The Guardian Legend
System: NES
Release Date: April 1989
Developer: Compile
Publisher: Brøderbund
Genre: Action RPG/Shoot ‘em Up
Compile is one of those rare developers that were working on Nintendo and Sega games simultaneously, this time they gave us a mash up of genres with the Guardian Legend. Here we have action RPG elements fused with shoot ‘em up sections. The story is that an alien race from a distant galaxy sent their planet hurtling through space toward Earth. Without a wormhole, that is hard to believe. Evil creatures multiplied on board and it’s up to you to destroy all of the self-destruct mechanisms and save the Earth.
You start up in one of the many shoot ‘em up sections. These are of the vertical scrolling type. You shoot with the B Button and will likely just hold it down, because it auto shoots. The A Button is reserved for special weapons, which you can change among in the sub-screen by pressing the Select Button. These deplete your stock of Chips and because I’m a moron, I didn’t realize that these replenish by collecting red and blue balls. As such, I didn’t start using the secondary weapons until late in the game. There’s a spot at coordinates X13 Y13 where you can replenish them easily.
Being from Compile, I noticed that some of the secondary weapons are straight out of Zanac and Power Strike. They can be used in both the shoot ‘em up and action stages. I typically stayed away from them in the action stages, but there are several spots they could be helpful. You have to find the weapons before you can use them, and they can each be powered up from level 1 to level 3. I suppose all of the weapons have their uses, but I really enjoyed the powered up grenade. That thing did a heck of a lot of damage. The Area Blaster is the ultimate enemy killer when it is powered up, but comes at a massive cost. I also leaned on the Enemy Eraser in the later corridors.
The hero is a female shaped transformer. It’s a ship in the shoot ‘em up portions and a bipedal humanoid in the action sections. The action sections require traversing a number of screens, looking for the corridors that send you to the shoot ‘em up sections. Areas open up as you find keys. You find keys by destroying corridors. That means this is a very linear game. You unlock areas in a specific order and have to defeat them to continue with the game. Enemies appear on most screens and you don’t have to destroy them, but you get points by doing so and once you get enough points, you upgrade your health bar. So, it’s not in your best interest to ignore enemies, especially the easy ones.
You also upgrade your main weapon, shields, and speed by collecting icons hidden throughout the labyrinth. When you find Red Landers (the little Lolo looking dude), you increase your maximum level of chips. This is how you upgrade your main weapon and increase your ability to use sub weapons. You want to upgrade as often as you can, because there are mini-bosses to defeat in the labyrinth. These usually drop a sub weapon upgrade.
Some corridors will open as soon as you enter the room, but others require you to do something in order to unlock them. This may be shooting a specific spot, using a sub weapon, entering and exiting, getting help from a blue lander shopkeeper, and more. Hints on what you need to do are found throughout the labyrinth and left by the entity that begs you to blow the whole place up. The corridors are very much stock shoot ‘em up levels. Enemies are relentless, so you’d better be blasting away at all times. Occasionally, you can get health recovery items by killing enemies, which you really need in the later levels. This all ends with a boss. They get recycled over the course of the game, but each version follows the same pattern. I got particularly tired of the Grimgrin boss that showed up a lot in the later corridors. Once you reach the last corridor, it’s a boss rush, which scared me, but it wasn’t that bad, then the final boss stands between you and the credits. This gives you the password TGL to do a Corridor Rush mode, enjoy.
Graphics: 2.5
The graphics are fine. There’s a lot of variety between the two styles of play and there wasn’t a ton of flickering.
Sound: 2.0
The sound of the gun is annoying and if you’re smart, it’s constantly chiming, so it overpowers the decent soundtrack.
Gameplay: 3.5
Everything works really well. There are a ton of powerups and secondary weapons for everyone to find something they enjoy.
Difficulty: 2.5
I thought the difficulty was proper. It’s not too hard and if you die, you go back to the last password room you entered.
Fun Factor: 3.0
I enjoyed myself and it wasn’t a super long game, I clocked in at 3 and a half hours, but I was getting tired of it in the last hour. I would have loved it in 1990, though.
Overall Grade: 2.7
The Guardian Legend earns a B-. This is a solid game and everyone should give it a shot. You’ll easily complete it in a few evenings or a weekend afternoon.