Rygar (NES) review"When asked to name their favorite video games of all time, chances are the name Rygar will not show up on most people’s lists. It was not a widely popular and recognized game when it was released in the Arcades, even though it was a pretty fun game that I enjoyed playing a lot. However, even fewer people have heard of Rygar for the Nintendo Entertainment System. And this is a true shame, in my opinion. After all, I had enjoyed playing the Arcade version of this classic game immensely, and I stil..." |
When asked to name their favorite video games of all time, chances are the name Rygar will not show up on most people’s lists. It was not a widely popular and recognized game when it was released in the Arcades, even though it was a pretty fun game that I enjoyed playing a lot. However, even fewer people have heard of Rygar for the Nintendo Entertainment System. And this is a true shame, in my opinion. After all, I had enjoyed playing the Arcade version of this classic game immensely, and I still feel that it is one of the better Arcade games, even to this day, but I also feel that the NES version of Rygar improved a lot over the original Arcade version and provided the game player with a classic gaming experience.
The reasons why Rygar never got the popularity it deserved are numerous, poor marketing strategies by Tecmo could not have helped the situation, but I am glad to say that I am one of the few people that have played this game. And judging by the other reviews at GameFAQs, it appears that I am not the only one to like this game. And I am glad that other people liked this game besides me, because not only does it help my case look stronger, and not only does it help me to appear not like a fool but like a person with a respected opinion, but it also means that I am not the only fan of this classic game out there.
The game is one of the must fun I have played on the old NES, or any other console for that matter. I cannot stress that fact enough. Simply put, I had a blast playing through this game, even though it did suffer from one or two tiny flaws. I really enjoyed playing the Arcade version, but suffice to say, I enjoyed playing the NES version a heck of a lot more than I enjoyed playing the Arcade version. And when you consider how much I enjoyed playing the original Rygar for the Arcades, it is really a testament as to how much I enjoyed playing the NES version.
There are a lot of differences between the Arcade and NES versions of the game. The basic game play remained the same, but a lot of things changed. The Arcade version stresses action over adventure, but the NES version has a lot more role-playing game elements. For instance, there is stuff like experience points and enemies killed to worry about in this game. I liked the graphics in the game, as well, although the game looked a lot different than the Arcade version. Well, there is about as much comparison and contrast that I can do between the two versions of the game. Now I will talk about the NES version of the game, without comparing it to the Arcade version.
The story line to the game is fairly simple, yet pretty good nevertheless. The Door of Peace has been open for countless ages, bringing happiness and tranquility to Argool. One day, Ligar, the King of Beasts, arrives in his floating castle and closes the Door. Step #2 in his plan is to rain terror and death upon the defenseless people. Then Rygar, the warrior from Argus, comes to stop Ligar. There is a lot of Greek overtones to the story line in the game, but I was really impressed with it, even if it was kind of complicated.
I liked the graphics in the game a lot, as the game just had this look to it that screamed classic. It really appeared to be a lot more than just another 8-bit game. The character designs in the game are solid, and the enemy designs are just as good. I liked the backgrounds in the game a lot, as well. As a matter of fact, the element of the graphics I liked most about this game was the fact that the backgrounds were still pretty good. The backgrounds were some of the best I have seen in a NES game, as they were brightly colored and very well varied.
As a matter of fact, the first time I booted up the game I was amazed by the quality of the backgrounds. The sunset setting of the first stage was pretty good, and I liked the sunset setting a lot. It really was a nice setting to the game, and it complemented the feeling of the stage perfectly. Even my friend, who is usually not blown away by video game graphics, was impressed by the sunset setting of the first stage. And he didn’t really like the game much, at all, for some reason, so the fact that he enjoyed anything about this game just makes the fact that the backgrounds are pretty good even more official.
The character and enemy designs in the game are pretty good, but nothing perfect. I liked the design of the main character a lot, although he was a bit small. Tiny sprites don’t exactly leave a ton of room for detail, but the main character was well detailed nevertheless. I liked the enemy designs of the game a lot, because they looked pretty good and were well varied. The enemy designs were pretty good, and I liked how there was a nice variety of them. The boss designs were also solid, I especially liked the detail that was put into the boss designs of the game. They looked very solid and well detailed. Overall, I was really impressed by the graphics in the game.
The music in the game is outstanding. In fact, I will go on record and say that the music featured in this game is some of the best I have ever heard in a video game. I am sure not many people will agree with me on that, but oh well. This is my review, and if you don’t like my opinion, go write a review yourself. The opening theme of the game fits the feeling of the game perfectly and really gets you into the mood of the game automatically. I really enjoyed this theme and was glad that the same theme played for a lot throughout the game. There is some other music pieces featured, like the music featured when you talked to a priest or whatever, but I liked the main music theme more than the rest of the music in the game. I liked all of the music, however, so it’s all good.
The sound effects in the game are pretty impressive. I liked how there were a wide variety of sound effects in the game, and they all sounded well done. The main sound effects included the sound of the swinging arm swinging back and forth between the ledges, and the sounds of the enemies and characters dying. The main sound effects sounded awesome, but I wish there were more sound effects featured, as well. Because the sound effects were pretty good, but there could have been more featured. Regardless, I am not going to complain about what isn’t featured, instead I am going to laud about how good the sound effects that are featured are, and overall I really liked the sound effects in the game.
The control in this game is awesome, as it is not that difficult to control the main character, at all. As you may know, there are not that many buttons featured on the NES controller in general, so do not expect there to be complex control in this game. All you really have to do is jump, swing, and move around. To switch between weapons and other stuff, you go to the pause screen and select your weapon of choice. Think of that part as just like the switching of the special weapons in the regular Mega Man series for the NES, and you have a good idea of how the switching of special weapons goes. Overall, the control is solid, and I really have no complaints about the overall control of the game. Tecmo really did a great job with the control in the game, to say the absolute least, in my opinion.
I think the thing I liked most about Rygar was how it combined fast action with an adventure like atmosphere. The game has a lot of action-like elements to it, but in the end it retains a lot of its adventure elements which makes it such a unique game. The main thing you have to remember about the game is that it is an action/adventure game with role-playing game elements. Think of it as being like Faxanadu, another classic NES game, and you have a general idea of how the basic game play structure of the game is. It is definitely a very fun game with a cool structure.
Again, you basically have a grappling hook. You can use the grappling hook in all sorts of different ways. Eventually you will get special items such as special armor and a grappling hook which will allow you to fly across a ledge, leading towards new areas. There are two game play views (reminscent of Blaster Master): Side Scrolling (Walking) and Overhead (walking in the over world). To kill enemies, all you really had to do was to jump on them to stun them, then keep on hitting them with your grappling hook until they died. Nothing extraordinarily revolutionary here.
I mentioned earlier that the game has role-playing elements. This is where the tone points and mind points come into play. When you kill an enemy, you sometimes get mind points. You need mind points in order to cast spells and do special attacks, and tone points act just like experience points act in most role-playing games. As you collect more, your life meter increases and your Diskarmer becomes stronger. This is cool because after a while you can become super strong and take out enemies with ease. It also means that you will want to play the game for a while, because you will go around running around killing enemies.
The game takes a long time to finish, and the lack of passwords really blows. Even limitless continues won't entice you to see the ending again (which isn't that bad, by the way). It doesn’t take as long as other role playing games, but come on now, there is no save system or password system, which means you will have to complete it all at one time. After you complete the game, you may decide that you are fed up with going through all of that, and that will pretty much kill any replay value the game has. However, while you are trying to play through the game, the replay value is pretty solid, as the game is fun to play.
The challenge level of this game is not as high as I expected it to be, but this is a pretty tough game nevertheless. There is a lot of mapping to go through, as you need to effectively figure out how to go from place to place easily, so the challenge level is pretty high in that respect. But otherwise the challenge level is not that bad. May I recommend something though? Kill as much enemies as you can and level up as quickly as possible before you really start to do stuff in the game. It really will make the game a lot easier. Like it really needs to be any easier, I am just saying. And read Epo’s review if you want to hear something really interesting about the bosses of the game.
Wow, I love this game. This is one of the best games I have ever played. Get it today! Rygar is one of the coolest games I have ever played. I believe it was originally released for the arcade and then was translated into a NES version. Whatever, this game still rocks. Remember when Tecmo used to be cool? They made this game, and they made the Ninja Gaiden series, as well. Needless to say, I love this game. The graphics are awesome, the music and sound effects are great, everything needed to make a great game is featured in this game. And despite the small amount of flaws found in this game, it is still a pretty solid game nevertheless. It’s true, it’s true!
Community review by psychopenguin (April 09, 2003)
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