NintendoComplete | AD&D: Heroes of the Lance (NES) Playthrough @NintendoComplete | Uploaded 5 months ago | Updated 15 hours ago
A playthrough of FCI's 1991 action-adventure game for the NES, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance.
Heroes of the Lance for the NES is a port of U.S. Gold's 1988 PC action game based on "Dragons of Autumn Twilight," the first novel in the D&D Dragonlance series.
Hoping to restore balance and peace to the land of Krynn, a party of eight adventurers known as The Champions of the Lance have entered the destroyed city of Xak Tsaroth. The city is a crumbling maze teeming with traps and monsters, and it's your job to help them retrieve The Disks of Mishakal, a sacred relic, and to slay its guardian, the black dragon Khisanth.
Given that it's the first NES game to carry the AD&D license, you might expect Heroes of the Lance to be an RPG. It makes a few attempts to pass itself off as such - there are plenty of menus, stats, and magic spells to fiddle with - but at its core, it's a combat-heavy platformer.
The party is represented in-game by whomever is in the lead position, and fights play out in real-time. You can use magic and items at any time from the menu, and combat mode kicks in whenever an enemy draws near. In these moments, you attack by holding down B and pushing the d-pad in the direction you wish to attack.
Whenever you're not grunting and flailing at the bad guys, you'll be busy collecting items as you chart your course through the labyrinths that make up the three main areas of the city. Some items can improve your performance in combat, but the majority do nothing but increase your score ("experience") when it's tallied at the end of the game.
Though it's a reasonably accurate adaptation of a well-received computer game, Heroes of the Lance is often cited as one of the worst games on the NES. I don't think that it's a great fit for the platform, but I also don't think that it's as bad as it's made out to be.
The key to harvesting any enjoyment from Heroes of the Lance is to not approach it like an NES game, and that's a big ask given that it is indeed an NES game. It inherits the PC version's awkward controls, RNG-based battle system, and the constant need to juggle menu screens, and though these design choices fly in the face of the console gaming crowd's expectations, everything works as intended. The soundtrack is pretty good, too.
Overall, Heroes of the Lance is a decent port of a decent game, but it holds too close to its PC roots to feel at home on the NES. Natsume was responsible for a good many NES classics, but this was one time they fell short of the mark.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
A playthrough of FCI's 1991 action-adventure game for the NES, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance.
Heroes of the Lance for the NES is a port of U.S. Gold's 1988 PC action game based on "Dragons of Autumn Twilight," the first novel in the D&D Dragonlance series.
Hoping to restore balance and peace to the land of Krynn, a party of eight adventurers known as The Champions of the Lance have entered the destroyed city of Xak Tsaroth. The city is a crumbling maze teeming with traps and monsters, and it's your job to help them retrieve The Disks of Mishakal, a sacred relic, and to slay its guardian, the black dragon Khisanth.
Given that it's the first NES game to carry the AD&D license, you might expect Heroes of the Lance to be an RPG. It makes a few attempts to pass itself off as such - there are plenty of menus, stats, and magic spells to fiddle with - but at its core, it's a combat-heavy platformer.
The party is represented in-game by whomever is in the lead position, and fights play out in real-time. You can use magic and items at any time from the menu, and combat mode kicks in whenever an enemy draws near. In these moments, you attack by holding down B and pushing the d-pad in the direction you wish to attack.
Whenever you're not grunting and flailing at the bad guys, you'll be busy collecting items as you chart your course through the labyrinths that make up the three main areas of the city. Some items can improve your performance in combat, but the majority do nothing but increase your score ("experience") when it's tallied at the end of the game.
Though it's a reasonably accurate adaptation of a well-received computer game, Heroes of the Lance is often cited as one of the worst games on the NES. I don't think that it's a great fit for the platform, but I also don't think that it's as bad as it's made out to be.
The key to harvesting any enjoyment from Heroes of the Lance is to not approach it like an NES game, and that's a big ask given that it is indeed an NES game. It inherits the PC version's awkward controls, RNG-based battle system, and the constant need to juggle menu screens, and though these design choices fly in the face of the console gaming crowd's expectations, everything works as intended. The soundtrack is pretty good, too.
Overall, Heroes of the Lance is a decent port of a decent game, but it holds too close to its PC roots to feel at home on the NES. Natsume was responsible for a good many NES classics, but this was one time they fell short of the mark.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
![X-Men (Arcade) Playthrough [Dual screen ver.]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BuMKYpO-cNY/hqdefault.jpg "X-Men (Arcade) Playthrough [Dual screen ver.]
A playthrough of Konamis 1992 license-based arcade beat em up, X-Men.
For this video, I played through the dual-screen version of the game as Wolverine on the machines default settings. Everything is presented in its original 8:3 aspect ratio.
Once the game is over, from 35:11 on, I let the attract mode cycle several times to show the character profiles and gameplay demos.
This version of the game is essentially the same as the single-screen version (https://youtu.be/yvHVwj3bzJ8), but the wider playfield and the ability to handle six players simultaneously were killer additions to an already classic Konami brawler.
I already did a write-up for the game for my playthrough of the 4:3 version, so please check that out if youd like to hear my thoughts on it.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
![Ys (Famicom) Playthrough [English]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D1oD7m8wjSg/hqdefault.jpg "Ys (Famicom) Playthrough [English]
A playthrough of Victor Musical Industries 1988 action-RPG for the Nintendo Famicom, Ys (イース).
This video was recorded with a copy of the game that had an English fan translation patch applied. You can find the patch at https://www.romhacking.net/translations/238/
Though Ys 1 for the Master System (https://youtu.be/WGy5fs7beds) was the only Ys game to hit third generation consoles in the west, Japan saw the first three games in the series brought to the Nintendo Famicom. All three were developed by Advance Communication Company, best known as the creators of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (https://youtu.be/zI3HOD4lRzQ), and were published by Victor between 1988 and 1991. The Famicoms Ys 1 landed on Japanese store shelves five weeks ahead of Segas version, making it the first version of the game to be released on a dedicated game console.
Most of the main characters and plot beats remain faithful to the original, but unlike every other port of Ys 1 to be released in the 80s, this one makes several significant changes to the core game:
-The layouts of the overworld, town, and dungeon maps have been completely redesigned.
-A couple of new story events have been added. To clear a path to the mines, a flute that you obtain from a spirit has to be played to dry up a lake, and theres a new door puzzle that has to be solved in Minea.
-There are two new bosses introduced in Darm Tower, and the final battle with Dark Fact takes place in a new location.
-Adol can only move in half-tile increments, and this simplification removes much of the strategy and challenge from the bump combat system.
-Many of the songs have been replaced with new tracks created exclusively for the Famicom port.
These changes all make Famicom Ys feel very different from its computer and Master System counterparts. The Famicom versions smooth screen scrolling is welcome and the controls are a natural fit for the gamepad, but the most substantive changes throw off the balance of the difficulty level and feel like unnecessary intrusions on Falcoms original game design, and navigation is now often frustrating thanks to the way Adol has to be right near the edge of the screen to make the playfield scroll.
Overall, its not a bad effort, but it might leave a sour taste in the mouth of anyone who first experienced the game on another platform. The TurboGrafx-CD version (https://youtu.be/KrH2uvC-zog) certainly spoiled me.
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
![The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road (DS) Playthrough [1 of 2]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Dgib_OW7g3w/hqdefault.jpg "The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road (DS) Playthrough [1 of 2]
A playthrough of Xseed Games 2009 role-playing game for the Nintendo DS, The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.
This video shows the first half of the game, covering the Spring and Summer areas. Part two, covering Autumn and Winter, can be found here: https://youtu.be/VLh5ueggZgs
The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, known in Japan as Riz-Zoawd (リゾード, Rizoodo), is a Japanese-style role-playing game adaptation of the American novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, and it was the only DS game to be created by Media Vision, the company behind Wild Guns and the later entries in Segas Valkyria Chronicles series.
Beyond the Yellow Brick Road is an entry-level RPG designed to appeal to genre newbies, much like Squares Final Fantasy Mystic Quest on the Super Nintendo (https://youtu.be/OvDTBDEJEQo).The game follows Dorothy traipsing her way through Oz trying to find her way back home to Kansas. With the help of Tin Man, Strawman, and Lion, she has to travel to four lands based on the seasons in search of the magical eggs that the wizard has asked for.
The general flow of gameplay is the same as youll find in most JRPGs: you scour the dungeons, fighting enemies and looking for treasure chests as you build yourself up in preparation for the boss battles while occasionally retreating to the castle to buy supplies and upgrade your equipment.
There are, however, a couple of notable ways in which it differs from the norm. The battles use a ratio system (like Capcom vs. SNK!) that provides you four points at the beginning of each turn to be spent on battle actions. Anything Dorothy or Straw Man does consumes one point, the Lion takes two, and Tinman takes three. The characters all have elemental affinities that make them strong against specific enemy types, and only the active characters in any given turn can take damage from enemy attacks, so theres a fair amount of strategy involved. The game provides a recommended course of action at the beginning of each turn, but youre usually better off ignoring it and doing your own thing.
The touchscreen-based control scheme is quite novel, too. You move Dorothy around with a virtual trackball, and though it sounds gimmicky, it works well and is a lot more fun than merely holding the up button to move forward.
The soundtrack is pretty nice, too, but the graphics steal the show. The DS was not renowned for its ability to crunch polygons, but Beyond the Yellow Brick Road is an absolutely beautiful game. The level of detail in the character models and the environments is second-to-none - not even Nintendo or Square managed this level of fidelity on this hardware - and everything moves at a smooth 30 frames per second. Screen resolution aside, it is a fair step up from anything youd see running on the Playstation or Nintendo 64.
As a game, The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road is a fun and easy RPG romp that doesnt do anything revolutionary, but as a technical showpiece for the Nintendo DS? Wow.
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!")
