Developed and published by Imagine in 1987. Follow me on Twitter:
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Foreword: This game cannot be completed without use of a trainer (it's well documented that the game is buggy as hell). Level 4 has a section at 28:51 where you have to grab a rope to swing over water, but the coders made this impossible. You can't grab the end of the rope since you make contact with the water and die, while if you grab the rope too far up, you can't jump far enough to clear the water and land on the other side. The only option I had was to play level 4 with use of a trainer that disabled sprite collision so that I could cross the aforementioned section and complete the rest of the game. Even though collision is off, I don't abuse it and play as if enemies and objects can hurt me. All the other levels are played with the trainer OFF. The game is heavily influenced by Conan the Barbarian and other high-fantasy lore. Each of the 6 stages is divided into 3 sections: exterior, interior of a fortress and then an end-of-level boss that has to be killed. Along the way, Rastan can collect power-ups and additional weapons to aid him in smiting his foes, which include an axe, mace and a flaming sword that grants him a ranged attack. Enemies can drop vials of poison as well as power-ups, so you have to be careful to check what the enemy has dropped before collecting the item. It's a real shame that the developers didn't correct the bugs in the game before releasing it since it's a pretty decent port of the arcade classic from Taito. The graphics aren't too bad, all the levels are present and there's a great musical score from Martin Galway. The loading graphic by Martin McDonald deserves special mention as it's easily one of the best for any game on the C64. Bootnote: The ending is very strange indeed. Enjoy! #retrogaming
