 SNES DRUNK The launch of the Guardian legend for NES got off to a pretty conspicuous start back in 1988 a commercial kicked off its ad campaign by announcing the action was blazing in Zelda the adventures of blast with link now Experience guardian legend the original commercial was unfortunately pulled off of youtuber else I just show it here But when it originally aired it was really confusing for a lot of people is it a Zelda sequel What does this have to do with either of those games the answer is nothing at all But despite the initial confusion guardian legend is a really impressive title and easily a top 20 NES game of all time It's another one of those hybrid genre games this time combining vertically scrolling shoot-em-up gameplay with top-down shooter levels a little Reminiscent of blaster master only you can fire your weapon in eight different directions Not only is guardian legend ambitious for attempting this combination But it's also a nonlinear game where the story dictates the action you play as this badass woman who has the ability to turn Into a friggin spaceship no really check out the PAL region cover that looks friggin awesome as opposed to the Japanese cover which Looks kind of terrifying Anyway, the game starts out with a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up level and you beat the boss and then earn a key to open up with the Manual refers to as the labyrinth or the top-down stages you get a message relate to you by a former Inhabitant of the world you're on called Naju they were invaded and this poor fellow is leaving instructions for how to activate the Self-destruct mechanism to blow up the whole dang planet invaders and all to do this You have to deactivate the safety protocol in 10 different areas And you have to find them all in the labyrinth and locate all the different corridors Which zip you around to different parts of the planet the use of the word labyrinth here is no joke You can spend forever just wandering around these mazes Thankfully the select button brings up a map which helps so you look for special weapons that unlock new areas with the help of Some clues you'll stumble upon here and there and eventually you'll come to these corridor entrances Which lead you back to the shoot-em-up stages these corridors are actually pathways within the planet itself Which is actually a pretty dang clever way of organically combining story and gameplay There's actually ways you can skip certain sections altogether here So this is a very speedrun friendly game, but in this case I'm not sure why you'd want to do that since there's so much here to enjoy But I just thought I'd throw it out there now a guardian legend was developed by compile who you might know better from games like Blazing lasers gun-knack and the eleste series including super eleste or space mega force So, you know only some of the best shoot-em-ups ever made the shoot-em-up levels and guardian legend aren't quite at that level But what compile pulls off here is still really impressive One big reason is how the two game modes seamlessly fit together And one reason for that is unlike a game like zexus a similar game I looked at a few weeks ago the special weapons you obtain can be used in both game modes There's 12 total weapons that can be upgraded up to three times and you use power chips You find to buy different weapons and upgrades in these shops You'll stumble across now and again the B button fires your normal weapon and a fires your special weapon with ammo being found In the form of these blue and red squares. There's weapons that fire backward. There's bullet shields that protect you There's the saber laser and the cutter laser And there's just the good old-fashioned big-ass fireball among other things and again They're used in both the labyrinth levels and the shoot-em-up corridors in addition to that compile Just did a hell of a job cramming as many moving objects onto the screen at once I don't know what it is about that dev team But they were able to figure this out better than most developers back then in some older NES games You've got these weapons that can only fire two or sometimes only one projectile at once and guardian legend You can shoot a huge frickin fireball and back it up with tons of extra firepower behind it It feels really satisfying the game also strikes a good difficulty balance here because yeah It feels awesome to be so overpowered But the game throws it right back at you with some of these huge boss fights Thankfully instead of one hit deaths, which is what most people are used to in games like this You have a health meter so you can afford to take some damage You only get one life though and it's game over and there is a password system here instead of a battery saved So it's another situation where you're better off just taking a picture of the screen with your phone if you want to play This one on original hardware. So yeah guardian legend has a ton to offer It's a hugely ambitious game and it comes through big-time both from a technical standpoint and from a design standpoint The music in this game is great The visuals are distinct some of the boss design is cool really the only flaws I can think of are the occasional slowdown that pops up here and there and the fact that it's pretty easy to get lost And not know where the hell to go next But even then the game gives you ample opportunities to get your wits about you and figure things out for yourself There isn't another game quite like guardian legend out there period and it's a must-play for the NES And I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day