1942 [Arcade]

Thinking about 1942, it’s a game that is front and center in my mind when someone brings up Capcom. It’s also one that I instantly associate with going to arcades during the 1980s. As such, I instantly date myself when it comes to the game because most people conjure up images of Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, or maybe Street Fighter when the name “Capcom” is uttered these days. Not to mention, arcades are a relic of the past for many, something that people increasingly only know about because of stories from their parents.

As a kid growing up, most of the arcades that I went to had a 1942 cabinet in them. I didn’t even have to look for the thing, it’s music could be heard the second one entered the place with its very simplistic mix of snare drums and what sounded like a whistle, belting out a very military themed tune. Well, perhaps “belting out” is going a little bit far, as the technology was still limited at the time insofar as generating music goes circa 1984. There’s an old interview with the game’s composer, Ayako Mori, floating around where she mentions how limited technology’s ability was to make music for games in the early 80s. I certainly agree that it was still the age of basic bleeps and bloops, but what she did with 1942 still made for a very memorable tune.

Another thing I’ll never forget about the game is the sheer number of quarters that I’ve pumped into it over the years. Of course, this was in part because I really like it. However, it’s also in part because I never got terribly good at the game. It was the 80s after all and arcade games were designed to devour those things back then. Eventually, I got to the point where I’d be quite pleased with myself if I managed to survive until a level with a decent amount of land passing beneath my P-38, which was no mean feat in its own right. Getting further than that never really materialized, but there is a part of me that would actually like to finish the game with one credit some time before I die.

While playing the game, it’s easy to see that the developers were experimenting with how they wanted to approach the genre to some extent. First of all, quite a lot of enemies are thrown at the player. By the second or third level, bullets are all over the place while your airplane is being swarmed by smaller planes. It’s usually around this point that one or two big planes will fly on-screen, tempting players to shoot them down for big points amidst the maelstrom swirling around them.

Second, there are some nice little touches to 1942. On a basic, aesthetic level it’s nice to see the P-38 slowly tilt as if a player moves it to the far left or right of the screen. It sounds like a trivial thing nowadays, but one rarely saw this sort of thing back in the 80s, as planes and ships often stayed flat as they flew around the screen in shoot ‘em ups during this time.

On a more practical level, players were given the option to “roll” with their plane a limited number of times. This allowed the plane to do a loop whereby it could avoid being hit by a bullet or prevent a collision with an enemy plane. As the genre evolved, developers looked for more and more uses for buttons on the arcade machine. There were games like Dragon Spirit and Xevious that had one button for air attacks and another for ground attacks. In later years, it became very common to have one button for normal attacks and another for bombs. 1942, however, was a unique case with its rolls as an alternate ability to firing off the plane’s main guns.

As the years wore on, and the game grew in popularity, 1942 inevitably made its way to various home consoles including the NES, MSX, and PC-88. Decades later, it showed up on a number of classic compilations from Capcom. For me, though, its original arcade incarnation will always be my favorite. Sure, it gobbled up my quarters at a blistering pace, but the game is so intertwined with my early arcade-going experiences and the good times that I had in those places that I’ll always have fond memories of that version of the game.

Gunsmith Cats [Anime]

As anime became more and more popular in the West during the 90s, various companies went to great lengths working on bringing legions of shows to North America. By the end of that decade, those interested in the medium had an impressive selection of shows to choose from on DVD and VHS. Whether it was a full length series or a smaller, lesser known OVA, there was a lot to choose from.

One such example of this was Gunsmith Cats, a three episode OVA based on Kenichi Sonoda’s manga of the same name. The show focused on a pair of women, Rally and May, who ran a gun shop in Chicago while also doing jobs on the side as part-time bounty hunters. It was a straightforward premise but more than adequate as a backdrop for adventure on the mean streets of the Windy City.

In the OVA, Rally and May are trying to stop a gun smuggling syndicate with connections to former Soviet military personnel, and who have ties to ambitious politicians in the upper echelons of government. It’s certainly a very paint-by-numbers story so far as 90s crime dramas go. Thanks to fun characters and plenty of action sequences, the whole thing is an enjoyable ride.

At the center of things are Rally and May. The former is a gun expert with amazing aim and encyclopedic knowledge of firearms. She has a good head on her shoulders and is the more levelheaded of the pair. Meanwhile, there is May who knows a ton about explosive. One would think that with the volatile substances that she uses, May would exercise a liberal amount of caution while on the job. That isn’t the case, though, as she’s all too eager to blow things up, getting the two into trouble from time to time. They’re a quirky pair that keep things more on the lighthearted side, only getting serious when infiltrating a gang hideout or something like that.

The two are joined by a number of supporting characters like their friend Becky, who is also one of their main sources for information, as well as ATF agent Bill Collins who coerces Rally and May to help him with his investigation of the gun smuggling ring. There’s also the show’s main villain, Natasha Radinov.

We don’t spend a huge amount of time with these characters, so there isn’t really an opportunity for them to grow. Becky is just a sidekick who is sort of there helping out from time to time, while Radinov, albeit a badass, comes off as a one dimensional Russian villain. At least Bill does get fleshed out to some degree. He’s a bit of a loose cannon but after seeing how he operates for a while, it becomes obvious that he knows what he’s doing.

The show isn’t non-stop character development, though. Each episode ends with some sort of climactic action sequences, be it a gunfight, car chase, or something of that ilk. I’m particularly fond of the car chase in episode two, personally. There was a lot going on there with Rally chasing after Radinov while the two exchanged gunfire on the highway.  It was quite exciting to watch their cars swerving around as bullets whizzed by. There’s something about the art here as well, that reminded me of Auto Modelista for some reason despite the fact that the game came out a decade after this OVA.

With that, it’s worth noting that the art in Gunsmith Cats is very good. Given that it’s by Kenichi Sonoda, there’s a very distinctive style at play here. He was fairly popular in the 80s and 90s, so one could find his stuff pop up from time to time in anime, another good example being Gall Force in the mid-80s (a series I’m rather tempted to discuss some time in the future). There was a certain round, petite quality to many of his character designs, particularly women. It could get almost cutesy in a way that actually helped elevate comedic scenes. That isn’t to say that he did this across the board. Sonoda was plenty capable of making more traditional-looking characters as well, case in point being Bill Collins.

Given that this is a show based on the works of Sonoda, however, it does mean that there is a fair bit of fan service. Most of it comes from the fact that Rally and May seem to like walking around their house in their underwear, but at least it’s presented in a logical manner and doesn’t feel forced as a mechanism to make up for a dull story. Moreover, it could have been a lot worse, as the manga shows a ton more skin and can get pretty darn explicit at times. (There’s certainly a market for that sort of thing, but it’s not my cup of tea.)

On the whole, the Gunsmith Cats OVA makes for an entertaining little action-y crime story. It gives us a glimpse into Rally and May’s world without being overwhelming. It’s able to tell its tale without feeling rushed, or leaving things out due to time constraints. These days, there are a lot of anime based on manga that run for a single season introducing viewers to its world, but end on a cliffhanger expecting people to just pick up the manga after. It feels incomplete and a little sleazy simply functioning as a tool to sell books in the end. They’d do well to follow Gunsmith Cats example, making a short, contained OVA story. It would still peak a lot of people’s curiosity while at the same time having its story come to a satisfying conclusion.

[Note: I do the Twitter thing, so if for some odd reason you want to read much shorter ramblings of mine, follow me there!]

Gunbuster / Top wo Nerae! [Anime]

Gainax has certainly made a name for itself over the years. For a lot of Westerners, their first exposure to the studio’s work was probably Neon Genesis Evangelion. Bring up 90s anime, and the show is bound to make its way into the conversation at some point. That being said, looking back at their earlier works they have a lot of interesting stuff that they’ve put out. Today, we’ll be looking at Gunbuster, an early OVA by the studio.

It takes place in the near future, when humans have developed the means to travel great distances through space. Unfortunately, this has caught the attention of large bio creatures from a distant world, which humans refer to as Uchuu Kaijuu (Space Monster). These creatures view humanity as a threat and have dedicated themselves to wiping out the species, getting ever closer to the Earth.

In order to fight back, humans have created a fleet of spacefaring battleships and giant combat robots, with their ace in the hole being Gunbuster, an absolute titan of robot that is piloted by two people.

This is where the show’s main character, Noriko Takaya, comes in. She’s a high school student training to fight in the war against the Space Monsters. Noriko’s father was an admiral in the first fleet to lock horns with the creatures, dying in the battle as he helped one of his subordinates escape their crippled battleship. With a family lineage like that, one would expect Noriko to have a knack for battle herself. That just isn’t the case, though.

Noriko has the nickname of “The Daughter of Defeat” among her classmates, as se has been doing a terrible job in her training up to this point. Watching her practice, she struggles to keep her mech upright, never mind actually doing more involved movements. Nevertheless, Noriko’s coach doesn’t give up on her, believing that she has the ability to become one of the best mech pilots ever if she sticks with it.

And this is what about half of the series focuses on: Noriko’s struggle to become a competent pilot not only in they eyes of her colleagues, but to herself as well. She slowly gets there, but every time she makes it a little further, she seems to be hit with another crisis. Ultimately, though, the show focuses on Noriko’s growth as she becomes a better pilot, toughens up mentally, and eventually becomes one of Gunbuster’s pilots.

Given that the series is an OVA, most of it focuses on Noriko’s growth without spending much time looking at the other characters. It’s unfortunate but understandable given the time constraints that come with making an OVA. It would have been nice to learn more about Jung, Kazumi, and Coach, but there just wasn’t any time for that. As such, they do come across as a little bit one-dimensional.

I would have especially liked to have seen more time spent with Kazumi, who Noriko refers to as One-sama, since she is like a mentor to Noriko. She’s a highly skilled, mentally disciplined pilot, the complete opposite of Noriko. Kazumi is basically who Noriko dreams of becoming, but we hardly see anything besides her very professional side for most of the show. In later side we see hints of her softer side, and there are those times where she’s caught talking to Coach, questioning why she has to be partnered with Noriko, but given the time constraints of the show, it just wasn’t possible to explore these in greater detail.

Nonetheless, what was there while watching Noriko grow until she’s a decent pilot at the end of the series is interesting to watch, especially when comparing it against later Gainax series that followed similar plot devices, as it gives an idea of how the studio’s storytelling has evolved over the years.

It can’t be emphasized enough how Gunbuster feels like an early prototype for later works by the studio. Coming back to it years later, it’s obvious that Noriko is like an early version of Shinji from Evangelion and one could just as well draw comparisons between Jung and Asuka or Coach and Gendo if they wanted to. The foundations for what would be used and expanded upon in future works are right there.

Moving beyond story, this series also looks and sounds amazing. There is a ton of detail in the characters, environments, robots, and the like. A lot is going on in many of the scenes as well, especially in later episodes when large scale space battles erupt. Of course, one thing people who have seen the show will bring up is the bounciness of all the girls’ breasts. It sounds like a silly thing to bring up, given the sheer amount of fan service that permeates anime today, but this was something that people just didn’t see in the late 80s. Sure, there was raunchiness and naughty jokes back then, just look at series like Dr. Slump or Urasei Yatsura, but here was this obsession with making that particular part of the female anatomy move around with a striking level of realism.

Also worth noting is the artistic choice to make most of the last episode without color. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but after that it’s a really interesting choice. On a very basic, superficial level, one can see a lot more detail in all of the scenes since everything has been reduced to black, white, and shades of grey. However, it also adds to the mood, given that we’re heading into the climatic final battle in that episode.

Before closing off, it’s worth noting one other element that is used in Gunbuster, that being time dilation. The show recognized the laws of relativity and how it impacts the characters. There’s a lot of space travel going on and as a result, those that are cruising the stars are aging at a totally different rate than those on Earth. As such, we see this isolation grow as Noriko spends more time in space, and those she knew back in high school becoming older and older while she’s away, turning into very different people when she visits them later on.

Gunbuster is one of those shows that I do like to revisit from time to time. First, it’s an early work from Gainax, which makes it interesting simply as a way of seeing how the studio has evolved over the years. Second, it’s just a very good a anime. The story is interesting, the image quality is amazing, and some of those songs will get stuck in your head for a very long time. It would have been nice if it was a full-blown series in order to flesh out some of the characters and moments in the series, but on the whole it’s easy to let this shortcoming slide. If you haven’t seen Gunbuster, I definitely recommend checking it out.

[Note: I do the Twitter thing, so if for some odd reason you want to read much shorter ramblings of mine, follow me there!]

Capcom’s D&D Beat ‘Em Ups

During high school, there were a couple of genres that I liked to spend a lot of time with: RPGs and beat ‘em ups. They’re certainly on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what they have players doing. One tends to be of a slower pace, building up character stats, and having a good think about how to defeat particularly tough enemies, all while exploring a big, mysterious world. The other is all about running around punching hordes of enemies in the face, often in co-op mode so friends can come and help.

I spent much of the early 90s gorging myself on the likes of Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior (it was still called that in the West at the time), Phantasy Star, Golden Axe, Final Fight, Streets of Rage and a host of others. There were good times to be had in all of them, but they were distinctly different experiences that very rarely crossed paths. Then something unexpected happened. Capcom released The Tower of Doom in arcades.

The first time I saw this, my jaw dropped for so many different reasons. For one, it was a new Capcom beat ‘em up, which was always a cause for celebration, as they were one of the kings of the genre during the height of its popularity. This is the company that brought us games like Final Fight, Captain Commando, and Knights of the Round. They had developed a reputation among arcade-goers for being pretty darn good at making these sort of games.

Second, the game had the Dungeons and Dragons license, which opened the door to a number of possibilities. Most obviously, there was the attempt to implement some degree of RPG elements. Capcom did give this a try a couple of years earlier with King of Dragons and arguably to a lesser extent on Knights of the Round, although these were a rudimentary first kick of the can at meshing the two genres together. Characters leveled up and got new equipment as players got further into the games. It wasn’t huge, but did give a basic sense of progress and character growth.

Tower of Doom built upon this, continuing with characters gaining levels while dressing the experiences in all of the livery one would expect from a game dawning the D&D mantle. The most notable feature was a basic inventory system. In other beat ‘em ups, players could temporarily arm their characters with knives, pipes, and the like when they stumbled upon them after breaking open a crate or disarming an enemy. However, the weapon had to be used right away and would be lost after a time.

In Tower of Doom, weapons could still be found in treasure chests or whatever but they would then be placed in the character’s inventory. This allowed players to save what they found for later to use in clutch situations. There were also quite a few different goodies that could be set aside including daggers, bottles of burning oil, arrows, war hammers, and a variety of different magical rings.

Characters only had six inventory slots, though, so they did have to make choices as to what they wanted to carry with them. It wasn’t possible to horde everything that they stumbled across. This was done by item type, however, so item stacking was possible. It was just a question of whether it was more beneficial to continue on with six daggers or a ring of magic missile, for example. Given that all of the game’s characters were armed with swords, maces, and the like, these items were limited to projectile weapons, as it would have been silly to give a dwarf a plank with a nail it it when he already had a perfectly good axe.

It may not sound like much, but having an inventory system like this could have a palpable impact on how one approached the game, especially with three or four people playing. With that many people working together, it was possible for someone to pretty much tank enemies as, say, a warrior or dwarf while someone else played the elf, hung back, and hurled projectiles at the mob of baddies that was distracted. Of course, this all hinged on people working together, which in turn meant dragging one’s friends with them to the arcade to play this way. The alternative was playing with strangers and having that one jerk priest that took all of the gold and items for himself, then complained that no one was shooting arrows at a boss. You took them all, you twit. 😡

Greedy priests aside, multiplayer was one of the best things about Tower of Doom. The game supported up to four players at once and, coincidentally enough, featured four different characters to play as. There was a dwarf, a priest, a warrior, and an elf. They didn’t have names, but filled the main archetypal roles in an RPG. The characters look quite nice with a noticeable anime-like flair to them. I’ve always been fond of the elf in no small part thanks to her resemblance to Deedlit from Record of Lodoss War.

While the game’s roster of characters was fairly large and varied, their moveset wasn’t, unfortunately. There were dash attacks to be dished out and another move that required incredibly precise timing to execute. After that, players were limited to marching around the screen, bonking baddies over the head in the traditional manner. Having that fancy inventory system helped to distract from this, but given that other games in the genre were already experimenting with implementing all sorts of fancy moves (especially in the wake of Street Fighter II), this particular void was hard to completely overlook.

One other RPG element to make its way into Tower of Doom was its surprisingly fleshed out story and how players could impact it. Usually beat ‘em ups just told players to stop some rival street gang, save the president, or something equally banal, but here was a game that sent players on quite the grand adventure. About the only other game in the genre that I can think of off the top of my head which attempted anything remotely similar was Konami’s Gaiapolis. Even then, good luck finding an arcade that had the machine. If someone wanted a beat ‘em up with anything even remotely approaching robust narrative, Tower of Doom was the way to go.

Making its story all the more interesting, and adding an element of replay value at the same time, was that at the end of each level players were presented with a choice as to what they should do next. It wasn’t a huge choice, being limited to two options, but it was more than most other games offered outside of one racing Ferraris across America or waging intergalactic war against vast armadas of mechanical sea life. Even if players beat Tower of Doom, they could still come back to the game and try going down a different path for their next play through.

Tower of Doom did so well that it got a sequel a few years later, Shadows of Mystara, and it improved upon every aspect of the first game.

There were two new characters added to the roster, bringing the total to six. First there was a thief. She was very fast, but couldn’t wear armor or use a shield, making her quite squishy. She could, however, pick enemies’ pockets, which was kinda neat. The other new addition was a mage. He was squishy too, but lugged around a bunch of snazzy magical items, allowing him to pew-pew from a safe distance for a while.

A lot of other stuff that made the previous game great were back in Mystara, such as branching progression paths, amazing graphics, the selection of D&D monsters to fight and so forth. One area that got a big improvement, though, was characters’ movesets. Each of them had more attacks up their sleeve now. There were special moves that depleted one’s health bar, another attack that was performed the same as if you were doing a fireball in Street Fighter II (no health consumed here), and one more that was done by pressing down, then up, followed by the A button (again without consuming health). With this, players had a ton of attacks at their disposal, really elevating the combat in Mystara compared to what we saw in Tower of Doom.

Eventually, both games even got ported to the Sega Saturn. Unfortunately, it was only released in Japan. So, anyone who really wanted to play either of those had to import them. As the years passed, the games’ price climbed and climbed making it prohibitively expensive for a lot of folks to get. A couple of years ago, though, Capcom inexplicably re-released both of them digitally for consoles and PC putting smiles on many people’s faces.

That’s how I play the games now, having grabbed them off Steam (as you can probably guess by the screenshots). They’ve been modernized somewhat with a few graphic filters to choose from that impact the look of the game while playing, a nice online multiplayer mode (unfortunately it’s a bit hit or miss trying finding randoms to play with), and a bunch of achievements to strive for if you’re so inclined.

Those are all nice little additions, but ultimately I’m just happy to playing these games again. Capcom was one of the greats when it comes to the arcade beat ‘em up. Their games handled well, looked great, and gobbled up more quarters than I’d care to admit. As far as their pantheon of titles in the genre go, Tower of Doom and Shadows of Mystara are two of my favorites, and games I’ll happily revisit for years to come.

[Note: Shmuplations.com has translated a bunch of old interviews with the developers of these games. They have some really interesting nuggets in them and are well worth a read. If you’re interested, you can check them out here, here, and here.]

[Another Note: I do the Twitter thing, so if for some odd reason you want to read much shorter ramblings of mine, follow me there!]

Dr. Slump [Anime]

Like a lot of people who grew up in North America, one of the first anime series that I was ever exposed to was Dragon Ball. I’d had a taste prior with Star Blazers and Robotech, but Dragon Ball was what cemented my interest in anime. The design of the characters and worlds were so unique and watching the epic battles unfold was captivating in my youth.

It wouldn’t be until years later when the internet became a thing that I would have the opportunity to learn more about the series. I could finally find out all that I wanted to know about the show and its creator, Akira Toriyama, and it was at this time that I caught wind of one of his very first manga, Dr. Slump.

I often enjoy looking up well-known manga artists’ early work so I can see how they’ve grown over the years, and the case was no different. I wound up watching the anime, and what I discovered was an amazingly surreal world laced with liberal amounts of potty humor, and I loved every minute of it.

The world and characters of Dragon Ball were quite surreal as well, but the show let viewers know that magic and space travel abounded from the get go. As such, it was easy for one to explain away unusual people, places, or events as falling into one of those two camps.

This just isn’t the case in Dr. Slump. The surrealism is there as viewers are plunged into a world inhabited not only by humans but animals walking around like humans, people that look like Frankenstein and Dracula, a mechanical pig that announces when a new day has begun, an anthropomorphic sun that spends a lot of time brushing its teeth, and so forth. That’s a lot to take in and there isn’t an explanation as to why this is. It’s just the world that the show takes place in. After a few episodes, one finds themselves not questioning it anymore, simply embracing the madness instead. This is just the way things are in Penguin Village.

The contrast between the unusual mix of characters and the town in which they live is something that I’ve always liked as well. There’s probably not much to it, but I always liked the juxtaposition of the unusual characters and wacky adventures set against a sleepy, rural village.

Humour in the show is the true litmus test as to whether someone will like Dr. Slump, as it can get pretty darn filthy. A lot of it is pure raunch, with a side order of poop jokes. It’s not exactly highly sophisticated stuff that will be gracing the pages of The New Yorker any time soon. I actually found myself laughing at the gags far more than I thought I would. Potty humour can be tough to pull off, as it often comes off as trying too hard to go for shock value, but that just isn’t the case here. The jokes are lovingly handcrafted and work so well. Senbei in particular always gets a chuckle out of me whether he’s figuring out what to do about Arale, obsessing over Yamabuki-sensei, or just getting himself into yet another predicament. Even something simple like the crow that flies around saying, “Aho! Aho!” all the time is good for a laugh.

Then there’s the whole cast of characters. Toriyama certainly likes to make large rosters when it comes to this sort of thing, and Dr. Slump is no different. For being such a small place, Penguin Village certainly has a lot of people living there. Granted a lot of the show focuses on Arale-chan and her various adventures, but there’s still a lot of other people we get to meet. Whether they’re her school friends, Senbei (who does get quite a bit of screen time himself), Gatchan, or a slew of others, there are plenty of people to keep track of. That being said, it isn’t overwhelming. It’s just a matter of tuning in to a new episode and thinking to one’s self, “Oh, I guess Arale is hanging out with these people today.”

There’s much more of an adventure of the week thing going on in the show too. This is something that doesn’t always work with me, but here the overall silliness of the show is enough to keep me interested. So, even if things aren’t serialized, I still find myself enjoying the episodes for what they are. Bare in mind that there is still continuity, though, so past events are remembered and impact things that happen later on.

Artwork itself is very similar to what we would see a few years later in Dragon Ball and is what we’ve come to expect from Akira Toriyama over the years. On the whole, it feels like he had the most freedom to make the world he wanted here with all of the unusual characters, events, and locales that the show visits. His other creations go to some out-there places too, but they were somewhat more constrained within a logical framework. In Dr. Slump there’s more “anything goes” feel to it.

There have been a ton of other projects that Toriyama has been involved with, but Dr. Slump stands the test of time. It may be over 30 years old now, but its jokes still elicit chuckles and its world is a wonder to look at, making it a classic well worth investigating.

[I also do the Twitter thing, so follow me there too if you like!]

Crystalis / God Slayer [NES / Famicom]

As much as SNK has made a name for itself with the Neo Geo as well as series such as King of Fighters and Metal Slug, it can be a lot of fun to sift through their various early efforts. There was a time when the company was perfectly happy to make games for other systems, with the Famicom / NES getting a number of SNK titles.

One such game was Crystalis (1990). At face value, it may be tempting to simply look at the game as a Zelda clone. However, while it shares a number of core gameplay elements, its developers brought a number of their own ideas to the table. This resulted in a combination of execution and originality that helped the game become a cult classic among action RPG fans.

When it first came out in Japan, the game was actually called God Slayer: Sonata of the Far Away Skies. So, in order to avoid offending religious groups in the US, the game got a new name for Western markets, being christened Crystalis instead.

Given the story in the game, God Slayer actually seems appropriate. Everything takes place after much of the world was destroyed during a massive conflict. After the dust settled, survivors rebuilt. Many made simple settlements, but one group who retained much of the knowledge before everything was destroyed built a large, floating tower. In time, this group were all but forgotten, remembered only in legend and thought of as gods. The player takes control of someone who has been in stasis since before the world was destroyed, and who must eventually fight a newly formed empire that is searching for the tower to use themselves. The whole thing almost has a sense of Gnosticism to it.

As was mentioned earlier, the Crystalis does have a similar feel to The Legend of Zelda. Your character runs around the map, swinging his sword, exploring dungeons, finding special items, and slaying legions of monsters. However, there are a number of little touches that help the game to stand out from other such games of this sort.

First off, your character can charge his sword to launch a projectile energy attack. Players did this by holding down the attack button, allowing the charge to build, then releasing after to launch the energy attack. As one progressed through, they would slowly unlock items that allow for up to three power levels when using the attack. This would result in a little more strategy when fighting, especially taking into account that while the third tier of the attack was it’s most powerful, it also consumed mana, a very precious resource in the game. As such, it made more sense to usually only let a charge his level two, then firing so to get off a reasonably powerful attack without running out of mana.

While similar mechanics are often associated with the Zelda series, it’s interesting to note that Crystalis was the first game to experiment with it. Similar abilities wouldn’t make their way to Nintendo’s legendary series until later.

There were some other neat features in the game as well, such as magic. Over the course of the game, players would discover all sorts of spells. Some would be pretty straightforward, like the ability to heal, but then the game would throw some curve balls like one spell that allowed your character to disguise himself in order to get past certain obstacles, and another that allowed psychic communication with the world’s four sages, who would give nuggets of advice. This spell could prove surprisingly helpful when one gets stuck and doesn’t know what to do next.

On top of this, there is the usual adventuring: clobbering enemies, gathering gold, exploring dungeons, and fighting bosses. While doing this, one is quickly reminded that Crystalis is still a product of the NES era, as it can be quite challenging. Expect to die fairly often in this game, but also expect it to be a fair death. There’s a method to the various monsters’ madness. If you learn the baddies’ patterns, everything in the game is beatable. There is one difficulty spike later in the game when fighting a particular boss in the mountains (and I’m sure most who have played the game can relate to this), but on the whole the game is tough but fair.

When the tough gets going, grinding generally isn’t the answer. Players can get away with it early on, but your character can’t go higher than level 16. It’s a mechanic similar to what one will find in Ys. So, later in the game if someone is having trouble with a particular boss or group of enemies, there’s little choice but to hunker down and figure out a strategy to defeat them. Wandering off to grind on relatively easy baddies just isn’t an option. The only time players will find themselves grinding is when they need gold for new gear, and even then this isn’t really necessary often since the stuff is pretty easy to get in the game.

Navigating the dungeons takes some doing as well. These things were long, winding affairs with all manner of forks in the road, dead ends, and blocked paths that would need to be revisited later. The further one gets into the game, the more grandiose, not to mention daunting, these places becomes. Item inventory is very limited in Crystalis, to it’s important not to get hit by monsters very often in order to conserve healing herbs for later.

Ultimately, Crystalis is an interesting evolution of the action RPG. The genre was still in its infancy circa 1990 with games like Ys, Xanadu, and, of course, Zelda helping to shape it. Here we have SNK contributing to it, albeit it briefly. The company may have gone in a very different direction since then, but Crystalis will remain one of the more interesting action RPGs to release for the NES.

Note: Crystalis actually got a port to the Gameboy Color. Gameplay is actually quite similar to its NES counterpart, but the story has been heavily retooled for the worse. It’s still a fun game, but don’t pay too much attention to the story.

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