Game:

Demon's Crest (1994)

Duration: 3:03:41

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144

A longplay of Demon's Crest for the SNES.

Demon's Crest was developed and published by Capcom in 1994. It is the third game in the Gargoyle's Quest series, a branch of the Ghost n' Goblins franchise which is also made by Capcom. The plot involves six stones of great power called “crests” which fall from the sky into the demon realm, resulting in widespread chaos as civil war erupts over their ownership. One of the demons, named Firebrand, manages to collect all six crests. However, in his weakness from battle, he's ambushed by Phalanx, who steals all but the crest of fire, which has been broken into pieces. Firebrand, left with only a shard of the fire crest, sets out to overthrow Phalanx, who has used his newfound power to claim himself ruler of both the demon and human realms.

The game is a side-scrolling action-platformer, using a world map for stage selection. Bosses and power-ups are spread out among the stages, which are intended to be played repeatedly as the player gains more abilities so they can reach new areas. It's similar to Super Metroid in that way, which was released just a few months prior. The art and settings are beautifully grim and macabre, highly appropriate for the theme of the game, and the controls are smooth and flow perfectly with the pace of the action. Although moving vertically with the Crest of Air may be a little awkward, it eventually blends in with the game's native difficulty and develops sense of its own.

Though Demon's Crest never gained much popularity until word of it spread over the internet, it still received all of the finesse and polish of Capcom's best games of the time, complete with a haunting soundtrack by Mega Man X composer Toshihiko Horiyama. An obscure gem, and one of my personal favorite games on the Super Nintendo.

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NOTES:

● The game has good and bad endings, as well as a post-game superboss the player must defeat in order to see the final ending. The bad ending is achieved by defeating Phalanx before all the hidden items and preceding crests are acquired. I show all of them in this longplay.

● You actually can use both the dash and the headbutt as the Ultimate Gargoyle, even though they both use the same input in their respective forms. You just have to hold up on the d-pad in order to use the headbutt in Ultimate Gargoyle form. I forgot about that when I use it the end.

● I did not use any emulator tools in the battle against Phalanx or the Dark Demon. Just something I'm nerdishly proud of. Granted, that's not as big of a deal today when you have Touhou and I Wanna Be The Guy, but back then, it was quite an achievement.

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