A magic red jewel, known as the Arumana, is stolen from an unnamed village. A thief runs off with the jewel and turns the entire village into stone. Kaito must travel through six cavernous levels in search of the stolen jewel, Arumana. The player begins with thirty throwing knives as his weapon of attack. As they venture through the levels they can find various other weapons. These include bombs, a handgun, bolas, a crystal ball that destroys everything on screen, and mines. He must destroy various cave dwelling creatures as well as soldiers, who sometimes drop weapons.
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Discovering this game feels like I've peeked into an alternative timeline for Konami's catalouge. For all intensive purposes it feels like we truly lost a "Third one" that could've been a pillar of Konami releases alongside Castlevania and Contra, for games that are thinly veiled reskin of beloved American movie imports.
Like how Castlevania is NOT Hammer's Dracula and Contra is NOT Rambo II, this is NOT Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom. It's not, there's not a cutscene about a stolen orb bringing famine to an indigenous village that takes up Side A of the Disk, there isn't, it's simply not true, don't look it up.
Everything here is peak NES era Konami, the OST is an absolute bop, the sprite work has that rub where it just feels good to walk around and the game's gimmick of a 45 degree upwards grappling hook is very fun. Instead of being restrictve, this thing is busted letting you clip into walls and platforms with relative ease. I know that's technicly a negative, but it does opens up the levels for repeat playthroughs, wondering what silly things you can get up to next
In this game our protagonist Kaito, A COMPLETLY UNIQUE AND ORIGINAL MAN, actualy is a little unique in that his arsenal to attack is made of limited resource items. Thinking about it they couldn't exactly give him a whip to use since another Konami Guy had that gameplay loop covered. Instead Kaito collects items from knives to pistols to Jospeh Joestars clacks as a means of attack. While pretty neat, it does leave a lingering stress on the first playthroughs of running out of the ability to do damage by means of not mastering the game from jump or comitting the cardinal sin of: Dying.
This also encourages hoarding, this game suffers from the unfortunate Konami final boss design of: Face in the wall, summon endless guys, as seen in Vampire Killer. Effectly meaning you'll want to hoard the screen nuke weapon as to not even begin to engage with: Any of that.
Still this gave me the same joy and feels of booting up any NES Konami classic, I can't help but wonder about a world where this game got localised and hit gold. I want to know what the moody SNES title looked like, I want to hear the Gensis Title's inevitably surger soundtrack, I want to know what headass shit they would've done to the games formula for a 3D PS2 entry. But for now we can only wonder.
- Butters
Like how Castlevania is NOT Hammer's Dracula and Contra is NOT Rambo II, this is NOT Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom. It's not, there's not a cutscene about a stolen orb bringing famine to an indigenous village that takes up Side A of the Disk, there isn't, it's simply not true, don't look it up.
Everything here is peak NES era Konami, the OST is an absolute bop, the sprite work has that rub where it just feels good to walk around and the game's gimmick of a 45 degree upwards grappling hook is very fun. Instead of being restrictve, this thing is busted letting you clip into walls and platforms with relative ease. I know that's technicly a negative, but it does opens up the levels for repeat playthroughs, wondering what silly things you can get up to next
In this game our protagonist Kaito, A COMPLETLY UNIQUE AND ORIGINAL MAN, actualy is a little unique in that his arsenal to attack is made of limited resource items. Thinking about it they couldn't exactly give him a whip to use since another Konami Guy had that gameplay loop covered. Instead Kaito collects items from knives to pistols to Jospeh Joestars clacks as a means of attack. While pretty neat, it does leave a lingering stress on the first playthroughs of running out of the ability to do damage by means of not mastering the game from jump or comitting the cardinal sin of: Dying.
This also encourages hoarding, this game suffers from the unfortunate Konami final boss design of: Face in the wall, summon endless guys, as seen in Vampire Killer. Effectly meaning you'll want to hoard the screen nuke weapon as to not even begin to engage with: Any of that.
Still this gave me the same joy and feels of booting up any NES Konami classic, I can't help but wonder about a world where this game got localised and hit gold. I want to know what the moody SNES title looked like, I want to hear the Gensis Title's inevitably surger soundtrack, I want to know what headass shit they would've done to the games formula for a 3D PS2 entry. But for now we can only wonder.
- Butters