Game:

Fray in Magical Adventure (1990)

Duration: 22:06

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Import gamers may be familiar with a series of Action / Adventure RPGs from Micro Cabin by the name of "Xak", an excellent series of top-down games that, at one time, gave some of the best games in the genre like Falcom's "Ys" and Nintendo's "Legend of Zelda" a run for their money, but there exists a spin-off to the series that people are less familiar with: "Fray In Magical Adventure". Also known as "Xak Gaiden" (or "Xak Side Story"), it is essentially one game, but it was remade, tweaked and enhanced several times due to its popularity. The least known version of the game is "Fray: Shugyou Hen" or "Fray: Training Version", a simplified and scaled-down version of the game for Sega's Game Gear in 1991. It is a vertical scrolling shooter with mild platforming and RPG elements, seperating it from the main franchise. At one time, the Game Gear title appeared so infrequently on auction sites that some people wondered if it even existed, and it is one of the rarest Game Gear games (not quite on the level of stuff like "Power Strike II" or "Car License", but along the lines of titles like "Griffin").

Taking place between the events of Xak and Xak II, the game tells the tale of the titular character, Fray (though this is her nickname, her actual name is Freya Jerbarn) who falls in love with the main protagonist, Latok Kart, but can't aid him on his quest due to lacking skills necessary for adventuring, so she goes on a three year journey of her own to study magic so she can be useful to him and have him reciprocate her feelings. The game still has shops between levels, but there are no town hubs whatsoever, which was part of the charm of the other games. Instead of gold, players earn medals between "classes" based on their stage performance, which serves as Fray's "grade" as she learns magic.

Players can buy different rods to increase fire power, a shield to repel attacks, shoes to move faster, a 1-up to serve as a checkpoint once if you get killed on a level (depending on how far you get) and earn spells after clearing stages that can be used to attack enemies in exchange for orbs (they are not single use like other titles). 1-ups are awfully expensive, but there's an Easter Egg that lets you get a free one before you head off to save the kingdom if you turn down the shopkeeper several times when she implores you to shop for the major battles ahead (however, you won't get to shop for this stage afterwards, but you should have almost everything you need anyway if you're good). Enemies come in small waves and have different traits, attacks, and movement patterns. Most levels also have a few mild cases of platforming (the exception being a flying level); falling in water/pits/etc. result in instant death (and a different defeat screen).

All the major elements are here from other versions -- the game is bright and colorful with a few nice sized bosses and cool spells, and some of the music tracks are nicely composed, though it doesn't take much advantage of the system hardware (it is a early GG title, so it's forgivable). On the other hand, the gameplay is competent (some of the major spells are fiddly as you have to deploy them a certain way or they won't affect enemies on screen like they should) though the scrolling is slower than molasses and gets even slower if too many enemies or projectiles are on screen and the game is extremely easy overall... some boss patterns are laughable even if this is practice for the bigger and better versions of the game, and jumping helps you avoid projectiles too. If the game ran faster, it could be cleared in about half the time, but it drags on as-is for about an hour, which (ignoring the small bits of story and dialogue) is about twice as long as these games ran on average back in the day.

Ultimately, as a collector and gamer, it's a nice conversation piece and one of the better shooters on Game Gear, but it's not particularly impressive overall. The game typically runs for a couple hundred bucks when it does appear outside of Japanese auctions, but unless your pockets are deep or you're trying to have every bit of Xak-related merch, I'd give it a pass. If you can find it for "cheap", I'd recommend it to curious Game Gear enthusiasts. This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.

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