Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga III (1992)

After the dud that was Nastar, Taito concluded its Rastan arcade trilogy with a more respectable effort. In Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III, we pick back up with old Rastan on his throne, telling more stories of his adventurous past. This time around, he and his friends Dewey the ninja(?) and Sofia, a whip-wielding former princess turned thief, battle foul creatures as they try to claim the jewels of Depon. But of course the story isn't the reason anyone plays a game like this. It's about evoking a certain mood, which is also for the best because the English text translation is lousy, even if no one outside Japan saw it on initial release because the game wasn't released abroad.

The game doesn't appear to share much talent with the previous two games in the series, aside from Masahiro Takaki on music, and it seems that the big plan for the game and getting the series back on track was to largely ape Golden Axe. Instead of a purely horizontally scrolling experience, characters have a bit more room to maneuver up and down and it plays like a traditional brawling game as cooperative players try to take down groups of enemies without being surrounded and struck down from behind. Instead of simply swinging his sword, Rastan has a set of moves he can use, such as charging attacks and even grabbing enemies so he can bash their faces with the pommel of his sword or fling them at their partners. It's mostly standard stuff for the genre, only distinguished by the fact that few games besides this and Golden Axe use a S&S theme.

The graphics look great. The characters are large and well-detailed. Rastan in particular looks very much the Conan clone he was always intended to be, like he stepped out of a John Buscema or Neal Adams drawing. Enemies include classic sword-and-sorcery types like serpent men, rival tribesmen, armored knights, living skeletons (of course), fishmen, and cloaked wizards. Some of the boss enemies are quite befitting of the genre, such as the skeleton of a dead king on his throne that moans "help me" as demons fly out of his carcass, or a giant tentacled sea monster. The stages, most of which can be selected in any order, have names like The Enchanted Castle of Zananstaff, Mahadidekaradi Spiral Tower, or The Palace of Black Demon Religion. There are also interlude stages in which the heroes engage in battles on horseback or while rising into the clouds on the backs of dragons. The heroes themselves don't use a lot of magic, but amusingly you can occasionally summon a wizard and can force him to cast screen-clearing spells on your behalf by booting him in the ass until his meter is spent.

In its own time, the most eye-popping thing about the game was that it used a gimmick Taito had previously busted out for its Darius and Ninja Warriors games, which was to place two monitors side-by-side in one cabinet to create a widescreen image. Not a big deal now, but it really made games standout in arcades back then. 

At the game's conclusion, Rastan, mercenary as ever, divvies up the winnings with his friends and parts ways with them, frustrated that he hadn't found what he was looking for and continuing to seek a kingdom for himself. And that was the end of Rastan's adventures in video games, not counting a half-assed attempt years later to throw him in a different barbarian-themed console fighting game.