Game

I felt like absolute garbage today, massive migraine day, so I decided to take the day off from doing anything actually important and I kinda just played games while watching Todd in the Shadows and videos about Archie Sonic. I decided to pick up and play this game, which I had played earlier this week on stream and decided after an hour that it was a “play by myself” kinda game. Because it’s kinda boring.

Game

Arkista’s Ring is a 1990 NES game by NMK and published by American Sammy. NMK made a bunch of games that I have not heard of at all, though Wikipedia tells me their most popular one is Zed Blade for Neo Geo. Sure. I had never heard of this game, but recently I’d been wanting to play more NES stuff, cause I love my NES and I hadn’t explored some of the more obscure depths of it, or even the less obscure depths. I pulled up the NES games list on RA and noticed quite early on (in the As in fact, funny that) this game, Arkista’s Ring. I was immediately drawn in by the 80s as fuck anime elf girl. Hell yeah, elf girls. I’m on board, let’s go.

Game

It’s a top down action game that was compared to Zelda a lot on its release and I’ll be real I have no idea why because they have very little in common. They’re both top down games where you are and elf and you fight enemies that kinda walk around on a grid-base, but uh, that’s about it. Zelda is a big ass adventure where you explore and discover secrets. Arkista’s Ring is level based and very samey. You have an open area where you need to kill all enemies, and then a key spawns in a little stand thing, grab that, go through the door, boom next level. There are like 40 or so levels, and they’re all the same every time, there’s no randomization here. The enemies are deterministic based on your movement, so you can outsmart them pretty easily. You play as Christine, a cute little elf who’s trying to get back Arkista’s Ring, an Elven ring stolen by the evil Shogun that has caused shadows to fall over the land or some shit, typical fantasy stuff. The game can be split into three different parts, where you go into dungeons and fight a manticore, go into crypts and fight a vampire, and then go into the shogun’s castle and fight the shogun.

Game

There are a bunch of enemy types, that can kinda be split into a few different types. Enemies that wander and run into you, enemies that throw shit when you cross their line of sight, enemies that wave back and forth and fly over walls, and ninjas. Ninjas are the fucking worst. They’re basically just the enemies that run into you but they’re fast as shit, some have way too much health, and they can jump over walls. Literally, if you fight these things like normal, they will out damage you at full health. Thankfully you can sometimes cheese their wall jump to get them stuck.

Game

If you press select at the start of a level, you get to see your character, and it’s laid out like an RPG’s stat sheet, as if Christine isn’t the only character you can play. Sex: Female. Yes please. Anyways, you also have loads of items and weapons you can pick up from enemies. You’ll get a full loadout by the end of the game… probably. Two items, the Elf Mirror and the Wealth Amulet are like, .5% drops, and even though this game is very long and you pick up a lot of items, I did 1.5 playthroughs of it and only found it on my third real attempt, on level 35. I played this game halfway through, gamed over, and had to start again. You DO get 10 continues, VERY generous, but the set required a 1cc so I started over. And this is a rough game for that. You need a route and plan to deal with those fucking ninjas, and though the game is short, kind of, it’s also long as fuck. You see, there are 31 levels, but after you beat the Shogun on level 31, the game loops. Oh so it’s endless? No. There is an end. After loop 4 the game goes “yo good job” and just ends on the character screen unceremoneously. So it DOES have an ending but you literally have to beat it all 4 times. It’s a bit of a slog. Put on a podcast like I did and veg out.

All in all, Arkista’s Ring isn’t anything special, but it does have an 80s anime elf girl, which is what I came to it for, I guess. It’s really not BAD, but there’s a reason it’s been kind of forgotten over the years.