I’m working on Black/Matrix, so this week I’ll post about three early Famicom games which I only played a bit of (one because it wasn’t very good, the other two because they really aren’t RPGs).

I have a list of all these early RPGs I’ve been playing here.

Saint Seiya: Golden Legend (聖闘士星矢 黄金伝説), released 8/10/1987, developed by Axis Art Amuse and published by Bandai.

Saint Seiya is a series I don’t really know anything about — I know it was a manga from 1985-1990 in Shonen Jump, and the anime version was really popular in Europe but never caught on in the US. This game came out during the run of the manga and anime so it only covers part of the story — a followup was released later that covers the rest of the story.

From what I have read, the story part of the game is well done for the time; it includes a lot of the characters from the original series and goes over the plot well, and has enough content to be satisfying to fans of the series.

It seems like the game itself is not well regarded; it got a 20/40 in Famitsu and I’ve seen that European players didn’t like the game either.

The system is one of those weird hybrids of action and RPG elements that shows up a lot in these early games. Most of the game is side-scrolling, where you explore maps, talk to people, and fight enemies. But the bosses are all done through a command-entry style RPG.

I found the system pretty difficult to get a handle on. You decide how much energy you want to put into APow, MPow, DPow, and HPow (the left side is apparently attack, the right side defense). All of this uses your “cosmo”, which cannot be easily recovered. You then choose punch or kick, and if you filled the gauges enough you can use some kind of special power.

I will admit that I never really understood how the system works; maybe if you do get a grasp on it the game is better, but I just found these fights frustrating. Eventually I reached one where I couldn’t even survive the first hit of the enemy.

You can build your levels by fighting things on the map, although I don’t think that there’s any actual “level”, just experience.

From what I can tell reading about the game in French and Japanese, it seems like most players at the time had my experience — they had no idea how anything worked and they gave up because it was so cryptic. The entry on the “kusoge” wiki also seemed to indicate that unless you turn to sources outside the game/instruction manual, you won’t understand the system well enough to be able to play it well, which is probably why it got such bad reviews.

Majou Densetsu 2 (魔城伝説2 大魔司教ガリウス), released 8/11/1987, developed and published by Konami

This is a Famicom port of a computer game that was well regarded. The Majou Densetsu series consisted of three games in different genres — 1 was a shooter, 2 was an adventure/RPG side scroller, and 3 was a top-down adventure style game. The only game in the series that was ported to consoles was 2. It was redesigned and half of the worlds were cut out (from 10 down to 5).

Here’s the story from the game itself:

The game is essentially a metroidvania type game (side-scrolling, non-linear). The RPG elements are extremely limited, though. You can level up your characters and there are a handful of equipment upgrades, but on the whole this is more adventure than RPG.

It does seem to be a good game for the time, though. I didn’t play a whole lot of it but from what I can see on walkthroughs, it doesn’t have a lot of those completely impossible secrets that other games of the era have, and there is some satisfying metroidvania style backtracking you can do when you get new items to open up some new areas.

You can also find a map. You switch between two characters, Popolon and Aphrodite. They each have their own strengths (for instance, Aphrodite doesn’t lose as much health in water, and Popolon can break walls more easily). As you beat enemies you increase EXP (individually) and when you fill the bar you get more VIT (hit points) and restore your HP.

The game consists of 5 worlds an a “main castle” area that you can access the worlds from. Each world has a boss, as well as items you need to find to reach the boss, and items that will make the boss fight easier.

It seems like the original MSX version is considered better, but the Famicom game does seem worth playing if you like retro games.

Castlevania II (ドラキュラⅡ　呪いの封印), released 8/28/1987, developed and published by Konami

This game should be well enough known that I don’t feel like I have to cover it. It’s perhaps notable as a very early example of what would eventually become the “metroidvania” games starting with Symphony of the Night, but the RPG elements are barely there at all. You can move up 6 levels and upgrade your whip a few times by spending money, but that’s about it.

Rather than add yet another post to a game that’s been written about a lot, here’s a blog review that’s good. Interestingly, the author of that post says that Majo Densetsu 2 was an inspiration for this game (the original MSX version).

I don’t think it’s as bad as it’s been criticized for being, but it’s definitely not as good as the other Castlevania games (to me).