Welcome to the all new Retro Roulette! We’ve got a good one this week, but first a bit of news. First off, if you’ve stumbled upon this domain looking for tips on winning on old roulette wheels, I can’t help you. You should probably also seek out a less money-eating hobby (though to be fair, what this site is about is not especially good for that either).
Second, to celebrate reaching 100 whole entries of the Retro Roulette game blog, I’ve decided to upgrade/change a number of things – the first of which is this domain! In addition to that, I’ve also finally acquired a capture card, meaning I can take screenshots in a far less stupid way. Gone are the days of me taking pictures of a crappy CRT TV with my phone – it’s 2020 now, and it’s high time I acted like it. The new equipment means I’ll also be able to stream on Twitch (more on that soon!), which I’m super excited about. Lastly, I’m also in the process of paring down my physical collection a bit, and embracing emulation and flashcarts a bit more – this means the potential for titles that can appear in future reviews is going to change a bit. I’ll break down exactly what that’ll look like a bit more once all of this has been fully realized, but rest assured there will be a steady stream of cool old games in the meantime.
Speaking of which, our 100th Retro Roulette entry is none other than Rare’s 1987 NES release Wizards & Warriors.
Crap, this is already going wrong.
There we go. Wizards & Warriors is an action/platforming hybrid, with a bit of item collecting along the way. To put it realy simply, it’s a bit like a more linear Zelda game, but there are only dungeons. Sort of. Also, it’s great.
You play as Kuros, a guy who is presumably in that suit of armor that’s running around. In each level, you simply need to find and open the door with the boss in it, typically by collecting an item or key that lets you reach another key, and so on. In that sense, I guess it’s also a lot like Doom, if you ignore everything else about it. The boss battles are all pretty cool, and typically all look impressively menacing.
As you progress through the game, you’ll also pick up various items that’ll help you along your way. There’s a shield that reduces damage, a ‘feather’ that slows you down when falling, and a series of throwable weapons, like this excellently-named thing:
GRRRR! This is the only game I know of where the available battle axe works like a boomerang. The far-right item in the inventory can be occupied by a few very different items, including boots that let you walk on fire, fire a super strong projectile, and more. Another of them is, in all seriousness, one of the most useless items in video game history:
Guess what the Cloak of Darkness does! Actually, I’ll just show you:
See that crosshair-looking thing in the upper middle of the screen? That’s you. The thing is, you’re cloaked. In darkness. The shimmering makes it a little easier to see where you are, but no matter how invisible you are, it doesn’t appear to impact enemy behavior at all. So, you’re really only invisible to yourself. Thanks, game.
The game’s music is also great – interestingly, it switches to another, more dire-sounding song any time you’re very low on health. I like to think that this is their way of acknowledging how the “your health is low” beeping noise from the Zelda series is helpful, but incredibly annoying. This feels like a much better way to do that.
The platforming and combat in Wizards & Warriors are both well-executed, though they can both be occasionally frustrating. The game has several levels that are largely vertical, and a poorly timed jump can lead to a time-consuming fall. There’s no fall damage, but some falls are big enough that you’ll wish there was. In combat, most enemies die upon making contact with your sword (even when you’re not swinging it, oddly), but at certain angles it can be difficult to get hits in. Throw in the occasional bat-who-kills-you-out-of-nowhere and the game can feel a bit punishing at times. Don’t let that dissuade you though – it’s a ton of fun, even when you’re a corpse being devoured by bats.
When I was a young, video game-addicted weirdo, one of my favorite things to do was to rent VHS tapes from the library about games I’d never heard of – this was basically the Twitch of its time. Typically this would come from a video in the Game Players’ Game Tapes series – this was how I first learned about this week’s game, Wizards & Warriors. To my ~9-year-old self, this game was the absolute coolest (tied with a few dozen others, probably), and I’m so happy that it still holds up. I figured this video was likely lost to time, but it seems I’ve once again underestimated the internet! If the timestamp doesn’t work, the W&W bit starts at about 41:35 of this video:
The W&W series was somewhat brief, but definitely notable for at least one reason – Ironsword, the second game in the series, featured a shirtless Fabio on its cover. That was followed by the Game Boy release Wizards & Warriors X, which I assume is meant to be the letter and not a ’10’ – there are definitely not 10 games in this series. The final release Wizards & Warriors III: Kuros Visions of Power, is not great, and maybe helped the series fade into relative (and unfortunate) obscurity.
That’s not the cover art for Ironsword, to be clear, but I’m happy with my choice. As you likely know, Rare went on to make quite a name for itself, developing the mega-hit Donkey Kong Country just 7 years after the release of our game of the week. Even with the occasional frustrating set piece, it’s very clear that they were a talented bunch.
Holy cow, I’ve written 100 of these! If you’re reading this, especially if you’ve been reading a lot of these articles over the last two years, I can’t thank you enough. It’s been a great way to revisit some childhood memories and explore some great (and also not great) games that I missed over the years. Here’s to the next 100! Next week’s game is another NES title, though this time it’s one from a crappy developer that sucks. I can’t wait!