Stop reading here and sit in the corner!

You'd think that a company like Cinemaware should really have loved a CD-based games system. After all, it was their proclaimed business case to produce games in the style of classic Hollywood movies and CDs offered so much more space to live this out.

Defender of the Crown was the Amiga's killer application. Though beneath its audiovisual presentation, it wasn't a very good game. In fact, just a few years further on, the Cinemaware formula of stringing together simplistic mini games with some adventurous setting of essentially little relevance had become easily transparent. The company's releases generated less and less buzz. This was when they re-visited and re-imagined their initial success with Lords of the Rising Sun. Though not without having gone back to the drawing board.