Astal: Intro, Title Screen & Opening (English Voices, Japanese Lyrics)
8These last few days of April 2025 have been stuffed to the gills with notable video game anniversaries.
One very close anniversary that I was looking at, in particular, is probably of a more unlikely game among these milestones, but I decided I wanted to give it attention for some reasons.
April 28th, 2025 is the 30 Anniversary of this game. It's one of the only notable platformer games on the Sega Saturn, which is considering the fact that this is the only significant SEGA console past Sonic's creation to not even have a proper Sonic platformer released at all.
Nonetheless, I chose this game to be the first on my channel to represent the troubled 32-Bit console. I indeed to show off more Saturn games eventually, but this one feels like a simple game to start this off with
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So here's how its story starts, as its narrator also explains:
Within the universe, there lived a Goddess named Antowas, who used a single jewel to create the world of Quartalia. She used her power to create Quartalia's earth, water, sky, and air.
Within Quartalia, Antowas also created two humans to live within it:
A girl named Leda, who was created from a green jewel to bring life to the world.
A boy named Astal, who was created from a red jewel to be Leda's sworn guardian.
Some difficulties came about from this bond, however, as Astal was known to be a bit TOO overprotective of Leda through his aggressive nature and MIGHTY strength. While it brought Leda some shame upon the planet, she still loved Astal's dedication to her unconditionally.
From there, Antowas slept to rest her powers, but this would prove to cause further issues...
The evil god known as Jerado suddenly appeared before Quartalia to threaten the planet, with a plan to reshape it into his own wicked image. When Astal & Leda resisted this force, Jerado countered back with a human of his own: Geist, who was his own evil version of Astal.
Geist used his own powers to seal away Leda to the bottom of the ocean. In a desperate effort to rescue her, Astal CRACKED the bottom of the ocean.
Leda was thankfully freed thanks to Astal, but as the old saying goes: "No good deed goes unpunished".
Surely enough, aftermath of the battle reawakens Antowas, and she was furious at Astal for what he had done to her ocean. As a consequence, Astal was banished to Quartalia's moon.
As a mercy, Leda gave up her own jewel to Astal for good luck. Antowas subsequently dealt with Jerado, herself, and then returned to her deep slumber...
But little did she or her creations know... this victory was only temporary...
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Just for this video, I ran a slight mod of the game that retained the English voices of the game, but also restored the anime opening's full audio.
The original Japanese release of this game had actual Japanese lyrics. Part of this mod was made to bring that back.
As for the English voices... EVERYONE in this game uses the same voice actress, Lani Minella, who Sonic fans will know as Dreamcast-era Rouge the Bat.
Despite this, there are still Japanese voices in the US version of this game through its gameplay. It's quite a trip, and I'll have to show you what I mean.
The anime opening itself shows that Astal will not be alone in his adventure to save Leda once more. He will be accompanied by a bird with special powers in his quest to defeat Jerado & his rival Geist.
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Also - 3:48 - Now I know where the intro theme of Sega Lord X's channel comes from.