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The Battle of Olympus, back for 2027

Peklo

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
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Steam​

Announced like a bolt from the blue, NES underdog The Battle of Olympus is gearing up for one final time in the limelight. There's not much more information than what the store page provides: that this will be an early access project scheduled for the beginning of next year, and that it will be developed by two thirds of the original team. That's heartening news for a number of reasons, one being that the original game was a very personal project for husband-and-wife pair Yukio Horimoto and Reiko Oshida and if that creative dynamic lives on nearly 40 years later, then there's hardly anything comparable in the entire medium. Another is the consideration given to the original work by those that know it best, in an age when many vintage properties are being taken advantage of and abused against their creators' wishes and outside of their control--just ask James Pond--making a rekindled passion project like this all the more precious. From the few screenshots shared, the material at least visually appears attractively re-embellished without stripping it of its native character and context; a kind of imaginary 16-bit and beyond melding of its 8-bit origins. Of the many errant children of Zelda II, this is one that always had a beating heart of inspiration instead of mere derivation, and it'll be interesting to see what comes of its equally unique development circumstances for this revival next to its original release so long ago.
 
Oh, awesome! I remember renting that game when I was a kid. Never beat it, watched some GDQs.

Always had a soft spot for it.

Also got to transcribe an interview with the developer back on... gosh, was it USgamer or 1up? Some site that sadly no longer exists.

Edit: Oh, just looked at the URL linked (a pity I can't get Internet Archive to load anything today). USgamer it was, then!
 
One of my absolute favorites even if it was a bit too tough for me to beat before I came back to it in high school. Needing to farm up olives for some of those late game items only to lose half of them to a harshly placed instant death pit was always pretty disheartening.

Music and setting was absolutely banging though, kept me coming back.
 
I think this is really cool. I'd definitely be interested to play a refined version made by the original couple who developed it in the past. I wonder how they plan to replace Sawa's music, tho, since he passed somewhat recently...
 
I remember being a kid who loved this game because I loved Greek mythology but then I got stuck somewhere and just spent a bunch of time collecting snake skins before giving up.
 
I wanted to love this game, but the original just never quite clicked for me. It's a nostalgic favorite of my wife's, though. I expect we'll both be indulging in this one.
 
I enjoyed this, although I didn't love it, but I will absolutely give it another go this way. Excellent to see this come back.
 
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Gave this a full playthrough for the first time to have context for the revision. Wonderful game, balancing appealing Famicom esotericism with fairly intuitive progress methods within that framework. I really enjoy this older sensibility of action adventure where despite amassing a significant armament over the course of the game, the end-game player state and capabilities don't utterly trivialize and negate the surrounding design for convenience; you'll have to respect each opponent to the very end with the proper tactics and timing no matter how small the critter. The piddly baseline hitbox of Orpheus's attack makes one appreciate any and every modification there is to gain--you're never collecting upgrades just because, but because survival really depends on it. I think the only detrimental pain points in the game are the acknowledged few grind sessions for salamander skins and the double 80-olive purchases in Crete... but even those are sort of amusingly winked at, with a local crone commenting about Circe and Ares's greed for their services. Otherwise it's a game full of memorable environmental theming from rocky townsides to overlapping forest mazes, gloomy caverns, dim undersea ruins and lofty mountaintops; it really reaches for a setpiece presentation despite the tileset limitations. Extremely attractive palette work throughout, too. Looking forward to how they repackage it all the more, now.

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was curious on how they managed to last so long, and apparently it was because they did a ton of licensed contract work in recent years according to their site. including notable IPs like Precure and Tamagotchi.

they also had a phase in the 90s where made several ports of historically significant DOS games to the Japan-only PC-98 computer, with some of the highlights including DOOM, Descent, Populous, and Simcity 2000.
 

Reiko Horimoto (née Oshida) posted a video about the project. Her and her husband are intending for this to be their final work in game development, 40 years after Infinity's founding. Part of the motivation to do the remake came from them seeing coverage of the game on YouTube and the complimentary comments attached to such videos... so in a rare turnabout, comment sections have been a force for good in this instance.
 
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