Arcade Archives DARK ADVENTURE - (Labryna, Normal Difficulty, North American Version)
0Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to go on an adventure! But not just any adventure - it's a DARK adventure! Presenting Dark Adventure, developed by Konami in 1987. This title was known as "Majū no Ōkoku" ("The Kingdom of the Evil Beast") in Japan and "Devil World" in Europe. It's a two-player (Japanese and European version) and three-player (North American version) action game. But I wouldn't say it's a particularly great one.
Our story kicks off with Dr. Condor, an archaeologist who has uncovered an interesting and oh-so mysterious casket while on an expedition, which contains a powerful and evil Devil King. Dr. Condor has the bright idea of showing off this amazing discovery to the public, because there couldn't possibly be any harm in exposing innocent bystanders to any sort of occultic devilry, right?
Dr. Condor opens the casket in front of several press reporters, and guess what?! Out comes of flood of demonic energy that sucks in Dr. Condor, his assistant Zorlock, and female reporter Labryna and plummeting them into the Devil King's world - where all sorts of dangers and creatures await!
Good thing they came prepared, though. Our three heroes battle the demonic monsters with their respective melee weapons, Dr. Condor has a whip, Zorlock has a spear, and Labryna has a sword. Now here's where it gets a bit questionable. I can understand Dr. Condor having a whip - I mean, don't all archaeologists carry one? I mean, Indiana Jones has one so it makes sense. I can sort of get Zorlock having a spear... well... maybe a GUN would've made better sense, but yeah, while digging through ancient ruins I guess an assistant needs something sharp and pointy to keep potential foes at bay. But what on Earth is Labryna, a NEWS REPORTER, doing with a sword? Don't ask me.
Dark Adventure is a unique kind of game, where you make your way through various worlds such as high cliffs, castles, moving wall mazes, and underground lava caves. In each area that you trudge through, you have to find a key hidden (or just plain out in the open) within the level in order to unlock the exit to escape. Along the way, you can pick up various power-ups such as weapons, orbs, and soda to refill your ever decreasing life bar. Yes, it's one of THOSE games. Similar to the North American version of Metamorphic Force where your life bar is constantly depleting, leading to an inevitable death no matter how careful you are.
The general excuse for this is because for some reason, Konami thought this was a good idea to generally increase the difficulty of the game for American arcades, this could just be a cheap way of getting players to drop in as many quarters as possible to beat the game. Your life bar is your "hunger" meter, so your character can just barely get through each area without dying at least once or twice, or even thrice. You can pick up soda and meat to refill your life, but you'd end up spending more time looking for life refills AND the keys needed to exit, which just unnecessarily prolongs game time. Not to mention the little bases that continually respawn enemies until you destroy them. Let's face it - you WILL die, no matter how careful or skillful you try to be.
You'll be fighting all sorts of enemies from lava monsters, skeletons, bats, and winged demons. You can pick up weapons such as a laser, flamethrower, and even dynamite, too. There's also the annoying standard breakable blocks which will get in your way constantly, so you spend a lot of time breaking them and dealing with an annoying metallic sword contact noise as you repeatedly do that.
A big difference is that in the Japanese and European versions, you only have to collect one key and go through one exit so it's a much more linear experience - in the North American version, you can pick up several keys and have multiple exists. This is a bad thing because you can end up looping yourself through several stages you've been through already, unnecessarily increasing game time even more. I almost quit the game late in the playthrough because I actually thought I'd never beat the game, but kept pressing on until I was surprised to get to the final boss.
What was that ending, really? I live in New York, and getting stranded on top of the FREAKING STATUE OF LIBERTY is probably worse than getting stuck in the Demon World. How would anyone know you'd even be up there to be rescued? You sure as hell can't climb down without falling to your death... eh, video game logic. Never has to make a lick of sense, but here we are, eh?
Anyway, not much else to say on this game, but I didn't really enjoy trudging through this one. Hopefully the next game will be be fun... see you in the next one.