Arcade Archives: Märchen Maze

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Märchen Maze (Namco / NH System, 1988)

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This game only has a Japanese ROM with no confirmed English version, so just the one version this time. There were rumours of an English ROM retitled Alice in Wonderland, but many years ago I spoke with btribble of UnMAMEd Arcade Games where this version was listed as a game being searched for, who confirmed that while he had been informed by someone else such a version existed, he hadn't seen any evidence himself. Preference Settings allow players to adjust game speed and shift the directional controls 45° to the right (so holding Up moves Alice diagonally up-right) allowing for slightly easier movement control.

In the land through the looking glass, all is a muddle! An evil queen has taken over and its inhabitants don't know what to do... The white rabbit knows, though. He reaches out through the mirror to Alice, a young girl who loves fairytales and is one of the few out there who can see and talk to the residents of the land. Dragging her into the mirror, she's got to save the land from the dark queen's tyrant! Fortunately, the rabbit also gives her a magic straw that can blow bubbles- mash the button for rapid-fire, or hold the button to charge up a giant bubble to bowl the enemies over. Alice is also a pretty sturdy girl, and won't be killed by just being shot at by enemies, as they just bounce her around. If she falls into a pit though, that's one life lost (unless she finds a recovery balloon that floats her to safety). Many bizarre enemies await her- smoking mushrooms, giant robots, card soldiers... But Alice will have to be up to the task if she wants to go home!

It's been quite a while since we've seen a proper Namco arcade game on Arcade Archives, hasn't it? Well, Namco published at least, as this is by the short-lived NH System who also made Blast Off and Final Blaster for the PC Engine (their entire output got a soundtrack release with really adorable cover art) before shuttering in 1990. In any case, Namco's been doing some stellar work preserving undumped Vs. System games like The Quest of Ki and Family Tennis, but it is nice to see their real arcade games again. This is one that people have been waiting for- Märchen Maze is one of the last holdovers from the Namco games rereleased via Wii Virtual Console Arcade (the only ones left now are Quester, Starblade, Solvalou and Cyber Sled) and it's a pretty interesting game. There's not a lot of on-foot isometric shooters out there (the arcade version of Michael Jackon's Moonwalker, Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters and Prikura Daisakusen are the only ones that really come to mind) and certainly none that have the unique 'take as much damage as you want but don't fall off the stage' mechanics seen here. It can take a little getting used to, can be a bit awkward when it comes to jumps (you have Alice's shadow to judge them except for the chequered platforms at the end of rounds) and it's a little disappointing that the game eventually runs out of round layouts (Rounds 7, 8 and 9 are palette-swaps of previous rounds but have different enemies). However, the presentation really sells it, it's a cute and charming game that might be a bit easier to play with the extra directional control option offered here. It helps that it's based on Alice in Wonderland, a favourite of mine. Anyway, I do have an old Gaming Hell playthrough of this game, but oh no, it's like 15 years old at this point. I probably need to rewrite a lot of this, so please bear that in mind.

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As a bonus, I highly recommend the Hamster stream for this one, as alongside some development documents and sketches, they show off a video of a 1987 prototype of the game at around 1:10:20 just titled Alice. As well as a very different, more realistic artstyle for Alice, this seems to be more of an arena shooter with large, open spaces to fight in and the ability to jump down to different arenas. It's clearly very early as a lot of collision detection doesn't seem to be implemented and there's debug information on the side of the screen, but this is fascinating stuff!