A Titanic Clash! Let's Play... Battle of Olympus!

Hey Cats and kittens, it's me, Octopus Prime! And it's time for another LP from Octopus Prime! What are the odds of that, I wonder? Well... pretty good I expect, since I was scheduled to start one this month. This time, I'm going to play, then write about, then submit posts regarding The Battle of Olympus, Broderbunds 1989 Zelda-y style adventure game!

Well... Zelda 2-y style at least. And Broderbund only published it, it was Infinity's baby. You might remember Infinity as being the developer of such other hits as the NES port of Ultima 4, or the SNES port of Populous. Actually... you probably don't, since even in their heyday Infinity barely had any titles under their belt. And the only ones that came out in his country were cruddy ports of good games. But we're not here to talk about Infinity, we're here to talk about Battle of Olympus!

The game itself is a loose re-telling of the tale of Orpheus. In the original myth, Orpheus was a musician who was so sad that his wife died that he waltzed into the the land of the dead and cried at Hades until the God of the Dead said "Fine! I'll bring her back to life! Just get the frig out of here. You're making everyone too sad to enjoy being dead". But on his way out of the underworld, he turned around to make sure she was leaving with him, and correspondingly, she had to stay behind. This is because Hades was kind of a dick. Anyway, once Orpheus got back to the Earth, he decided to resume crying until such point as he became a plant.

As one would.

Anyway, the good people at Broderbund wisely decided that "Cries a lot" is not a trait that leads itself well to action heroes, so, instead, Orpheus decides to get his wife back by grabbing a club and beating the living daylights out of every living thing in ancient Greece. Oh, and also, she isn't dead, she's just turned to stone. So I'm not REALLY sure what beating the hell out of Hades would accomplish.

This is hardly the only bit of artistic liscense used by Broderbund in the game with regard to ancient myth. But we're getting off track. Lets find an Olympus and BATTLE IT!



Y'see that? That's a stirring title graphic. You are most likely swooning from the sight of it right now, so I'll give you a moment to collect yourselves.

...

You ready? Good.



Despite being based on the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice (albeit with the formers musical skills being replaced by a desire to bludgeon everything he sees, and the latter having the easier-to-spell name of Helen) we're free to rename them whatever we want. I think the choice is obvious;



Yes, that looks right. Okay, now to press start and get this crazy adventure of questionable anthropological research STARTED!



And here it is! The full game map! We're starting in the west-most part of the map, in good ol' Arcadia. We'll eventually be going to every spot on this map, but the graphic itself isn't all that helpful since transport from one spot to another in it does not actually correspond to where you're walking (unless, of course, the entirity of Attica is found in some guys basement). But hey, that was a problem in Simons Quest too! And that game was GREAT!



And here's the actual FIRST shot of the game, the green-clad dude is, of course our HERO, Orpheus. There's a functionally useless map in the top corner of the screen, and the shield he's wielding is only for decoration, since it can't actually intercept any attacks yet. As for the rest of his gear, our sad, sad, sad hero is armed with a billy club (made of only the finest wood) and is presently carrying... err... no snakes.

Thats useful information, that. His lack of snakes.

Anyway, thats enough looking at a status screen, lets head into that duplex and gather some USEFUL INFO!



The first thing you'll notice is that, unlike Simons Quest, the townsfolk are not only helpful, but coherant! OLD MAN tells us, in no uncertain terms, that we should go and meet Zeus, who is lounging out in his temple, somewhere else in Arcadia.

The other room has a lady telling us about some dude who learned how to control fire by using a tasty herb.



Another tree house, containing a fat man gives us some valuable insight as to the location of The Strongest Sword. This would be fantastic advice if the map pointed out how to reach Peloponnesus from here, but the gesture's appreciated.



The rest of Arcadias population is a bit more vague; Somewhere in the world is a cave that may or may not have an invisible door, and the trees have secrets.

...actually, that last thing sounds tempting, lets head into the forest and see what kind of secrets them there tree-tops might have! Why, there are some trees just a screen or so to the right of this house, in fact! Why don't we head over there now!



AHHH! Worms!

Grecian Catapult Worms kind of... really suck to fight; when they're on the ground, they are too low for any of your attacks to hit them. You need to wait for them to leap up to put them into range of your club (assuming you are crouching). This would be fine in most games, but the Catapult Worms are fully capable of walking around and plowing into your knobbly knees without ever leaping, and you can't move while crouching. So if you can't hit the worm as it drops out of the tree, its almost certainly going to hit you. Probably a lot. And they cover a greater height then you can, so trying to leap over them usually inspires them to jump too.

Actually "This monster really sucks and I hate fighting it" is a pretty good description of the entire Battle of Olympus experience.



Killing the Worm causes it to drop its bounty; a glowing sprig of mint. Besides giving Orpheus fresh breath, it also restores a whole unit of health.

Well, Grecian Catapult Worms or no, we have ourselves a mighty quest; to find Zeus, somewhere else in Arcadia, as per the instructions of some weird old man whose house we barged into.



And here's a tree with a door carved into it! I bet if the Father of the Gods is anywhere, he'd be living in the middle of a tree!



Nope, no Gods. Just some old lady telling me that this is the way to Argolis. Which, should I enter it, will kill me. Well, nuts to that! Why should I listen to some crazy old lady who lives in a tree? If she's so smart, why doesn't she live in a house!



The other side of the tree has another section of the Arcadian Forest, and with it, our second exciting enemy type: The Koala. It's a little known fact that the Koalas were originally from Greece, the British imported the the entire population of them to Australia in the late 18th century in order to supress the prisoner population.

And true to their heritage of preventing dangerous convicts from swimming across the entire pacific ocean, these fiendish Drop Bears have developed the skills needed to use tools, such as sharp sticks. They will wait on the edge of the screen until you approach, then they will dart foward, toss their spear, and run off again. Usually before you get to within whackin' distance, and they take twice as many hits as the Catapult Worms too.

On the plus side, they're not so small as you can't hit them when you crouch, and their attacks are much easier to dodge then the Worms.



Just past the gauntlet of Worms and Koalas (and another gauntlet of the same) is another duplex filled with people offering vague, but helpful hints! Did you know...



Somewhere there is a bottle. And you can put fluids in it.



Argolis, besides old-lady predicted death, has some wine

And now you know!



Past the bottle-obsessive people of the Arcadian Forest is a shed. And on the other side of that shed is the volcanic hellscape of Argolis. Rather then houses, the people of Argolis live in caves hewn in the molten rock.

And, being people who live in volcanic caves, the good people of Argolis know a thing or two about fairies being hidden in Caves, and things that will prevent you from dying in flames. Helpful advice, both!



Further on is a cave. And the cave has a snake. And the snake is longer then Orpheus is tall. And it takes a lot of hits and moves very quickly. But surely its no match for a hero such as Orpheus! Its a snake! It moves in a straight line and can't possibly pose any meaningful threat!



...yep.

The penalty for dying, should you be curious, is to be sent back to the start of the area you just came from at the expense of half your money, rounding down.

Okay, so the crazy old lady in a tree was right, Argolis is no place for us yet. Let's head back to Arcadia and see if we can't track down Zeus after all.



Incidentally, that little red gem on the ground is an Olive, it's Greeces primary unit of currency. That doesn't quite jibe with what the various Carmen Sandiego games, or common sense, taught me. But that's neither here nor there. The point is that I killed a Catapult Worm as it dropped out of a tree and a olive fell out of its stomach. And I took it.



Another tree has another crazy person. This one is a little less pessimistic, since she offers advice besides "going outside of this tree will kill you". We can get ourselves a weed that lets us control fire in far-off Attica!



Along the way, Orpheus finds a conspicuous white house. He enters it, and walks through into the backyard... which is not anywhere near a forest. There was no Map-Transition screen, so this is still Arcadia, its just a fair bit Brickier then usual. I wonder if there's anything significant about this change of scenery?



Well, there's the first Boss, for one thing.

According to what few online resources I could find for the game, there's nothing notable about this Bull. It's just a bull. A regular, boring bull. Lets assume it was the Cretan Bull, best known for seducing King Minos' wife who promptly mated with it, so that she gave birth to the minotaur. Don't judge her too harshly, it was a very hot cow.



And true to form, the Cretan Bull is a lover, not a fighter; its significantly less dangerous then any other enemy thusfar encountered. He'll spend a second or two getting ready to run, then it will run (daintily) forward, usually into your waiting club. Impact with which will send it flying back across the screen.

Three cracks against the head and the bull explodes. Which is not behaviour commonly associated with bulls. Magical sexy bulls or no.



And, indeed, the bull was guarding Zeus' Shrine. Zeus won't speak to you at all until you kneel before him.

You all know Zeus; he tore apart his dad, the god of farms. Then he married his sister, had a daughter pop out of his brain, and had a whole whack of illegitimate kids by turning into (apparently sexy) animals. And once; some sexy rain. This one time he got mad at the guy who decided NOT to let humanity die off by denying them warmth and science, so he chained him to a rock and let birds eat him.

Zeus is kind of an ass.




Zeus, true to his established characterization, is less then useful; he tells you you need Hephaestos' sword to get the Power of Argus (not that he says where or what either are), and he says that other Gods will be helpful and give me stuff now. Good. I'm sure that there won't be any sort of payment required or side-quest to be solved first for any of them either.


Zeus also makes a habit out of screwing with the heads of Greek Heroes, incidentally.

Okay, thats enough for a first update, methinks. Next time I think we'll head on over to Attica and see what we can do about finding that Staff of Fennel. And maybe beat the crap out of some more mythological figures!

I am so excited for this! This was my first NES game.

Think you can up-size your images, Octo? I know so much of your brain is devoted to being awesome that you don't have a lot of neural pathways left over for things like image processing, but I sure would appreciate it.

I always loved the adorable little mini-map in this game. Forward thinking!

Yay, new Octo LP. Once again, thank you for braving the depths of a game that I will never play in its entirety.

That continue screen has some nice coloring.

I never did play this game, but its description of being Zelda II-like made me interested in doing so.

Quoted for truth. I love the game's Greek theme and it has some stuff I wish Zelda II had, but the enemies and bosses feel very random in the worst ways. They're more like something you'd expect from a quarter munching arcade game.

I've never even played BfO and I'm enjoying this LP a lot. Keep up the good work, OctoPrime.

A new Octo LP?! What did we do to deserve this?

WHY WON'T YOU DIE

This is already the best new LP. =D

This is what Photobucket gave me as "unchanged" but I could probably up-size them from here on out. Though you won't see any changes for a few updates yet.

I HATE THOSE THINGS. I HATE THEM SO MUCH.

This game was a childhood favorite, but I wasn't able to finish it until much later because the password system never worked properly. I'm still not sure if it's a problem with my cartridge or the game itself.

For those who aren't familiar with this, it isn't just similar to Zelda II. The mechanics are nearly identical, right down to going into your crouch for a moment when landing. Some of the sprites are a small step away from having been copied outright.

Yeah, this game is basically Zelda II: Less Fun Edition.

It's still kinda fun though.

It's fun when you're not fighting annoying monsters or wandering for hours trying to figure out what to do next, which is always.

I loved this game as a kid, though I never came close to beating it. When I went back and replayed it as an adult, I thought it was pretty mediocre, but I did manage to beat it. I don't know what this means.

What? No. This game is way more fun than Zelda 2, because of a thing later that rocks.

I won't say what though. I wouldn't want to spoil the Radmaster's LP.

Needless to say, awesome LP.

This LP is already fantastic.

Actually, there's a lot to recommend about BoO. The eight regions are tied together in interesting ways and you do eventually get a way to warp between many of them. As mentioned above, the various townspeople are actually helpful and coherent, and I found it really fun to piece together the various bits of knowledge. The graphics are quite nicely done - check out the way that the black used in the screen shots to give a sense of depth to the ground and the leaves in the trees. Some of the bosses are really well-animated. The music is lovely.

Plus, the totally sweet cover art:

The only thing not awesome about Battle of Olympus's cover art is that "Includes Password Feature" triangle. I could never get most of those damn passwords to work even when I was positive I put them in right. I think I heard something about them being glitched? Now "Includes Saving Feature", I could get behind, even though savestates make such a thing unnecessary.

Yet another game I wish was on Virtual Console here.

You should go back in time really quick and talk to another god before you chat with Zeus. If memory serves, they tell you to buzz off.

I don't know why, but the cover art isn't showing up for me.

Edit: Never mind, it's showing up now and it's completely awesome.

This is the reason why I picked the game out as a child.

It's the reason EVERY child picked it up.

That, and the promise of passwords being featured.

I approve of this LP.

My girlfriend, who is a fan of this game and lurks here very occasionally, also wanted me to tell you this is a great LP of this game, which she loves and hasn't really seen a good LP of.

Also, she tells me that the snake-counter thing, with the two zeroes under it, looks like a roller skate. Since I can't unsee that anymore, I thought I'd share it with all of you.