Arcade Archives: Vs. The Quest of Ki

[tepidsnake]

 

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Vs. The Quest of Ki (Namco, 1988)

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This version of the game includes a full set of maps detailing enemy placements, items and time limits for every stage, available during gameplay at the press of a button. Preference Settings allows players to remove the black space that appears when character sprites overlap, display visuals near the edge of the screen normally not visible and display the score, current floor number, key status and wind direction in-game.

In another time, in another world... The evil Druaga has stolen the Blue Crystal Rod, planning to use it to cast the world into darkness under his rule. The Goddess Ishtar entrusts the priestess Ki with a most difficult task: ascend the 60 floors of the tower Druaga has holed himself in and retrieve the rod! To aid her in her quest, Ki has a magical tiara that allows her to jump as high as she wants and float down gracefully, although she needs to be careful not to hit her head on the ceiling or run into a wall too fast as she'll crumple for a moment... Although that might be useful in some situations. As well as treasures that offer protection, extra lives and even warps courtesy of the adorable dragon Quox, the tower is filled with enemies and hazards ready to kill Ki with a single touch. Mastery of Ki's flight powers are your only hope, but even if you reach the 60th floor...?

While this is a story prequel to The Tower of Druaga, showing how Ki managed to get captured in the first place (although if you ask me, getting all the way up that tower without any armour shows she's way tougher than Gil), it's a completely different game, developed by Game Studio, the company Masanobu Endō formed in 1985 that kept a good working relationship with Namco. Inspired by the jumping mechanics in the Atari arcade game Major Havoc (Atari even gets a special thanks credit specifically mentioning this game in the credits), this is a methodical platform game where Ki can jump as high as she wants, but once the jump ends, she has to float down and can't add to her height again. It starts off gentle, and there's even some warps early on to get you started, but you really need to master these controls to get up the tower, and as the manual for this one shows, there's a lot of techniques you'll have to learn how to do, such as hopping short distances and even intentionally hitting the wall or ceiling to crouch under things. I wouldn't exactly call it a puzzle-platformer as it's very much focused on dexterity, but you will have to think a lot more than others in the genre.

The special stages- unlocked in the Famicom version by beating the first 60 floors- are particularly infamous for being brutally difficult, and you might know about them from their GameCenter CX appearance, but this Vs. System version- currently undumped for MAME- has a few extra features tailored to these special stages. As explained in the Hamster stream, you can start from the special stages right off the bat (and even select which one to start on), hidden backwards warps in there now don't take you as far back (to prevent people playing too long) and... There's twenty new special stages. If you've beaten this game before and want a new challenge, Namco is happy to provide. If you've never played this though, this is absolutely the version to play- you can get it for Namcot Collection on Switch as well, but this version has an extremely useful set of guides, including maps, enemy and item descriptions, so similar to the other Druaga games available on Arcade Archives, this is perfect for those who've never played it before. Anyone remotely interested in platformers that make you think a little (and who have patience, this is a Druaga game after all) should look into this one immediately!

Comments

[camping_luna_marisa]

Do you think the Sunsoft unreleased VS has a chance if we got super rare VS arcade?

[tepidsnake]

This is the question that always comes up when Vs. System games show up, huh~ I won't claim to know the ins and outs of Hamster's process, but I do know that they use real boards in their development- Ninja Emaki launched without the international version because they didn't have access to a board, but it was patched in after a board was leant to them.

As a result, for those Sunsoft Vs. System games to show up, Hamster's gonna need those boards, so they'd either have to make a deal of some kind with the owner of them (I believe it's the same person who owns those three Sunsoft games) or find other boards. So, probably not, much as I'd like it to be so!