Rygar (HQ Remix) - Den of Sagila (Cave Funk Remix)
23Rygar, also known in Japan as Argos no Senshi (アルゴスの戦士, Arugosu no Senshi, lit. Warrior of Argus) was released in arcades May 20, 1986 by Tecmo, and was soon ported to home computers. The NES version is actually a completely different game known as Warrior of Argus: Extreme Great Charge (アルゴスの戦士 はちゃめちゃ大進撃, Arugosu no Senshi: Hachamecha Daishingeki) in Japan. It was released April 14, 1987 in North America, and in 1990 for Europe.
Rygar, as it was known to Western audiences, is a true action RPG with multiple perspectives. It features both side-scrolling platforming as well as overhead exploration, and you fight from both perspectives using different abilities. Rygar is sort of a cross between Zelda and Metroid. It was a very ambitious game for the time! Your quest as the Legendary Warrior is to defeat the evil King Ligar and save Argool. To stand a chance, you must travel the land and seek the aid of the Indora gods, who will grant you five legendary artifacts you need to bring peace to Argool.
"There was nothing but peace throughout Argool. However that peace
was ended quickly once the evil creature known as Ligar invaded
with his hordes of monsters. Only a mighty warrior can stop this
evil from spreading. To that end, the Indora God's risen the
fallen Rygar from his grave. Along with his powerful Diskarmor,
Rygar must set out on a quest, to find the Indora God's and defeat
the evil Ligar!"
The advertisements say the game is set on Earth 4.5 billion years in the future, but then the game also mentions the year 19XX, a common year in Japanese games of the era. There definitely weren't any localization/translation issues. Nothing to see here, move along!
It's not a perfect game. The music is a bit repetitive, but some of the songs are super catchy (the music is slightly different between Japanese Famicom and NES versions). The sound effects definitely could have used a bit more attention, often bordering on torturous. There is no save feature, no battery in the cart, and no password feature. If you die, you have unlimited continues. If you want to beat Rygar, you'll have to do it in one sitting! Slowdown was definitely an issue if you had more than a couple monsters onscreen at the same time, but that was not uncommon on the NES. Getting the pulley to work on the overhead map was aggravating. Despite these problems, the game has a certain charm to it that you just can't duplicate.
Temco released a successor to the original Rygar in November 2002 on the Playstation 2 entitled 'Rygar: The Legendary Adventure'. The setting was changed to an island in the Mediterranean called "Argus", and the environment took on more of an Ancient Roman/Greek influence. It has a 'God of War' style gameplay. and it was very well received. It sold well and became a bit of cult classic in its own right. It is still highly playable today. Sadly, it was poorly adapted to the Wii in 2009, and as far as I know has not been ported to later versions of Playstation consoles, making it harder for gamers to play it.
Trivia: The music that plays when you visit the Guru was reused as the title screen on the reviled NES game Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
If you would like to commission a piece of your own, be it remake or original, please contact me via email (in the About section of my channel, mobile users may need to use desktop mode to see it). All proceeds go back into the channel for all of gamerkind to enjoy.
This my special remix of one of my very favorite 8-bit songs. I hope you like it. Something about it evokes imagery in my mind of an intimate, smoke-filled club where a small band of musicians lay down that sweet, sweet jam and blow away an audience that was not ready for them. See if you can close your eyes and go there.
Original score by はすや みちはる / 蓮谷 通治 (Hasuya Michiharu) ©1986
This version is Copyright Pieces of 8-bit ©2022
Where applicable, All Rights Reserved
Other Videos By Pieces of 8-bit's HQ Remakes
Other Statistics
RYGAR Statistics For Pieces of 8-bit's HQ Remakes
At present, Pieces of 8-bit's HQ Remakes has 11,839 views spread across 19 videos for RYGAR, and less than an hour worth of RYGAR videos were uploaded to his channel. This makes up less than 0.95% of the total overall content on Pieces of 8-bit's HQ Remakes's YouTube channel.