Arcade Archives: Warrior Blade

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III (Taito, 1992)

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Although there are no Preference Settings, you can alter settings for the two monitors in Screen Settings to replicate little differences between the monitors as you'd see on original hardware, and you can set the Joystick Attack (mashing Left and Right for a health-sapping desperation attack) to a single button, although this is disabled in Hi-Score and Caravan modes.

The barbarian who dared to challenge, Rastan, has too many stories to tell for one night, but here is just one of them, presented in TAITOVISION. In the furthest reaches there lies the land of Depon, said to have magical treasures with amazing powers. With his mighty sword in hand, Rastan journeys there with two new companions- the whip-wielding Sophia and the ninja-trained Dewey- and meets the mysterious magician Mahadidekaradi who aids them in their quest with powerful spells to defeat those who stand in their way. By foot, ship, horse and even winged beast, two will stand against many (in the co-op mode, sorry three-player fans) until the adventure is over, but just hope that luck is on your side and bad fortune does not bedevil you!

The final proper Rastan game (we don't count Warrior Blade: Rastan vs. Barbarian, that's just a reskinned Saffire / Titus game), this ditches the single-plane platforming in favour of a scrolling brawler format, as was the style at the time. Not just any kind of scrolling though, this is TAITOVISION scrolling! It's just two screens instead of the three used for The Ninja Warriors, but this still means the artists had a lot more room to work with, resulting in some finely-detailed sprites and impressive-looking pixel art for just about everything in the game, and combined with the incredible Zuntata soundtrack (with my personal favourite being Rising), you have a game with excellent and striking presentation that really makes an impression.

The game plays pretty well too- certainly the most mechanically-interesting brawler Taito made for the arcades, there's not a huge amount of moves but the characters feel distinct enough, there's some variety with the auto-scrolling creature-riding segments and your magician friend (either always with you or summoned via a crystal depending on the dip switch settings) can be struck to cast different magic spells similar to the ones from Golden Axe. The stage select feature may seem like a minor addition, but each stage you clear has a different treasure with an effect like increasing the strength of Mahadidekaradi's magic or making your movement faster, so picking the right order could be helpful. There's even an element of luck as 'bad fortune' events may make you play an extra stage (although this too can be changed with the dip switches, forcing you to play all stages). It's a pretty solid end to Rastan's run in arcades, and it's a bit of a shame we didn't get any more stories of the days of hgh adventure with him!

Anyway, be sure to try some of the high score name secrets if you get this one!