Tiny Barbarian DX (2012)

Tiny Barbarian opens with a scene of our hero, the Tiny Barbarian, under the player's control as he fights enemies on all sides. You can battle for a while but eventually you'll be overwhelmed and the game transitions to Tiny Barbarian hung on a tree with vultures looming over him. One gets too close and Tiny Barbarian grabs it with his teeth and shakes the creature until it's dead, then he busts loose and charges off to get revenge. The scene directly homages Conan's crucifixion in A Witch Shall Be Born, although the visualization of it and the following level, in which you battle snake cultists and a pair of villains that strongly resemble Thulsa Doom and Dagoth, indicates that the creator of the game was thinking more of the Conan movies than Robert E. Howard's original story. Tiny Barbarian's own design, with his brown hair and comically top-heavy physique, resembles Arnold Schwarzenegger more than the black-haired and pantherish look of Howard's creation.

The second level features Tiny Barbarian hacking his way through a lost city inhabited by giant bees and ape-like people with advanced technology. If this is inspired by a specific story, the source eludes me. The third level pays homage to the original Castlevania as the hero travels through a strange town at night and enters a floating tower.

Level four sees the hero abducted by aliens while battling Lovecraftian cultists, leaving it to his girlfriend to put on a spacesuit and grab a ray gun to rescue him in a goofy tribute to Barbarella. Midway through, she rescues him and they team up for the rest of the level in a nice changeup to the gameplay.

The most interesting level to me and what initially brought the game to my attention is a bonus level directly based on Robert E. Howard's The Frost Giant's Daughter. Tiny Barbarian sees and becomes enamored with an icy woman floating through the air and battles his way across the snows until she lures him into her trap: her two giant brothers.

As a game, it's fun but can also be frustrating. Like many similar retro-styled games, there's a masochistic, trial-and-error aspect to the gameplay that is intended to evoke the "Nintendo hard" difficulty of 1980s games but is probably even more difficult in direct comparison. At the least, there's a trade-off: Tiny Barbarian gives you infinite chances to overcome it while jacking up the challenge compared to older games that provided limited lives and continues and usually had the difficulty somewhat increased to ensure it would be too hard to clear on a daily rental.

The graphics are appealing enough even if they aren't dazzling to look at. Games in the 8- and 16-bit eras were primarily concerned with increasing the size of the characters because it was a real technical limitation to be overcome back then. This minor trend in modern games of miniaturizing the characters reflects a different, more self-imposed limitation, one of trying to see how small one can go while still maintaining a sense of clarity and style.

The Mark of Kri (2002)

I'm not very familiar with Polynesian fantasy, but in 2002 Sony released this game for the Playstation 2. The player controls a swordsman named Rau, marked with a particular birthmark, who after a tutorial mission takes a sketchy job from an old man at a tavern. Before long, you're fighting demons and trying to save the world from a necromancer.

The game's most striking aspect is its graphics. "Get Disney to animate Conan" isn't an idea that I'd ever heard anyone seriously utter, but someone behind this game more or less had that idea and it turned out to be remarkably inspired. The characters and environments are beautifully drawn and animated with clean lines and shapes that help offset the game's age. The game might look like a Disney movie, but it's not rated like one, as the game doesn't skimp on violence and gore. Rau is a suitably brutal fighter who can master combinations that result in enemies skewered on his sword or their skulls and necks crushed against stone walls.

The melee combat system is based on a unique method of using the right stick to lock up to three enemies to a specific attack button, giving the player the ability to smoothly manage crowds of attackers. It takes a short while to get used to it but it's a reasonable enough system for the time. Rau can also use a bow to attack at a distance.

Although Rau is a hulking brute, he's no superman and stealth is often preferable to charging in and alerting entire camps to your presence (unless you're really mastered the melee system and want to show off). Even Conan and Kane liked to sneak and avoid notice most of the time. The stealth system is relatively easy to master and it's forgiving in that if you're detected you'll have a fight on your hands, but you can also win out and then go back to sneaking. It's not a game that demands a perfect lack of detection as some stealth games do. Rau can hide and when an enemy comes within reach, he can yank them out of view and quickly snap their necks.

The game's last major trick is to give Rau a raven companion who can explore areas and give the player a vantage point to scout out which enemies are present and where.

A very good game that really ought to be better known. 

Supplemental viewing: The Beastmaster

COVER ART: Warrior (1979)

 

Art by Frank Brunner for Tim Skelly's one-on-one vector graphics fighting game.

Slain: Back From Hell (2016)

Slain was originally the product of a Kickstarter campaign by Wolf Brew Games that described the game as a "homage to the gory hack and slash games of the 80's and 90's" and cited Altered Beast, Shadow of the Beast, and Ghosts 'n Goblins as inspirations.

The campaign was successful, but the initial release of the game was a bit of a disaster, with many complaints about bugs and the game's controls. The studio a short time later relaunched the game in much improved form under the title Slain: Back From Hell. This edition fulfilled the promise of the Kickstarter campaign in providing a smooth playing but challenging action game with tons of gore. 

The player controls a warrior named Bathoryn who is resurrected from the dead to battle Lord Vroll and his hordes. Bathoryn must hack his way through a litany of monstrosities that have turned the world into an apocalyptic hellscape. Successfully clearing the game mostly requires that the player master a system of timing your parries of enemy attacks to stun the enemy and counter with a devastating sword-swing. Although some progress can be made through mashing buttons, failure to master the parries will almost certainly result in the player hitting a wall before long. The game's detailed and smoothly animated pixel art and particle effects combine to create the sense that you're playing your way through a catalog of death metal albums. 

The metal aesthetic doesn't stop there, either. The game's soundtrack was provided by former Celtic Frost member Curt Victor Bryant. After dispatching boss enemies, the game gives you the option of pushing the attack button to "honor the Great Horned Metal God in thanks for your victory!" Doing so causes Bathoryn to start windmilling his hair, sometimes right into the gore layered on the ground, while a heavy, down-tuned guitar riff blasts.

The overall experience highlights a kinship between sword and sorcery and heavy metal that has been there since heavy metal was established as a musical genre. So many songs draw on fantasy imagery, particularly of an edgier, bloodier style, and metal music generally favors a spirit of individuality, strength, and skill that is agreeable with the sorts of characters that populate S&S fiction and their stories.  Consider the lyrics of, for instance, High on Fire's "Return to Nod":

Serve the shadows mountain peaks under the glass mirrored skies
Sing the psalms of the wailing winds, the entrance seer will provide
Stars reveal the tattered map, a land cursed of time
So speaks the words of our challenger seeking the ultimate prize
(chorus)
Speaking the words of the sorcerer's tongue
No one can stop what's already begun
Follow the footsteps and unlock the door
The giant you face has awakened

Fear is invoked by your trembling hands, the foe is deadly and wise
A sight that's filled the eyes of mighty men, the very cost of their lives
Take the aim of the shimmering blade, the vulnerable spot is precise
Swift is the hand of the waking beast, crown of two worlds is the prize

(chorus)
Speaking the words of the sorcerer's tongue
No one can stop what's already begun
Follow the footsteps and unlock the door
The giant you face has awakened

Blood will spill on the warrior's feet, casting the enemy aside
Exalting the hero forevermore, steps to the throne of eyes
Serve the shadows mountain peaks under the glass mirrored skies
Sing the psalms of the wailing winds, the entrance seer will provide

It would probably be harder to find examples of metal bands that don't compose songs rooted in fantasy than otherwise. 

Supplemental reading: Stormbringer, by Michael Moorcock; Swords of Steel Omnibus, published by DMR Books

Golden Axe (1989)

I had a few thoughts on where to start, something more recent or something very old, but Golden Axe kept coming to mind. Why not?

It is an arcade game released by Sega, designed by Makoto Uchida, who previously worked on Altered Beast and would go on to design the Die Hard Arcade/Dynamite Cop games. Strongly influenced by Double Dragon, it plays like a horizontally scrolling beat-em-up game, but instead of picking up weapons (because the characters are already armed), for powering up the player can either accumulate potions for magical attacks or mount one of three creatures that attack in their own ways. One of the creatures is a squat, tail-whipping and bird-like creature referred to as a cockatrice (which also previously appeared as an enemy in Altered Beast), the other two are dragons that breathe fire in different ways.

The player can choose one of three characters to control, differentiated in a typical way for beat-em-up games: physically strong but with weak magic, physically weak but with strong magic, and an intermediate character. They're each on a quest to defeat Death Adder, a hulking, ax-wielding brute who's taken over the kingdom and is keeping the king and princess hostage. Ax Battler, the barbarian, wants revenge for his mother's murder. Tyris Flare, the amazon, wants revenge for her parents' murder. Gilius Thunderhead, the dwarf, wants revenge for his brother's murder. The motives are about as simple as you can get.

The game is fun, intuitive to control, and relatively easy for a coin-muncher. Some of the collision detection can be tricky, but even having not played the game for a good while, I was able to complete it in around 20 minutes and using no more than what would have been $1.50 per character. The graphics are good and the music does an adequate job of evoking works by Basil Pouledoris. My friends and I used to love hearing the death cries of the game's characters that were sampled from "First Blood."

Stylistically, the game aims straight down the middle in how it goes for a sword-and-sorcery flavor and it's probably more reminiscent of mid-list books that were written in the 70s as cash-ins than the major classics of the genre. Uchida is said to have studied the "Conan the Barbarian" movie quite a bit for inspiration, and the presentation of the characters follows the classic post-Frazetta veneration of the human physique. Ax Battler is a muscular swordsman in a blue speedo. Tyris Flare is a swordswoman in a red bikini. Gilius is a bit irregular since the genre doesn't often depict dwarf heroes, but it's not like there's a rule that you can't have non-human heroes. Death Adder is also very muscular and wears relatively little clothing. Not practical, but for better or worse modern visual depictions of the genre largely favor this style of hairless bodybuilders facing down their enemies.

One of the most striking enemies in the game is the skeleton warrior who rises out of the earth with a sword and his brow angled down in a permanent glare, straight out of the climax of Ray Harryhausen's "Jason and the Argonauts." Most of the others are an assortment of club and sword-swinging goons, male and female.

For setting, the heroes travel through the wilderness, arriving at a village on the back of a giant turtle that swims across the sea. They pass through a town but, finding the way to the villain's castle blocked with enemies, they ride and fight on the back of a giant eagle to the castle's ramparts and proceed to the throne room for the final confrontation. 

After besting Death Adder, he collapses on back as he flings his axe skyward, only for it to twirl down and embed itself in his chest, causing blood to explode out of the wound. The heroes release the king and his daughter and the game abruptly cuts to an arcade in which kids are playing the Golden Axe arcade game, at which point the game's cast of characters jump out of the screen and chase the kids through the streets of what is presumably Tokyo. It was common in games of the era to not take themselves very seriously, but overall this is about as pure a S&S game as has ever been made. I suspect most won't fit the genre so cleanly.

Supplemental viewing - Conan the Barbarian (1982); Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

Supplemental reading - Kyrik: Warlock Warrior, by Gardner Fox