I dunno, Ys was pretty approachable too. For the most part, it's straightforward aside from a couple kinda tricky puzzles towards the end. (Although locking the door at the top of the tower and forcing the player to trek halfway down again was a dick move.)

I think Ys I and II aren't against the player in any way. Sure, the dungeons can be mazelike (especially in Ys II), but it's still manageable even without a guide, and the gameplay is pretty easy and forgiving.

​@@jasonblalock4429 Ys isn't a Metroidvania though

Who the hell is trash talking Faxanadu? I will fight them.

Agreed! It really needs a re-release on Switch!

@@LeoStaley Don't have negative thoughts. Remember your mantra.

That password system tho

@@OB-um3ql Oh yes, I got used to save states.

Both have amazing music, must say I love LOTW music more though

Legacy of the wizard is criminally underrated.

I have both lol

Good choices! I loved both of these as a kid, and I still play through Faxanadu every few years or so.

A few years ago, I got hooked on Faxanadu again and played through it about four times in the span of a week. Journey to Silius, on the other hand, is one that I suck at, but I love every second of it. It's crazy how it was originally meant to be a licensed Terminator game.

Loren Helgeson I agree. I think for Silius (for me) the amazing soundtrack drrove me to complete it. It’s super hard though!

@@joshdoughty1789 Yeah, I'm all about games with a great soundtrack. If a game has weak controls, is boring or just downright terrible, I'm still willing to give it a chance if it has at least one song in its soundtrack that stands out. Take Fester's Quest, for example. Boring, boring, boring. But, that overworld theme is fantastic. Of course, it helps that Journey to Silius controls like a dream and is actually fun to play, even if it's just brutally hard. Been playing it on and off for about a decade, and I still can't get to stage 5. But, on the NES, it's hard to beat Sunsoft's sound capabilities.

Loren Helgeson playing Battle Of Olympus was tough to follow Faxanadu for soundtrack reasons. Made the overall game feeing like a chore more than anything else .

He's always been the only media personality who legit gets it. "ven diagram" indeed.

I know what you mean. Seeing the footage for Romancia in this video seriously makes me want to code my own 80s-era retro action RPG.

Falcom and Atlus are the kings of low-to-mid level game development lol

It's why I love programming flexible systems. Makes content creation cheap and quickly

Wow, thank you for this comment. I’m glad to see someone agree with me on the primary reason Faxanadu is so awesome. The game has that kind of unsettling but engrossing “weirdness” that you might expect to find in something like an early-era Dungeons and Dragons module. The atmosphere, visuals, and music really make you ask “Good Lord, what is going on here?” in the best possible way.

And you didn't even mention that it has perhaps the most unique and haunting soundtrack of all time.

Yeah, it feels a little like Dark Souls in that way.

@@LeoStaley Most unique of all time might be a stretch, but it does have a strong soundtrack, the song "Land of Mist" especially is fantastic.

@@19Szabolcs91 OK, that's an exaggeration, but for the size of the game, I still might put it in top 20 of all rime.

what now? a remake?

@@tylerd4884 Well its called a Remaster, but more accurately its a remake. Some guy rebuilt the game in a new engine. The graphics and sound are the same, but the music is new, and all the maps are completely redesigned from what I can tell. Also no more passwords,

The dude that did the remaster of it changed a bunch of things that negatively impacted play. Particularly the scrolling, and visibility of more things at once than in the original. It messes with the exploration, pacing, and tension the original game perfected. Though he did fix and improve other things, so it's a toss up for me.

@@LeoStaley I haven't really gotten far enough in the game to judge, but so far the scrolling and larger view area hasn't bothered me

Try Xanadu: Next, it reminds me a lot of Faxanadu, though it plays like Legend of Zelda meets Blizzard's Diablo.

I never encountered an invalid password but I sure learned to pay close attention to exactly how the characters looked for the passwords early on after losing my progress a few times.

But more importantly, we are all one Faxanadu sequel poorer. 😢

@@joshb.9380 Absolutely right! I know there are other games in the Dragon Slayer series but I want a direct sequel to Faxanadu. I believe Konami now owns the IP so yeah, don't hold your breath.

@@SlyBeast Well, we can dream. I hadn't heard that about Konami though, but I guess it would make sense if it was a Hudson IP. Anyway, yeah, I know we've had plenty of similar games, maybe even some inspired by Faxanadu, but I just haven't seen a game yet that captures its unique weirdness and atmosphere. I mean, Faxanadu has you fighting through dungeons housed inside a giant World Tree while fighting mushroom-men, Giger-esque abominations, blue humanoids that hurt you by slapping a drum(tambourine?), and whatever the heck the final boss is supposed to be. I love that old-school, no-holds-barred gonzo weirdness, and the game managed to convey it all convincingly with the technology of the time.

@@joshb.9380 Well, it's just an educated guess based on knowing exactly what you mentioned already - Konami acquired Hudson Soft. Agreed, everything you mentioned makes this game unique. I miss that design approach in general. A fellow fan that clearly loves the game as much as we do made a Faxanadu Remastered from scratch (well, using sprites from this game and others) - may want to Google that and check it out if you haven't already. It's pretty good and about as close to a sequel as we'll likely ever get.

@@SlyBeast I appreciate the recommendation and will check it out if I can find it hosted somewhere. Thank you!

Wait, I need more details on this story

By the time the visitor finally left, the Hudson team's drug-induced vision had ended, and they had to ship the game as it was.

Was there actually a proverbial man from Porlock during the development of Faxanadu? I would love to hear more about it if so.

Where can I learn more about this?

@@christopherdemichiei It's just a Samuel Taylor Coleridge reference.

You know, now that you mention it it's the kind of game where I'm somewhat surprised it never got a sequel or remake or anything...

"Meet the Drasles", everyone's favorite TGIF sitcom

You are a gentleman of culture. Castlevania 2 is a great game. In fairness, I understand a lot of the complaints folks have with it, but, for my tastes, it is still a very fun and unique Castlevania title.

And I say, go right on liking it. I played Castlevania 2 when it first came out. Back then, cryptic NES games were just a thing that happened. Milon's Secret Castle, Renegade, Deadly Towers, Metal Gear, there were so many "how was I supposed to know that?" kinds of games. Nothing quite like Castlevania 2, which required Nintendo Power to decipher some of its more cryptic secrets, but that doesn't mean it was a bad game. Personally, I like it just slightly better than Castlevania 1.

That's fine but you should know that the feeling isn't mutual.

What a horrible night to have a curse.

That makes sense! Some of those sound effects in Dragon Slayer Jr. are also found in other Compile games like The Guardian Legend.

I was under that impression for a long time, but in researching for this episode I discovered that's not 100% certain. A lot of internal Falcom staff are credited on this version, so it seems whatever contribution Compile made was probably supplemental.

@@JeremyParish I think it was done as contract work but I could be wrong. But from what I have read Falcom didn't do its own console work and mostly stuck to non-Nintendo system work. I think with Faxanadu it was Falcom just giving Hudson the license and Hudson going wild. Which ended up being a baller NES game. A shame Faxanadu never appeared on WiiU eShop, fingers crossed for a Switch Online release.

Ah, that's too bad. It was on perpetual clearance in every KayBee Toys I ever visited back around 1991 or so-I guess you just had to stumble into the right retailer to find the treasure trove.

Those weird guys with the drum who hit you with their magic regardless of where you are on the screen. What the hell, Hudson.

Like how getting the pendant actually makes you weaker? That's not hate, it's just a bug.

He's trying

I know what you mean. I kept thinking of Guardian Legend with those sound effects going off.

@@LorenHelgeson Exactly!

I was surprised when the cadence didn't finish! I didn't think I would miss 2 notes so much, hehe.

To be completely honest, that name never came up in all the prep and research I did for this series, so it's not on the list. But it does look pretty neat.

Jeremy Parish no matter how much research you do there’ll always be some bastard come out of the woodwork with another obscure game 😂

Yeah, I gave trying to be comprehensive long ago. There always turns out to be some Spectrum game a dude in Ipswich made in his garage and sold to 8 people in ziploc baggies back in 1983 that only 8 people have ever played.

It took me a long time to come around on Nihon Falcom, but eventually I grew the hell up and stopped being a snotty punk about them.

I've never played a Dragon Slayer game (these videos have really made me want to, Xanadu and Faxanadu especially), but Ys is a timeless classic.

Sure, why not?

I mean, relatively. I would describe it as "reasonably balanced", which is a rarity in action-RPGs of that vintage.

As a teen I finished faxanadu, but I didn't get anywhere with legacy of the wizard. Difficulty is world's apart.

@@JeremyParish Honestly, I would say Legacy of the Wizard is a bit easier. Like MSX Castlevania, it has a reputation for being ludicrously hard, but I feel it's unearned -- both MSX Castlevania and Legacy of the Wizard are games that require you to "take notes," so to speak, but once you've learned the lay of the land and gotten a handle on where things are and what the best routes are to get to them, you'll have little trouble doing so. In other words, they're not games that actually require twitch reflexes or perfect timing or anything like that. Just... time. Time to explore and plan. Take that time, and you'll beat both games no problem. Faxanadu doesn't require any such planning, but it DOES require more twitch reflexes and timing. It has more difficult platforming and more threatening enemies than either MSX Castlevania or Legacy of the Wizard.

Faxanadu is a great game and I highly recommend people play it!

@@ajpiskel Ah, yes, me too! I would recommend all four games from this video, honestly. They're all superb in their own way. Old-school Falcom is incredible -- and so is old-school Hudson working with Falcom properties!

That would make sense, as TGL developer Compile seems to have ported Legacy of the Wizard from MSX to NES.

The coverage list up to about 2017 is at www.metroidvania.com!

There's a five-banger episode due up next week. The pandemic has increased my workload a fair bit and here I am making it worse with a non-stop cavalcade of the most elaborate, time-consuming videos I've ever produced...

Yeah. The first time someone called Diablo an ARPG in front of me, I was baffled.

Nah, that strikes me more as an offshoot of the single-screen arcade action genre, a la Mappy. I will be covering it in some capacity, though.

@@JeremyParish yeah you are right, when you compare it to mappy it strikes more to that direction, thanks!

12:07 sounds like it is from a different game too. SMB2?

Not at all actually, while they may be frustrating, all of Xemn’s puzzle rooms have ladders to reset the room in case the player makes a mistake. That was apt game design on the part of Falcom.

@@osurpless that could screw you over its own right.

Eek! Chocolate! How so? The ladders spoken of don’t actually lead anywhere, just to a row of walled in cubes, so you can’t end up taking the wrong path.

@@osurpless like I'd find myself not being able reach a jump or push a block in a particular direction because it was meant to be moved out of the way from the other side.

Eek! Chocolate! Ah, do you mean “the other side” as in the way you’re meant to move the block in a particular direction? If so, that’s what the ladders are for again, as it’s not like you have to reset the game, which is how permastuck is usually defined.

I mean, it's tough compared to later games like this, so don't feel bad. I was holding it against contemporary releases (especially Falcom's own)... it's a baby's cakewalk by comparison.

It requires certain tricks and abusing terrain. For example, that first tower where you get the mattock? Nearly everybody rushed the winged demon and got absolutely destroyed by its fire breath. Most noticed that if you stood on the ledge where you enter the room from, the winged demon can't hit you with its fire breath, but you _appear_ to not be able to hit it, either and you will likely run out of MP if you try to kill it with Deluge. What many people I would assume never figured out is that you *CAN* hit the demon with your dagger, but only on specific frames when it flies in, and then flies back out trying to hit you. So you can kill it without taking a single hit. There's also the one fountain at the bottom where you enter and there's a boss. Use the Winged Boots to fly over him without even fighting him, lol. A lot of bosses are like this. Also, the dragon that has the dragon slayer sword, and the last boss? Use the Hour Glass on them. You won't freeze them in place, BUT, they can't shoot projectiles while the Hour Glass active.

@@JeremyParish That makes sense. And thanks for putting out all of your videos so far. I've been loving every one I've watched so far. You have been teaching me an aweful lot about one of the biggest aspects of my childhood. (Nintendo games of the late 80's and early 90's in general) Cheers!

@@Dhalin wow, those are a lot of tricks I had no idea about. Doubly so for the time long ago when I spent allowance to rent a faxanadu cart for the weekend.

There’s already a Drakkhen video.

On the contrary, Faxanadu was once named #6 on the Top 30 NES Games by Nintendo Power and locally I knew several kids who loved the game. Also, Final Fantasy (the NES version, not the re-releases) sold decently well in NA, selling 700,000 copies.

@@Dhalin okay I thought ff flopped just like dw did

@@Mikey-zj8bn I think Dragon Warrior mostly flopped because of the absolutely insane grinding, simplistic battle system, and the frankly unfair difficulty. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy... while it was challenging, you could still levelup, and at level 50 most people were able to get at least most of the way through the game until maybe the last dungeon. Hopefully you saved those heal staves and heal helmets and realized that they were your ticket to success. But that was better than getting pulverized near the 3rd town because you didn't grind for the best equipment at the 2nd town because you needed 1,000 gold per piece and fights there only gave you 10 gold a battle or some ridiculous nonsense like that. THANKFULLY they fixed that in later games of the DW franchise, #4 is reasonably balanced for example.

It's pretty obvious from context that I was talking about Ys and didn't said they stopped making all sidescrollers, especially since Popful Mail will show up in this series down the road.