Solstice (NES) Playthrough
277A playthrough of CSG Imagesoft's adventure game for the NES, Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos.
In their heyday, isometric puzzle-platformers were the bread-and-butter of many a British game studio in the 80s. The genre formed around the strengths and limitations of popular 8-bit microcomputers: the games typically featured single-screen, highly detailed backdrops and a laid-back pace that required little in the way of complex sprites or detailed animation. To compensate for the lack of action, gameplay typically revolved around finding key items, avoiding wandering enemies, pushing blocks, and making pixel-perfect jumps.
Given how popular these faux-3d adventures were on computers, you'd think that some of their influence would've spilled over into the console space, but that never really seemed to happen. As far as I know, Solstice was the only NES game of its kind to have been officially released in English.
What a game it is, though. Solstice was plenty ambitious for an NES puzzler, and in many ways, it surpasses the games that inspired it.
It's clear from the moment you first turn it on that Solstice means business. Tim Follin's epic title theme plays through the rolling demos with a level of bombast rarely heard from the NES's sound hardware.
The opening cutscene kicks off with Morbius, the evil bad guy, kidnapping the princess Eleanor in order to sacrifice her for some sort of ultimate evil power. You, as Shadax, head to Morbius's castle in search of the Staff of Demnos, the only weapon known to possess the power to defeat the wizard.
Unfortunately for Shadax, the staff has been broken into several pieces, and so Solstice tasks you with finding the pieces and reconstructing the staff in order to save the princess and save the world from whatever dark fate Morbius has planned.
The castle is huge - 252 rooms in total - and it's loaded with all sorts of nasty stuff that can end Shadax in a blink. It is quite similar to The Legend of Zelda in how it leaves the player to explore, to experiment, and to make sense of how the elements all come together.
As you get your bearings, made easier by the inclusion of an auto-map, the game will begin to introduce the core pieces of its gameplay. Jumping platforms, stacking blocks, and using items to reveal hidden paths will all be quite familiar to you by the time you've reached the princess, but nothing is ever entirely straightforward. The puzzles mostly focus on how to get from one side of a room to the other, and once you start exploring beyond the initial few rooms, the difficulty level ramps up considerably.
Don't be fooled into thinking that it is a short game by the length of this video, though. It took me a year or so as a kid to get through it, but the puzzles and room layouts never change, so things become much easier with a bit of familiarity. Well, except for that final set of puzzles that vertically span three rooms - even once you know what you are meant to do, it is still pretty easy to botch a jump unless you're paying *very* close attention to what's going on around you.
If you like games that make you think, Solstice is a top pick for the NES. The graphics are fantastic and the perspective shift adds a welcome bit of challenge. The lack of character shadows makes jumping difficult when you're first starting out, but it becomes fairly intuitive with some practice. The soundtrack is among the best on the NES - the intro themes are brilliant, and the dungeon tunes, more ambient and somber than you'd probably expect, set the tone well. And I love that high pitched squeal Shadax lets loose when he dies!
The puzzles can be devious, but you don't need a guide or a walkthrough to finish the game. A bit of persistence will see you through.
If you are looking for something that's fun and that'll keep you playing, I'd highly recommend checking out Solstice. It's an experience that will stay with you long after you've put Morbius in the ground, saved the girl, and brought the world back from the brink of oblivion.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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