2008 Competition Results: (6:We Like It Retro)

2nd Place – Devil Ronin – Total: 294

Ian:

Here we have a game that I truly am in two minds about.

On the one hand, we have chunky nostalgic C64 style visuals, sound and gameplay and on the other we have chunky nostalgic C64 style visuals, sound and gameplay.

While looking, sounding and playing like an early C64 game, I can’t help but feel, even back then if this game were on a real breadbin, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it to any great extent. It’s not that it’s bad in any particular area, it’s because it doesn’t really excel in any and it’s not really that much fun to play.

Cast as a lone demon warrior it is your destiny to free Japan from the evil Demon Shogun. Moving around a map of Japan, our hero enters various provinces, where he must battle demons, despatching them with his trusty bow and arrows, while riding his horse. Things change slightly when you enter castles, as you get to run around, climbing ladders and slicing and dicing with a sword.

The demon levels play not unlike “Kane”, an old CPC fave of mine, although times have certainly moved onwards and upwards since then.

The graphics, which appear to mimic C64 titles, are good but not great. A special mention should go out for the horse animation, which is very nicely done. The music again is very C64 SIDish, although some of the tunes don’t seem to fit the game at all. SFX are limited, but functional.

The action keys are a tad odd, methinks, with SPACE being jump (in the castles) and SHIFT as attack. Why not use two keys that are next to each other?

Maybe if you are into Japanese mythology you might get more out of it, but I’m not and playing it a couple of lengthy times for this review, was enough for me. It’s not a bad game, it’s just a tad lean; my inner demons like a bit more meat to chew on.

72%

Geekay:

I always said that the main vocalist of Boyzone wasn’t to be trusted.  See, look at the havok he is causing in medieval Japan.

Codex’s C64 inspired Japanese epic for the most, especially the Brokeback Mountain parts, kind of puts me in the mind of this being an oriental Kane.  Not that you’re jumping over tumbleweed and catching up with locomotives, but you shoot things from your horse.  This comprises of the biggest and most visited part of the game.  In essence it is Space Invaders with a new look.  The enemy you fire at moves from side to side, or some other form of pattern.  When they reach the sides they move down a level and get more perilously closer to you.  There’s enough variety of foe to keep the player  interested to see what is next.

To break the tedium of the shooting levels, you can always visit a castle which offer a host of platforms, ladders and adversaries to tackle.  These levels are a nice distraction, although not all that taxing.

Overall, the game isn’t entirely difficult – you do get used to the action and get progressively further with each attempt.  I do like how you only get one life and the energy bar carries forward to each level.  It does make you careful and think when battling adversaries.  I did find the map level a bit confusing, but I only skimmed the in depth instructions.

Visually, the game is as retro as it comes.  I would have classed it more Colecovision looking than C64, but I suppose that comes down to the games I played on the C64.  I’m not the world’s biggest blocky graphics fan, I do prefer my sprites pixelled, but they do add to the mood and feel to the game; the mood being enhanced further by the various tunes and sound that suit the game well.

This is turning out to be a good category as this is another game that, if I didn’t know better, I could have sworn it was a remake of something classic.  I didn’t find myself driven to get to the final battle, as I did eventually grow bored.  It’s not a meaty game, but it is certainly good within its own constraints.

70%

Spray:

You know, there is a place in this world for humanity loving monsters. That place is here.

Devil Ronin puts you in the place of an Ogre who has turned on his master and now has vowed to battle evil for the sake of humanity.

The problem here is it’s a wee bit samey. 5 screens of shoot-em-up followed by a brief Bruce Lee style slashy platform screen and repeat to fade.

It’s fun, for a while, but after 85th wave of long haired ghosts I felt inclined to jump off my horse and land on my sword.

75%

Oogy:

Hoards of demons plagueing the ancient japanese countryside, and only me, a turned demon, to rid the islands of such evil. That is the tale of Devil Ronin in a nutshell. Let’s grab some sake and get on with it.

This game follows the limitations of the Commodore 64 very closely, though I doubt that it could really be done identicaly on the old platform. Nevertheless, the feel of playing on a C64 is certainly there. From the blocky graphics and the limitation of single-colored sprites, to the sound, which marks this game as if it were made early on in the life of the old home computer.

Not that that’s necaserily a bad thing mind you, although pretty simple in its execution, it’s not as boring as I would have thought at first. The stage-select part is well designed and nicely implemented. The actual levels are a bit basic. Most of the time your task is to shoot one or more monsters that float at the top of the screen, while you ride your horse at the bottom. There is also an alternate stage, where you walk through a castle and have to kill all the enemies on that screen. A bit of a platform-esque interrupt so to speak.

for me, the ease of use and the music is what makes this game stand out. The music does a good job in creating the right atmosphere this game needs, and there’s really nothing complicated about playing this game. I would’ve like to see more variety in the game stages though. With only two different stages of varying difficulty, the game feels a bit empty.

77%