Tag Archives: castles

Moon Crystal, NES/Famicom

Released in Japan only for the Nintendo Famicom in 1992, Moon Crystal is a scrolling platform game in the style of Zelda II. The game was developed by Hector (aka “Hect“), and fan translations into English, Spanish, Polish and Indonesian exist, making the game understandable to players who don’t speak or read Japanese.

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James Bond 007: Nightfire, Game Boy Advance

James Bond 007: Nightfire on the Game Boy Advance was developed by JV Games and published by Electronic Arts in 2003 (in North America), and 2004 (in Europe). It is a single-player only first-person shooter, in which you play as the fictional British spy, James Bond.

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Knights of the Round, Arcade

Knights of the Round is a three-player hack-and-slash arcade game, developed and distributed by Capcom in 1991. The fact that the developers – for whatever reason – neglected to include the word “Table” at the end of the title of their game hints at some hilariously bad translation, and plenty of terrible spelling mistakes, which is exactly what you get in this game…

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Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, PC

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is the sequel to Lords of Shadow [one], and Mirror of Fate, and was once again developed by Spanish studio MercurySteam, and was first published by Konami in 2014. It ties-up the storyline of Gabriel Belmont, Trevor and Simon Belmont, Alucard, and Dracula – the core characters of the Castlevania series – in a satisfying manner.

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Conan, Commodore 64

Datasoft‘s 1984 release, Conan, is a curious game. It doesn’t seem to be directly related to either of the two Conan films released in the early ’80s (although it does use artwork from the sequel, Conan the Destroyer), so my guess is that it was a quick cash-in on the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger by the developers.

The game was originally written for the Apple II by Eric Robinson and Eric Parker, and the Commodore 64 version was created by Ron J. Fortier and John Butrovich.

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Legacy of the Wizard, NES/Famicom

Legacy of the Wizard is the North American localisation of Dragon Slayer IV, released for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Brøderbund in 1989. It’s a fantasy-based platform/action game featuring a family of four heroes – and their pet – on a mission to retrieve a mystical sword and slay a dragon, inside a sprawling dungeon.

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Dragon Slayer IV: Draslay Family, MSX

Originally released in Japan as “Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family“, the version I’m showing here is the fan-translated MSX2 version of the fourth game in the Dragon Slayer series. The game was developed and published by Falcom in 1987, and the fan translation was released by “MSX Translations” in 2010 under the title of “Dragon Slayer IV: Draslay Family“.

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Xanadu: Dragon Slayer II, MSX

Xanadu: Dragon Slayer II (aka just “Xanadu“) is the 1987 sequel to 1984’s Dragon Slayer. It was developed and published by Falcom in Japan only, but the game is entirely in English so is playable by non-Japanese speakers/readers.

Xanadu is an action RPG that looks and plays similarly to Falcom‘s own Ys series, with side-scrolling town and dungeon sections and overhead, real-time combat taking place on a separate screen. Xanadu was a much bigger hit than its predecessor and was released in MSX and MSX2 versions.

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Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart, Game Boy Advance

Released in Japan only, Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart was developed by TOSE Co., Ltd. and published by Enix in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance. It is the third game in the Dragon Quest Monsters series. A fan translation into English was released in 2008, making the game playable to non-Japanese speakers.

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Dragon Warrior Monsters, Game Boy Color

Dragon Warrior Monsters (aka Dragon Quest Monsters in Japan) is a spin-off from the famous Dragon Quest series, and this is the first game in the DWM series. It was developed by TOSE Co., Ltd. and published exclusively for the Game Boy Color by Enix (Eidos in North America and Europe), in 1998.

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