 I did not own an NES as a kid. I had to resort to going over to a friends' houses and that was usually to play stuff like Legend of Zelda, or Mega Man 3, or some sports game, but one game that always stuck out to me however was Rygar. My friend Tim from grade school had this game and any time I played it, I could not make heads or tails of what this game was, or what I was supposed to do, or this weird yo-yo weapon, or how the game shifts perspectives once in a while, I guess my slow child brain just wasn't developed enough to keep up with what this game was throwing at me. Coincidentally, what's equally confusing is this game's history. Rygar was originally titled Warrior of Argus, made for arcades back in May of 1986 by Tecmo, and that game is a lot different, it's much more of a regular old side-scrolling action platformer, and that version received ports to Sega Master System, Atari Lynx, and all sorts of PC systems like the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and of course the Amiga. The Famicom got its own version of Warrior of Argus, only the game was completely retooled by Tecmo to be more of an action-adventure exploration kind of a deal, with its title shortened to simply Rygar when it was released in North America in April of 1987. So what makes this game different, not just from the original arcade, but from any other NES game? Well, you start out and there's no text, you're just a dude running to the right fighting turtles and giant roly-poly's with your comically oversized, spiked yo-yo that somehow only goes sideways. You eventually get to this rope you can climb, where you can meet the Tickets Please guy, who's still super-cut, and he tells you that inside the grand mountain lies the entrance to Garlas, sure okay. You keep heading to the right until you reach another door, and the game switches viewpoints, kind of like Blaster Master, and you can still attack and jump, but this time in four different directions. Also the overworld really opens up from this point, allowing you to just wander around to find the next area, find some new weapons and items, and find some new enemies. That's right, Rygar is an open-ended NES game, well, kind of. It's still very limited, and there's still a general direction the game has you proceed towards, but for an NES game made in 1987, the exploration involved here has held up reasonably well over time. Hey, sometimes it's fun to just be dropped into a world with no explanation, only equipped with a giant sideways yo-yo, and to figure out stuff for yourself. Early on, eventually you're able to find the Tickets Please guy behind another door. Okay, he's behind like 75% of the doors in this game. And he hooks you up with a grappling hook. You find another door where he gives you another cryptic clue, and another door that leads to another side-scrolling section. A Rove here in the skies of Rolsa is a floating castle. A Rove here? Does this guy talk like Scooby-Doo or something? Now, based on what I've gone over so far, this game sounds promising, right? You can see here what looks like a combination of Metroid, Legend of Zelda, and Blaster Master, but unfortunately that would be way too kind of a description of this game. Rygar is still good, but this one just doesn't have that same polish. It's a little slower paced, it's intensely flickery even for an NES game, and most problematic of all, there's no map in the game. Well, at least a map, you know, exists in the manual, and I will say to this game's credit, one of its best qualities is how huge the overworld is. But yeah, you're gonna want the map in the manual while you play this one, unless you'd rather draw your own on a Denny's napkin with a pen you mistakenly took with you from a bank. There's one personal hang-up I have to admit, and it's holding me back from thinking Rygar along the same lines as a top 20 or top 30 NES game. I just don't think your main weapon is all that great. I like that it's different, but it's just kind of wonky. I guess the rapid-fire nature of it kind of throws me a bit, or maybe I just feel like I'm shoving enemies instead of attacking them. I don't know. Maybe I've played too many games with guns and swords and whatever. It doesn't help that the level design throughout the game is dull. It relies a lot on enemy repetition and constant respawning. Like right away early on in the game, in this forest area, these green guys just do not stop coming. You eventually just have to avoid them and push them away with your weapon to keep walking ahead. Hey, that's fine for a while, but jeez, this feels like it takes forever to get through. Eventually, after this section, you reach a boss, who takes roughly 10,000 hits before he finally concedes defeat. At that point, you earn a new item that allows you to progress to a new area of the map, and so goes Rygar. Find the next area, go through a couple side-scrolling stages, talk to Ticket's Please guy a couple times, beat a boss, get a new item, then go find the next area. I should mention that this game doesn't really have lives, just a health meter that you can expand by defeating enemies, but once you die, you get a game over and you go back to the title screen. But don't panic, just hit start and you'll resume your game at the last door you went through. There's no battery saver passwords here, so you gotta beat this one in one long playthrough, and this one can get pretty dang long. I do want to give full credit where it's due. If this game already sounds ambitious for an NES title, there's even more here, evidenced by the start menu. The more enemies you defeat and items you collect, you can strengthen your weapon and add to your health meter, and you also collect what are called mind points, and they unlock the three phrases that are listed to the right. Power up increases the length of your grappling hook, attack and assail does a clear screen attack, and recover allows you to gain back some of your life when you lose all your health. Again, the game doesn't tell you any of this stuff, and the manual has a really poor translation, so I wouldn't be surprised if folks went through this game having no idea these spells exist. But hey, it's nice that they're there, I guess. I should mention quickly that the Raigar series continued with a reboot of the original game titled Raigar, The Legendary Adventure for PS2 released in 2002, and that later got ported to the Wii in 2009 as Raigar the Battle of Argus, but I have not played either of those, but if you need more Raigar in your life, knock yourself out. So yeah, Raigar has some really good ideas, and it's a pretty good experience overall, but the execution of certain aspects in this game is really frustrating. It's awesome to have essentially two action modes, but the level and enemy design gets very old after a while. I mean, some stages are just one long corridor with weird bug lizard things bouncing around. I also cannot stand how if you walk a tiny bit too close to the water here, you die. That's some nonsense, come on Raigar, have your mom take you to Walmart to get some water wings. Still, if you've watched this channel over the years, you know I love ambitious games that swing for the fences, and Raigar definitely does, so I appreciate the weird journey this game takes you on, which is unlike any other on the NES. Overall, I gotta say I enjoyed playing this one, so despite the frustrations, I do recommend checking this one out. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.