Best game named after a murdered infant - Let's play Astyanax!

It’s safe to say that my love for Astyanax on NES is fanatical. As a kid, I was addicted, so much so it was one of the very few games that I had beaten before I reached the age of 10. To this day, I still remember it fondly for its wonderful characters, its detailed cutscenes and tightly wound story. Unfortunately, I failed to remember that it was a fairly broken, bog standard platformer. Still, with lots of charm, a better than average localization and amazing soundtrack, Astyanax remains near and dear to my heart.

First, a bit of background info. The Astyanax was originally an arcade game released in Japan under the name “Lord of Kings”. A brief trip to Hardcore Gaming 101 reveals that the original game was a knock off of The Legendary Axe, a different arcade game by Victor Interactive Software and designed by Tokuhiro Takemori. A little further digging reveals the true reason why Lord of Kings was such a ‘rip’: The arcade game was in fact, also designed by Takemori!

Fearing a call from the Department of Redundancy Department, Jaleco’s American division changed the name and lead character's name to “The Astyanax”. The name itself comes from Greek legend, but I’m not sure if it was a change for the better. To quote Wikipedia:

Mm. Grim stuff. I don’t care how much you adore Greek legend; there’s gotta be a better name for your kid, or your own game for that matter.

As so many other NES iterations of arcade games, Jaleco chose to make a different game rather than port the original wholesale. Much of the gameplay remains in tact, albeit the levels are different. Also new to the NES version was a unique story, complete with animated cutscenes in the style of Ninja Gaiden. In this iteration, Astyanax is now a high school student who is thrown into an unfamiliar fantasy world, as opposed to a generic Conan-esque barbarian in a bog standard fantasy world, but we’ll get into the story as we play the game.

For the curious, this is not an example of America ‘westernizing’ the game as was the case with Blaster Master. From what I can tell, this is a fairly well localized title outside of the title and main character’s name (Rooshu in Katakana, not exactly sure what that transliterates to. Ross, maybe?). Alas, we will never know who was responsible, American localization or otherwise. This is because the game is completely devoid of credits. That’s right, there aren’t even any goofy pseudonyms to be had after the last cutscene; just a frozen The End screen. But I’ll let you see that for yourself; Let’s Play Astyanax!

When you go to turn on the system, what do you expect to see? Bios boot up if this were a new fangled game, but otherwise you'd expect to see a publisher logo, sometimes a developer one if you’re lucky and maybe some legal stuff to round it out, right?



Not Astyanax! No, it just throws you head first into a cutscene. I knew the game was story heavy, but this LP makes that even more apparent.



While most of the frames of main characters are repeated, the cutscenes are all fairly detailed and there are some unique screens for specific moments. All in all, A+ on the presentation.



See how quickly he changes the subject? Yeah, I'd hate to have a name I'd have to explain to people too.




No flashy portal effects here. Just a good ole fashion, epilepsy causing strobe effect.



Alright, NOW Let’s Play Astyanax!

. . . Or not, I guess?



Astyanax apparently needs to learn a lot more about female anatomy.

Cutie: Listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you. The girl who appears in your dreams is Princess Rosebud of Remlia. She is being held by the evil wizard, Blackhorn. Astyanax, please save our princess!

Astyanax: But. . . I'm only sixteen. How could I save her? (Uh, High school freshmen at sixteen? Brains is not a requirement for a chosen hero, apparently.)



… Yeah, no one ever said it being the chosen one carried a storied legacy.

Cutie: And also... only the princess can send you back to your world. I can't do it myself.



Cutie, Blackhorn and now Bash... You get the feeling the writer's weren't trying hard with the names.

Cutie: This is the only way you can get back to your world. Blackhorn has many monsters at his command.



And the stage is officially set. This is probably the most bad ass sequence you get in the game. Well... as bad ass as anyone can be in purple armor, really.

Tomorrow - Actually playing the game!

Man, Astyanax! Nintendo Power got me really hyped for this, but I never found it in local stores (I was actually surprised by the cover art when I first saw it on the Web.) Game Players' Magazine's elaborate strategy guide only increased my interest for years and years. Seeing an LP for it foretells much awesomeness!

I remember being very impressed by the cutscenes of this game when I first saw it. Was a horrible disappointment when I realized that it was just a generic side-scroller. Also, what kind of cruel parent names their kid Astyanax? And what kind of weaponsmith names their *Steel Battle Axe* "Bash"? Even Dwarf Fortress denizens come up with more interesting names than that.

I think the only place I've ever heard of this game before is in the Game Genie code book. Color me intrigued in this LP.

I know! That's not even what you do with an axe!

I wonder if this is a carryover from the original Japanese text. If I recall correctly, Japan's junior high runs for three years, and its high school for another three, rather than two years and four as in the U.S. So Astyanax would have been a freshman where the game was first made.

Or...maybe I think about these things too much.

Nah, it just says he's a freshmen in high school in the original Japanese, at least from the intro cutscene. It doesn't even give the name of the high school. It looks like they took a couple liberties with the american release, which is nice.

This game seemed cool back in the day when I didn't know about anime but had noticed that some games from Japan had a kinda neat art style. My memory of actually playing the game was just putting in an invincibility code and slogging through it in order to see the cutscenes.

I beat this one. I even figured out the trick to the last level on my lonesome, at age 11! Yay me.

Man, between this and Abadox, Faxanadu, Xevious and Xexyz, there are... I guess a lot of NES games with X in the name. I'm not sure where I was going with that.

So let’s take a sec to explain the mechanics. So this is Astyanax, but we’ll just call him Nack from now on. Nack’s sporting a snazzy purple helmet not seen in the cutscenes. Actually, it looks like he could be a big fan of Shredder from the '87 TMNT show.



The power meter here works a lot like the charging from Secret of Mana: I attack at full strength, it empties. I have to wait a few seconds for it to climb to max before I strike again for full power; otherwise I do a wimpy little hit. So by ‘a lot like’ Secret of Mana, I mean exactly like Secret of Mana.



These totem pole… things are breakable for items. This is where we get the usual suspects: points, health, magic, 1-ups etc. etc. But what I’m really interested in is the Axe icon.



This ‘upgrades’ your weapon. I assume this also affects your attack power, but really I have no idea since there are charge power upgrades as well. The three forms are the normal axe, what I also assume is a spear and then finally a broad sword. They all have the same reach from what I can tell.



On top of being a badass warrior, ‘super miracle power’ also has imbued Nack with magic. You have all your powers from the beginning, but only a limited amount of MP for each stage. Despite one of the four powers being the awesome Castlevania-esque ability to freeze time, I’ll pretty much only be using the default ‘fire’ attack. It completely clears the screen and does massive damage to bosses. Pretty nifty!

Ok, now let's dive in.




Welcome to Remlia which... resembles a castle more than a town if anything. Huh. One with an interior decorator who has a penchant for Unicorns. And angels. Don't ask, don't tell I suppose.



Also note the skeleton. This is Astyanax's version of the generic soldier. We'll be fighting plenty through out the adventure, and they get more dangerous with level. The generic version here doesn't do much other than jump around and swing his sword.



I'm assuming the designers had worked on shooters because Astyanax's difficulty is completely based on throwing as much crap at you as possible. The bubbly looking thing does nothing but get in your way, and the eyeball just floats around jumping back and forth throwing pumpkin bombs at you until you swat it out of the sky. On the bombs it drops, I didn't realize until many years later (Read: This LP) that it does no damage until it actually explodes. Good to know.

So those pits there, you can imagine with all this stuff on the screen, its incredibly easy to get knocked in right? Right! But...



. . . This trap doesn't make it easier. I wager I lose my first life here 1 out of every five times I play. And they reuse this trap all over the game. Twice in this level, in fact.



So end of the level, there's a totem pole thing. If you're low on health, generally this is a health pick up, as I am here.



Which is good, because our first mid-boss approaches... Mid being the loose sense of the word here. He's not really in the middle as I'll fight the real boss right after this... So... sub boss I guess? Moving on.

So he likes to hop around a lot. Worse, there's no good way to dodge this because he doesn't really follow any kind of pattern or known physics. He just goes where he damn well pleases. I tried to capture the randomness in these shots, but you don't really get the idea until you play it.

After you hit him from the ball form, he stands on the ground and fires shots at you. All you have to do is kneel and hack at his knees. Really, he's only a danger when he's in the ball form.



Just hit him when your power is full and he should go down in no time. Still, it's easy get your health drained early on. Thankfully, if you didn't use any magic the REAL boss is a snap.



Nack wanders into a dark room, and straight into Caesar! Caesar and his... Bulldog... chicken... dragon... thing. Yeah, I don't even know.



Caesar's mount (If you don't mind the WoW vocab for a sec... I don't play, honest) has three forms of attack. One, he likes to throw his big old weak spot of a head at you, which you can just jump has it goes around, and a three way spread shot which will never hit you as you'll never that far away from him. He also charges forward, but this is fairly rare and he pauses long enough for you to get to safety. All in all, there's no real reason you should get hit here hacking away. You'll want to save that MP up anyway.



And now he's on foot. Great. Caesar's attack, other than swinging a sword at you which you can kneel ala the last enemy, is to throw two ring projectiles at you with perfect trajectory at your current location. Worse, he likes to jump back at random and attack at the same time. The randomness once again is your worst enemy. Really, if you don't have the HP here you're more or less screwed.



… Unless you've been saving MP like I told you too. I swear the fire spell is more or less the win button against most bosses.



It's time to meet our two villains. Blackthorn is the lovely red gentleman on the right while Thorndog delivers bad news on the left. Blackhorn, and Thorndog. Maybe the writers were big He-Man fans?



Even in video games, you can rely on good old fashion 90s villain incompetence.





Compliant though he may seem, I'm not entirely sure what Thorndog DOES until yo actually fight him. I assume he must be the general of Blackhorn's army or something and just sends the soldiers out to the field.

NEXT UPDATE: Nack and Cutie face the TERROR, OF ~



Stay tuned!

There were several characters from Greek mythology named Astyanax, but yeah, that was the one I learned about in ancient history class.

Also, that fairy reminds me of the one in Kidd Video, the 80's centric cartoon series that was a cross between Alice in Wonderland and that music video by A-Ha.

I remember playing this one, but not for very long. I'm not sure if I even beat the first level to be honest.

This is really nice looking game. I recall the giant sprites to be of interest, but now that I'm looking at still screens I can appreciate the backgrounds. Repetitive as they may be those are nice looking unicorns.

So Retronauts recently posted an article collecting photos from the 1990 CES, and look what we have here:

I remember Astyanax. I played and beat it over the course of a rental, but it was a pretty decent rental. I'm interested in seeing more of this LP.

Welcome back. We return to Nack whose about to traverse level 2-1, The Red Road. A level that... isn't too different from level 1. Outside from being outdoors anyway. These lovely gargoyle statues have been placed by some curious sculptor.



And much like level 1 in an area that's laid out exactly the same way, we run into the first purple skeleton. There's about three in the level total and are much more dangerous foes. They have three unique attacks:



They can shoot high and low projectiles, block your attacks and attack low on top of attacking high. This, essentially, makes them as dangerous as Iron Knuckles from Legend of Zelda 2, only even more random.



Even worse than the plants, these... mouth things first two energy balls that spiral in different directions. I got caught by one of these guys and fell into a pit below, something I failed to capture. Obviously, the bottomless pits show this was intentional design.



One more skeleton to take down before Nack can check out this conveniently placed cavern.



Well, that and a midboss anyway. This slime guy moves back and forth until you smack him, at which point he grows and tries to bitch smack you a couple times.



Like before, duck when he extends to dodge the attack and whacking him a good couple times in the kneecaps. And thanks to the lack of randomness, it's fairly easy not to even get hit.



Voila! And we didn't even have to sacrifice a single magic point. Now to see what's in the cave...

The cave has a name apparently: Inazumi, oddly Japanese for a medieval Fantasy realm.



Inazumi is the first vertically scrolling stage. Generally these make up the second half of each level from here on out. Also, I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to carve eyes and talons all over the walls.



The sole enemy on this trek upward is this goo monster. He moves back and forth, extends and shoots spears. All in all, easy to avoid, so it's pretty easy to do this climb without getting hit. Which is good, because the mid boss is a bitch.



Before that though, I wanted to mention one thing. You're not able to see it, but there's an invisible barrier that is keeping me from reaching the next platform to continue upward. I've illustrated it thusly:



This is fairly annoying and if you're unlucky enough to try it while that enemy is shooting, you're going to get hit. So how do you advance, you might ask? Well...



You jump up from the platform from below, of course! For those paying attention, that essentially makes that platform on the left a red herring and otherwise completely unnecessary.



So anyway, you reach the top and have this gargoyle thing waiting to swoop down at you. Afterward, he just moves left and right really fast... until you attack him. He then goes back up, swoops down at you and then fires a spread shot that goes 4 ways diagonally as shown. He's obscenely obnoxious and extremely hard to hit.



… However the actual boss is a push over, so we can magic blast him to death.

The pushover, btw, is a public domain video game monster recurrent Medusa! Please note the Boss obvious weak point.



Medusa alternates coming from the left and right, stops at a certain point, and claws at you while throwing out snakes from her hair that try and flank you from the other side. Then she teleports to the other side and repeats.



So her claw happens to not go where the obvious weak spot is, so you can just kneel and hack away. The trick is to press the opposite direction and take care of the snakes while never leaving the crouched position. I can imagine this being tricky for someone who hasn't grown up on platform games, but most of us, this is a peace of cake. It just takes a while if you don't have any magic left.



And then she explodes in glorious 8 bit fashion that I failed to capture. Hooray Action game LPs!



And on to another beautiful cutscene. The last level was filled with enough BS design that it makes me wonder if this is all I like the game for. There's better stuff forth coming though, thankfully.



Astyanax awkwardly talks to Cutie who has just been staring at him for the past 5 minutes. Actually, she initiated the conversation in a minor scene I didn't get, it's just funnier to think of it that way.



Cutie reads Nack like a book. I don't have anything particularly snarky to say, I actually like this cutscene quite a bit. For being as much as you can get out of an 8-bit game from 1991, it's actually fairly sweet.



Thelenea is Blackhorn's stronghold, which was never told to us prior to this. Hooray for consistency?

The next trip on our journey to save Rosebud will be Ryogoku, which is even more oddly Japanese! Stay tuned!

A zombie Medusa with a lower snake body that looks like it's made of slime-coated intestines? Holy crap! It's been way too long since I last played this. O.O;

I'm having a bit of a technical issue with my laptop, so there might be a bit of a delay in the next update.

However, I'll take some time out to focus on something that many an Astyanax fan raves about that I failed to mention from the beginning - the music (Note I've never really written about music before and its one of the areas that though I appreciate, I know little about technically, so please bear with me).

Good or even amazing NES soundtracks aren't something that are very hard to find, which is impressive considering the limitations. But what makes music significant for Astyanax in particular is that its such a narratively driven game. In fact, its worth noting that some of the weaker pieces are the ones that are used for the actual gameplay (Some notable exceptions, which I'll get into).

The introduction, a dream sequence, is given a simple, appropriately dream like melody while the title screen that follows it and the first cutscene's music that follows it has a very "get up and go" kind of energy that really embraces the beginning of a journey. Really, in terms of the kind of 'epic tale' that Astyanax is, this is about as close as you can get to envoking these emotions on the NES. The rest of the cutscene music follows suit - In fact, there is a unique cutscene theme for each level of the game.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that the game's presentation was very well directed, and the music is a testament to that. Kiyoshi Yokoyama seems to be who is most pointed to as the composer of the game, but I can't really find any source confirming his involvment beyond the arcade version of the game, so take that information with a grain of salt.

For those interested, the whole soundtrack can be enjoyed here. As I come across other noteworthy pieces, I'll put it in as I go. For now, I'll leave you on the first level theme for Remlia, which so far is probably the stand out gameplay piece.

I'm kind of amazed how noodley Nack's arms look in the cutscenes, yet beefcake-y in the actual game.

Astyanax was one of those weekend rentals when I was a wee child that drew me in more than most, mainly due to the cut-scenes. I played it before I played Ninja Gaiden, but after playing Golgo 13, so I was used to seeing cut-scenes in NES games at the time. But I think it might have been the first game I played with a somewhat depressing story to it. While the gameplay wasn't terribly inspiring, it may have been one of the earliest games where I was generally curious what would happen to the characters.

I remember one time getting in the mail a letter from Jaleco pushing Astyanax. Anybody else get one?

PS- I no longer have this letter.

Oof, second page?

This LP will continue once I return from the GDC next week. Please look forward to it! ::bows::

I'm still a little stunned that despite three weapons in all after upgrading none of them bash.

Huh? Was I working on an LP or something?

Seriously though, life got in the way hard shortly after the laptop I was doing this LP with died. Now that school's out and I've taken care of a lot of my other personal projects however, I can get back on track with this and zip us through to the end.

Also, I'm not going to lie - Level 3 is a boring level. A very boring level, so I'm going to try and make it as painless as possible. However, on the other side, this is where the boss fights begin to show their true colors - and a lot of the game's technical weaknesses are at their strongest. Many enemies have attacks that are practically impossible to avoid, and have lots of HP or multiple forms, which means we can't simply fire magic our way out of as many situations as we did before. Truthfully, this part is where I tend to lose all my lives when I haven't been playing for a while. That noted, let's get back to Ryogoku.



We're at the gates of what appears to be a large castle. Unfortunately, we never go inside - we can only stare from afar and imagine what is behind it's walls. Also note that once again, the architect has a thing for faces being built into the wall.



And here we have what amounts to all of the challenges of Ryogoku outside of the boss fight... Skeletons... Plants... and eyeballs. The exact same enemies from Remlia. In fact, the lay out of the entire level closely mirrors Remlia too. All this equals up to their being nothing remarkable to note about this area. Moving on.



At the end of the stage, at the foot of a Greek style pantheon, we meet a theme appropriate minotaur. Being about the same size as Nack, he's actually kinda cute. Aw, and what's he doing with those horns?



OH GOD! Since when were minotaurs able to shoot lightening??

The lightening is spaced out, but it comes really fast and barely any warning time that trying to out and out avoid it is pretty impossible. If you time it right, you can slice through it, but even that takes practice.



He also has this little slash attack if you try to come next to him. This means that you can't take the usual approach of slashing at him while ducking, because he's actually smart enough to sweep slash as opposed to the rest of the bosses who have attacked high up until this point.

There is another stage after this, so your MP gets replenished, however the minotaur has very high HP so the fire blast won't be enough to kill him. Worst, every time you attack, he counters with lightening, so you're sure to get hit on the recovery lag when coming out of the spell animation. Your best bet as outlined here is to slice through the lightening and attack him once all your magic charges are used up. And then move out of the way. Because he's going to counter again.



Next we stop by 1989 New York where everyone inexplicably bursts into song. And have AIDS.



Oh, wait, no, it's just our next vertically scrolling level. And outside of these little dragons and the fact that you go down, it's exactly the same as the last scrolling level. The only thing I have to say is that not taking damage is very important - you're going to need as much health as possible to survive the awaiting boss gauntlet.



This golem is our mini boss before the true thing. He doesn't have many attacks, but he's extremely dangerous. He hops up and down, occasionally throwing rocks, and pressures you into the corner. Worse, once you're in the corner, it is impossible to avoid damage. You cannot jump over him, and are powerless to avoid being hit. The most I can tell you is to attack him as many times while avoiding his rocks before he gets you in the corner, take the hit and walk through him to try and minimize your damage before the next boss. Also, you can't use your fire blast - you're going to need it.

This brain encased in stone - I really have no idea what to call it - is the next boss. He starts out moving back and forth throwing out one or two spiked balls at a time which can be attacked. You want to save your fire blast for now and avoid getting hit the best you can. It's not that difficult since his attack is limited.



Soon, you'll take off the stone encasing the boss itself. So far so good... right?



... Crap. Now he throws out about 5 to 6 of these balls. Fire blast might be good to survive this section, because it will do high damage to the boss and also clear out the attacks before it damages. You still want to save it, however. When you attack the spike balls up close, Nack does a bunt animation that freezes you up for a second, but you're also invulnerable for that period and the balls will go right through you. If you're close enough, this equals a free hit before he attacks again. Rinse and repeat and it won't be long until...



... You fight the third and final form. This one flies back and forth from speeds varying from normal to pretty fast, and he blows nearly impossible to avoid bubbles each way. Thankfully, a fully charged spell bar can take him out by using three fire blasts. You did save those up like I told you, right?



Cut to Blackhorn and Thorndog being their usual Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain selves.



Yeah, because she was so helpful the past 3 levels. Seriously, this is almost the equivalent of someone trying to hinder Link by casting mute on Navi in Ocarina of Time.





I'm not sure if Blackhorn ever fully revealed his plans until now. But here they are anyway.

Alright, I apologize for the return of my LP to be such a boring one. At least I hope you enjoyed hearing about the more challenging bosses, both the two cheap and the other legitimately challenging one. It gets better from here on out as the next level has a slightly different layout, unique enemies and even an interesting theme! So join us next time when we traverse the dark marshlands effectively titled Marshy in Stage 4-1. I swear the next post won't be half a year from now.

I remember this game. I loved this game but could never beat it as a kid, and you know why? 'Cause I didn't know I had magic! I popped this into my NES a couple months ago and went 'Hmm, what's that special meter for? Let me try a couple button combinations...' and in like thirty seconds I figured it out and went on to obliterate the game. I also as a kid didn't have the patience for cutscenes, so I barely got any of the story. Just goes to prove that gaming is wasted on kids who can barely read.

I loved this game. It is kindof a generic platformer, but when your only platformers are mario and this you really come to appreciate this game. Glad to see Astyanax had that impression on someone else.