COVER ART: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1982)

 

Mattel's Intellivision games had a distinctive art and trade dress credited to artist Jerrol Richardson. The games' covers would feature a main scene of action with one or two circular insets depicting other scenes. It's often been noted but games from around that period often had more vivid art and packaging to offset the limited graphics of the period.

Joust (1982)

Jousting by itself is as good a concept as any for a video game. In 1982 John Newcomer added flight to it when he designed Joust for Williams. 

Joust is known as much for the fact that the player rides on the back of a flying ostrich as it is for its gameplay. It comes across as the kind of weirdness that is often associated with classic fantasy, although when it's picked apart there is a logic behind it. Newcomer was going for an arcade game that didn't involve shooting like so many others, and when he settled on the idea of riding birds for their emotional connection to players (as well as inspired by numerous bits of sci-fi and fantasy fiction such as the hawkmen in Flash Gordon), he found after researching that as beautiful as eagles were in flight, he didn't care for how they looked when they ran and running does factor a bit into gameplay. Ostriches do look great when they're running (since that's kind of what they do), so he went with the fantasy that these ostriches can fly, too. Some of the promotional art for the game also indicates that the birds have some kind of cybernetic enhancement. Newcomer also said the ostriches were good precisely because of how unique a choice they were - everyone going to the arcade would remember that game with the flying ostriches.

With the flying bird concept settled, he decided to go with a two-way joystick - similar to Defender's but horizontal instead of vertical - and a single button to control flapping. The faster you hit the button, the faster you ascend, so the core of the game is mastering the sense of the characters' weight. It's also an early example of a two-player cooperative game, with player 2's character riding the back of a stork to make for a visually distinct sprite.

The game is essentially a deathmatch scenario. The player controls a golden knight riding his ostrich. He has to defeat every other enemy on the screen. The bad guys all ride buzzards and come in three flavors: Bounders (red) are fairly stupid; Hunters (gray) are more aggressive and will even attempt to hover over the player in some circumstances; and Shadow Lords (blue) are very fast and powerful and tend to zoom into the air and bounce off the "ceiling" downward just as fast, making them very dangerous. Defeating an enemy simply requires that the player's lance makes contact with them on a higher plane (being perfectly level with an enemy results in a draw of course). When an enemy is beaten, his bird drops an egg and the player must scoop it up before it hatches. If it hatches, it reveals an enemy of the next level higher level, but the player still has a few seconds to run him over before he mounts a fresh buzzard.

The field is peppered with floating platforms, so the characters all have to try to kill each other while quickly slipping through the gaps in the platforms. As the game progresses, platforms will vanish - open space tends to favor the computer since the player is outnumbered and can't hide as much above or beneath the platforms. There's also a lava pit surrounding the lowest level and early on a "lava troll" will start trying to grab fliers who drop too low over the pit. The troll doesn't discriminate and will grab enemies, too. If grabbed, the player needs to hammer the flap button rapidly to ascend out of the troll's grip while hoping an opportunistic enemy doesn't kill them while they're immobilized (and the player can benefit from this in the opposite circumstance). 

To prevent rounds from dragging, before long an ear-splitting cry will announce the coming of the "Unbeatable?" Pterodactyl, an invincible creature that homes in on the player until the round is finished. The reason for the question mark, though, is that a last-minute programming change resulted in the pterodactyl being vulnerable in a tiny spot, allowing the player to temporarily vanquish it through a pixel-perfect strike into its mouth.

Joust is as perfect an arcade game as has ever been created, especially if one is grading based on how a game feels to play. Unlike Defender, which was deliberately designed to frighten players with the complexity of its controls (you have to push a button just to switch direction), Joust's controls are approachable. The physics are extremely finely tuned and easy to get to grips with in terms of gravity and the rhythm of hitting the flap button, as well as understanding the bird's sense of speed. When the game is really up to speed, the sense of soaring through the air is unparalleled in a game of its time. You actually feel graceful while playing it. As a contrast, Nintendo released a Joust clone called Balloon Fight a couple of years later, and while it's a very good game, it's still inferior to Joust in terms of how it feels to play. 

Joust has a fair difficulty curve. It looks and sounds great, too. Williams's games tended to have instantly memorable soundscapes, and the animation by Bill Pfutzenreuter is smooth and conveys a sense of character, particularly touches like the how the ostrich will do a Looney Tunes-style foot-braking when it has to stop after running.

The Astyanax (1989)

 

Despite the title, Astyanax isn't about the son of Hector of Troy. The player controls a hero who must, as ever, hike across the land and battle monsters until he defeats a dark lord. The game, distributed by Jaleco and known in Japan as The Lord of King, was designed by Rastan's Toshiyuki Nishimura and Tokuhiro Takemori, with Takemori listed as director.

For a core game mechanic, Takemori brought a concept around which he'd based one of his previous games, The Legendary Axe, namely that the hero's axe has a power meter that charges up between attacks. The idea being that you have a choice between attacking a lot at low power, or saving up to unleash a much stronger blow. As it is, Astyanax is such a frantic game that most players will probably just hack away as fast as possible at the litany of foes coming from all sides. The player also can make limited use of a screen-clearing magical attack. Among the bosses are another instance of a multi-armed statue likely influenced by the Kali statue in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and a two-headed dragon.

Unlike some other games, Astyanax does follow a relatively consistent path in settings. The attract mode displays a huge tower rising on an island in the middle of a lake that is connected to the surrounding land by a long, narrow bridge. Indeed, the player starts out in a forested area, then moves through cave, then onto the bridge, then penetrating the castle/tower to meet the evil wizard. Because it was the 80s, the final level has the hero bust into a Giger-esque biomechanical hellhole and face skittering monsters that rear up to display mouths that look like vagina dentata, culminating in a battle against a final boss that attacks with an arm that extends across the screen, presumably because having its mouth shoot outward would have been a bit too much for the lawyers. With the job done, the tower and its island crumble and sink and the world is made safe again.

It's not a bad game, but it does overall feel inferior to the console games it's related to, both Legendary Axe for the PC Engine and the NES console port of Astyanax, which keeps the axe-charging mechanic and hack-and-slash gameplay but otherwise reworks the game quite a bit. The graphics in this arcade game are reasonably good, but it feels a bit rote in its side-scrolling design and it's so hyperactive that it renders the charge attack almost pointless. 

Rastan Saga II/Nastar (1988)

 

Rastan was a classic late 80s arcade hit for Taito. Somehow this sequel didn't turn out so well. Possibly the only thing saving it from a worse reputation than it already has is that it isn't well-known at all. The game's design is credited to Hisaya Yabusaki, whose only other design credit is for Taito's animal conservation-themed brawler Growl.

The game's attract mode lays out the story in classic Engrish: The "Rastania" was a sacred place, in which the sacred temple, "Skycraper", soared into the sky. It is said that whoever conquer the "Skyscraper" would rule the "Rastania". A wicked group has invaded the "Skyscraper" and has tried to make it their own. If the situation is left as it is, the place would eventually be controlled by the wicked group.

The player controls a headstrong warrior who seeks to defeat the "wicked group" occupying the tower, although the settings for the five levels don't bother with internal consistency very much. You'll go from looking over tree tops, to a cavern, to a forest, etc. The characters are bigger than the sprites in Rastan, but the game is slower and feels much clumsier to control. Actions like the downward stab that were easy to execute in Rastan now require precise timing - if you do the downward attack too soon the warrior will revert back to his regular stance before coming down on the enemy and will take damage. Even grabbing and leaping off Taito's classic swinging ropes can be oddly finicky. Even worse, the game takes advantage of this and will force the player to deal with incredibly difficult jumps or fall to his death in bottomless pits. One particular trap involves having to do a weird mid-air crouch while falling to squeeze into a tiny space - moves like this have to literally be pixel-perfect in execution. It feels cheap instead of challenging.

Probably the most noteworthy difference from Rastan in gameplay is that the player can block attacks when not attacking. The hero starts with a short sword and shield and can also obtain a long two-handed sword or a pair of iron clawed gauntlets that have shorter range but more power. 

Between levels, the game treats the player to scenes of the hero commenting on the action; e.g., clearing level 2 gives a closeup of him with the claw weapon, declaring, "You wicked people! How did you like my assault? Oh, here come tough enemies!" One can imagine how this would sound appropriately badass with a proper translation - maybe something like "You bastards! You like the taste of my steel? Come and get some more!" - but good Japanese-to-English translations even today can't always be taken for granted. At least the music is still pretty good, although not as immediately memorable as the original's.

COVER ART: Wizards & Warriors (1987)

 Quite a difference from the somewhat comical-looking armored knight you control in the game.

Gladiator (1986)

Gladiator was created by Allumer and distributed by Taito in 1986, Japanese title Ougon no Shiro (Golden Castle). Despite the Western title, you're not controlling a gladiator in the arena fighting sense, but rather an armored swordsman as he ascends the floors of a tower, attempting to gain access to the riches of the treasure room at the pinnacle. 

The gameplay itself takes two forms. In the first, the hero, apparently named Great Guaranos (or Gurianos), walks from left to right down a lengthy hallway, blocking hails of projectiles - fireballs, blades, arrows, etc. - with his sword and shield. Having survived this onslaught, the hero is met by a series of warriors who try to prevent him from mounting the stairs to the next level. There are four levels before the game loops and becomes even more difficult, and it is already very difficult at the start. Among the opponents are other men with varying weapon choices, a swordswoman, a fire-breathing demon, a bow-shooting amazon, and eventually an undead skeleton.

The game's most distinguishing feature is that the fighters are all armored and their armor needs to be broken piece by piece before a killing blow can be struck in the exposed flesh. Both sword and shield can be held high, low, or in the middle, (joystick controls shield, three buttons control the sword attacks) so battles involve the opponents going for openings in the guard while simultaneously moving the shield up or down to stave off a strike. However, the shield itself can be worn down to little more than a strip of metal if too many blocks are made. On the player's side, many of the enemies' swords can be broken if hit enough, for those who want to try a more conservative style.

The game might not look like much today, but at the time of its release its exceptionally large, well-defined and muscular characters were quite striking and the gameplay was frantic yet encouraged strategy in how offense and defense should be managed. There are also some fun wrinkles, such as the ability to create a forcefield if the magical shield is picked up, the ability to turn invincible if certain conditions are met, or the ability to scoop up one enemy's mace as a replacement weapon.