(Tecmo, 1987)

If you haven't played Rygar on one platform or another I just don't know what to tell you. It is a great action / platform game that will keep you entertained for hours. OK, well maybe it will only keep you entertained for 15 or 20 minutes, but it's still worth the download.

There are actually two major versions of this game: one for NES and the much rarer arcade version. They play quite differently, so I'm really not sure why Tecmo even called them the same thing, since it's not like the Rygar name was going to sell them a lot of games. Same thing as what they did with Ninja Gaiden.

I'll begin with the arcade game. This is much more straightforward than the NES version- it's basically a scroll from left to right and kill everything type of game. It's pretty fun, though, and it's got really nice graphics (as usual with Tecmo). What I don't really get about this game is how to win it. I think that after a while the stages are randomly generated, because I played this for about an hour on MAME and nothing ever happened. Actually, here is how I think it works: When you kill an enemy you get a star / coin type thing, and also at the end of a stage if you didn't die but you killed a lot of enemies you get a cool shield for a bonus. But if you do really well, at the end of the stage there is this devil sort of monster waiting for you. He usually kills me in about 2 seconds, but I beat him once. Then the sky started flashing and this big face made of lava came down out of the sky and killed me, at which point I had to start the stage over. But I think that that's how you win the game, by beating that face. However, I don't really have the patience, so how about you do it and tell me what happens?

The NES version is almost a different game. The only real similarity is that your character looks the same. You have probably seen this game before, because it's pretty common, where as the arcade game is next to impossible to find (I think I've only seen it about twice). Well, it's really the same type of idea- scroll left to right and kill things, only this game has stages and bosses and what not, and you can get items and have an inventory. What I don't get is that that this game takes a good 8 or 10 hours to beat (I played all the way through in about 1989!), yet there's no password or save feature (this is where the freeze / defrost feature on your emulator will come in handy). Also, as you can see above, the Rygar world is apparently populated only by giant monks!

Anyways, I give the arcade version of Rygar a 7/10 because it's pretty fun but way too hard to win, and it's gets old fairly quickly. The NES version gets an 8/10 since it's quite a bit more interesting, even though the graphics are pretty bad.

You used to be able to get the MAME version of Ryagr at Dave's Classics. You're on your own for the NES one, but it's pretty easy to find.