The game for greek mythology nerds. It's based on the story of Orpheus who have to travel to the underworld and rescue the love of his life, Eurydice, since she died and Orpheus armed only with a lyre descends to Hades and moves Hades to tears with the song and allows her to return, but only if he doesn't look back at her during their travel to the surface. It's a tragedy so of course at the very last minute he looks, overcome with doubt and fear, and Eurydice disappears forever. Stricken with grief again he grieves until he's killed by being torn to pieces by some women.
So you play as Orpheus armed with a club and shield setting of to rescue... Helena? Helena of Troy? Alright, a bit of liberty already, both in choice of weapons and name of the wife. Maybe the letter restriction of the NES made Helena a better choice? Anyway, Helena have been killed by a snake that allowed Hades to kidnap her, but Aphrodite sees the couples love for each others and persuades the other gods to help so Orpheus meets with Zeus and from there sets of all around Greece to find all the temples of the gods and get the means to find the entrance to Tartarus and fight Hades. You get the Sandals of Hermes, the Shield of Athena, The divine sword of Hephaestus, Ares Power Bracelet, Apollo's Harp, a harmonica from Poseidon and Artemis Moon crystal. You need all of these items in order to find the three nymphs and the hearts that allows you to find Tartarus.
You gotta defeat Hades minions like the Lamia, cyclops, the minotaur and a lot of snakes. God I hate the snakes. After getting to Tartarus and defeating Kerberos (I hate that damn dog too, bosses shouldn't be allowed to regain health, especially when they are hard to hit) you traverse the maze and finds Helena turned to stone, the next room being completely dark with only water and a bridge. You use the moon crystal and the moon lights up making Hades cast a shadow in the water so that you know where to hit to fight off Hades. Really cool concept, it also harkens back to mythology again since Hades had a helmet (or cap depending on the translations) that could turn one invisible, so props for that. You beat him by forcing him against the wall and do the Zelda II Shadow Link fight by kneeling and just attacking. Beat him and the hearts of the Nymphs releases Helena from the stone and both arrive outside of Tartarus as the sun rises bringing a new day and a happy ending for Orpheus. So a sword clearly beats playing a song.
We had this game when I was a kid and the furthest we got was defeating Lamia and getting the staff and fire ability (or that was when I was in my 20's so as kid we didn't get that far really). I pretty much got lost at the forest stage. It's hard. Dying sends you back to the entrance of the stage and there are a lot of death pits, enemies that have irregular flying patterns and the damage progression is awful. You take too much damage early on and the Golden apple that halves your damage is way off. But I have nostalgic feelings for it. The music is great, and the graphics looks really good. It was released 1991 in Europe, but the Famicom version was released in 1988 and the whole game was made by only three people. It was inspired heavily by Zelda II which you see in the side-scrolling segment and the final battle with Hades. It feels nice finally finishing it, although I gotta be honest, I used the save state function a lot. Boy, I don't know how much time I would have had to spend on the game to finish it legit. And I even had a Nintendo Magazine walkthrough of the game that at least showed the beginning of the game.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar