King Arthur and the Knights of Justice is a Sunday morning, syndicated animated series which lasted for two seasons of 13 episodes each. The series was created by Diane Eskenazi (Golden Films) and Avi Arad (Toy Biz chairman, CEO and the founder of Marvel Studios) with its first episode airing on September 13, 1992.
Description[]
The show's premise had King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table trapped in the Cave of Glass by the evil enchantress Queen Morgana. The wizard Merlin, unable to free King Arthur and the Knights himself, searches the timeline for replacement Knights. Merlin finds the quarterback of the New York Knights football team, Arthur King, as a suitable replacement.
Merlin transports Arthur King and his teammates to Camelot after one of their football games and appoints King as their leader, with his teammates as the new Knights of the Round Table, and assigns them the task of freeing the true King and Knights. To do so, they must find the 12 Keys of Truth, one for each knight that only the knight in question can initially touch. Once all the keys are found, the real knights will be free and the team will return home. In the meantime, they pledge "....fairness to all, to protect the weak and vanquish the evil".
Video game[]
In 1995, a video game based on the cartoon was released for the SNES gaming system. The game is a standard action-adventure game, played from a top-down perspective. The player takes on the role of Arthur King and is accompanied by two Knights of Justice controlled by the game console. Twelve Knights are available from the start, each with his own weapon, personality and statistics for life force, defense, strength and speed. Each boss of the game has a specific weakness against one of the Knights.
Unlike the series itself, the game features an ending where the heroes achieve their goal of freeing the real King Arthur and returning home.
Trivia[]
The beginning of the series was adapted into a three-part comic book miniseries by Marvel Comics in 1993.