Flip-screen

Learic and Leanoric concoct their spells by travelling round the flip-screen landscape, collecting rare herbs and roots from the countryside.

Yes, that's right, you've correctly deduced from the plot that what we're talking about here is a flip-screen adventure, each screen presenting you with a few baddies to beat up and one or two problems to solve before you can progress onto the next one.

So, your masterpiece is going to have to be either a straightforward (upward?) vertically scrolling blast (with a choice of fast or faster still but both supremely smooth), a single flip-screen affair or a 'push-scrolling' jobbie where the screen scrolls in accordance with the main sprite.