Astyanax (NES) Review
System NES
Developer Aicom Publisher Jaleco Genre 2D Side Scrolling # of Players 1 Release Date March 1990 |
Pros
Decent graphics Good combat Cons Game slowdown when the screen is full Game can be challenging in spots |
Review
by Thonos
1/30/2016
There are some games in my library that while I enjoy playing them, I am just not good at them. This usually involves fighting games, but this time it is the platformer Astyanax. I played this game a lot when I was younger and I always needed to use the invincibility cheat code to get through the game. Playing it now I fare much better than I did back then, but I'm still bad at this game. But that does not mean it is a bad game by no means.
Astyanax has a pretty straight forward backstory. You play as a teenager Astyanax who gets transported to a world by Cutie, a talking fairy, who tells you that you are the legendary hero destined to save the Princess Rosebud from the evil Thorndog and Blackhorn. Only Princess Rosebud can send you back to your world so you grab your magical axe and march onward, slaying all types of evil creatures and bosses in your path. Not the most original story, but it gets the job done.
Progression is pretty straight forward. The game is broken into 12 stages and you get story cutscenes after every two. Stages usually have you go left to right and then the next stage has you go either up or down. At the end of each stage you fight a mini boss and every other stage you fight a big boss. As you go through the stages you get upgrades to your weapon, power and power refill speed all which effect the power of your attacks. If you die your weapon drops back a level.
Combat is also pretty straight forward. This is a game where a turbo controller may help, but with the power bar if you do multiple attacks in a row they are all going to be low power attacks. Waiting between attacks makes your attack stronger. You get the same three magic spells throughout the game. One shoots out a ring of fire around you, one kills all the enemies on the screen and one freezes time. All three are useful while I found the freeze time spell to be the most useful.
Graphically the game looks alright. Most of the enemies look good with most of the later ones just being color changes of eariler ones. The stages are semi-detailed however over time you start to see them repeating themselves. The cutscenes that advance the story look good even even though many of the images get used many times. The audio in the game was good, with the music being better than the sound effects.
Astyanax does suffer from some flaws. The game does suffer from some slowdown if there are too many characters on the screen which can affect gameplay. Also I found this game to be pretty challenging. As I mentioned earlier in this review, I am not good at platforming games so take my opinion on difficulty with that in mind. I did find the later stages easier than the ealier ones though, which is something I have seen on a few other NES games.
This is a game that I enjoyed from my childhood and still enjoy today. The game has its flaws, but I feel most of them can be overlooked.
by Thonos
1/30/2016
There are some games in my library that while I enjoy playing them, I am just not good at them. This usually involves fighting games, but this time it is the platformer Astyanax. I played this game a lot when I was younger and I always needed to use the invincibility cheat code to get through the game. Playing it now I fare much better than I did back then, but I'm still bad at this game. But that does not mean it is a bad game by no means.
Astyanax has a pretty straight forward backstory. You play as a teenager Astyanax who gets transported to a world by Cutie, a talking fairy, who tells you that you are the legendary hero destined to save the Princess Rosebud from the evil Thorndog and Blackhorn. Only Princess Rosebud can send you back to your world so you grab your magical axe and march onward, slaying all types of evil creatures and bosses in your path. Not the most original story, but it gets the job done.
Progression is pretty straight forward. The game is broken into 12 stages and you get story cutscenes after every two. Stages usually have you go left to right and then the next stage has you go either up or down. At the end of each stage you fight a mini boss and every other stage you fight a big boss. As you go through the stages you get upgrades to your weapon, power and power refill speed all which effect the power of your attacks. If you die your weapon drops back a level.
Combat is also pretty straight forward. This is a game where a turbo controller may help, but with the power bar if you do multiple attacks in a row they are all going to be low power attacks. Waiting between attacks makes your attack stronger. You get the same three magic spells throughout the game. One shoots out a ring of fire around you, one kills all the enemies on the screen and one freezes time. All three are useful while I found the freeze time spell to be the most useful.
Graphically the game looks alright. Most of the enemies look good with most of the later ones just being color changes of eariler ones. The stages are semi-detailed however over time you start to see them repeating themselves. The cutscenes that advance the story look good even even though many of the images get used many times. The audio in the game was good, with the music being better than the sound effects.
Astyanax does suffer from some flaws. The game does suffer from some slowdown if there are too many characters on the screen which can affect gameplay. Also I found this game to be pretty challenging. As I mentioned earlier in this review, I am not good at platforming games so take my opinion on difficulty with that in mind. I did find the later stages easier than the ealier ones though, which is something I have seen on a few other NES games.
This is a game that I enjoyed from my childhood and still enjoy today. The game has its flaws, but I feel most of them can be overlooked.