 Sometimes when writing about some of these older games, it can be tough to find even the most basic information. Take Incantation, for instance. I know it was made in 1996 by Titus Software, the same group that's made games that ranged from interesting, like Lamborghini American Challenge, to mediocre, like Realm and Prehistoric Man, to just plain bad, like Blues Brothers or Prince of Persia 2. Incantation seems simple enough on the surface, you run to the right and zap stuff with your magic wand while collecting all the junk on the screen, only, uh, what the hell just happened? Where did I teleport to? Do I go to the left or right? And what is this stuff I'm collecting? This is where it would help to have an instruction manual, but there's no scan of it online anywhere, and if you want to buy a copy somewhere, good freaking luck, because Incantation is one of those quote-unquote rare games, so this game gets a price of something like $350 if you want it complete in the box, which means that the cheapest you'll find the manual alone on eBay is around $60. No thanks. Magazines are no help either, GamePro's review of Incantation is a whopping 8 sentences. I couldn't find anything an EGM or Gamefan, and while Nintendo Power doesn't actually review the game, it does offer a couple of paragraphs prior to the game's release, but again, there's not a whole lot there in the way of solid information. What I've been able to cobble together is that there's 6 different worlds split up into a couple of stages each, and you have to find 3 golden feathers throughout each world to unlock a boss fight, and these feathers could be anywhere, hence the warping from earlier, so you have to wander around until you find all 3. Warp points could send you to another part of the level, or to a totally unrelated bonus stage. What's really irritating is that once you've visited a warp point, it stays there, so while you're zapping enemies, you could accidentally hit it again, and inadvertently warp yourself out of there. That's so annoying. So you bounce around throughout these stages, getting rid of enemies, and collecting these coin things that earn you extra lives, and they're counted up after you defeat a boss. You can also upgrade your projectile to 3 different things. A fireball to a homing weapon to these bomb things. The game does allow you to combine two of them, but honestly the bomb weapon is so awful that you'll just want to avoid that one altogether. You start with 3 lives, and plenty of opportunities to get more. No saves or passwords here, but you do have unlimited continues. You also have a very forgiving health meter, and most enemies are pretty easy to take care of. The platforming is pretty simple, the boss fights are very simple, and I'm running out of stuff to say about this one. I will point out that the environments look great, the backgrounds are deep and detailed, and your character's sprite is well done. But the music is so incredibly dull that you'll hardly notice it at all. Worst of all is the sound design, just listen to this. Come on, you have a magic wand, you should be zapping stuff into oblivion. Why does it sound like a fat guy running down the basement stairs, or a child playing with kettle drums? Seriously, there are Atari 2600 games with better sound design than this. Plus there's no indication that I'm actually doing damage to anything here. Also the way this game ends is laughable, you beat the final boss and then you're greeted with some generic text saying thank you. Geez, this game was made in 1996, you couldn't come up with a better ending than that? So yeah, it's tough to find any real information about incantation, but it turns out that's for a very good reason, because nobody cares about this game. And there's no reason to, it's the most bland generic platformer ever. I will say one positive about this title is that if you have a small child you're looking to get into older games, this would be a good one to start out with because it's a very easy playthrough, albeit a bit confusing at first with all the warping. But if you're older than the age of five and want to play incantation, you're better off looking elsewhere. Not that because it's bad necessarily, just because it's so dreadfully boring. And I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.