Swordfall ‘Nobody Knows Nobody Fears’ is out now via Bandcamp and Spotify.

For the hundredth time, I’ll repeat myself: I am deeply, deeply into the fantasy shit. In particular, I am really into anything that even remotely emulates Dungeons & Dragons. There’s just something about a band of adventurers descending into caverns, ruins, and other dangerous places to hunt for loot or die trying… it’s the stuff legends are made of. Well, legends or bloodbaths, I guess. Either way… *puts on dumb helmet and picks up ridiculously huge axe* count my ass IN.

I mean, how the fuck does this not scream “awesome?” (This is the box art by the way, by Boris Vallejo, one of the inheritors of Frazetta’s legacy.)

in 1990, the whole concept was still pretty hot in popular culture, at least hot enough to try and sell some NES cartridges. Interplay strapped on its gear and lit its torch to bring us Swords and Serpents, a game that takes the general premise of D&D (as well as some of its terminology) and crunches it down ever-so-gently so it can be presented in an 8 bit format. There’s a lot to like about this game, but there’s plenty I wish were different as well. It’s a visually beautiful and carefully authentic dungeon-crawl that stays very true to formula, but it’s still got some holes in it.

NOTE: I would like to stress that this game bears no relation to the identically titled Intellivision game, and at no time am I talking about that game. In fact, I have had almost no exposure to the Intellivision, except I know a He-Man game came out for it and I’m forever pissed that Mattel was so exclusive with its licensing back then. But that’s an axe we can grind some other day…

The game starts up and you’re presented with the choice to make your own group of heroes or use the default one. Do what you will, but the default one’s really not bad and choosing it saves you a little time diddling around. You’ll want the same basic setup anyway: two characters who can beat the shit out of monsters by way of weapons (warrior and thief, really just two different styles of murder), and two magic-using people (who can both do some hurting and some healing). Minor details don’t factor in. Besides, you’re probably just going to see them all die.

AKA: Who you tryin’ to send to the grave today?

Let’s talk about that… palette swaps and all, Swords and Serpents has a surprising array of monsters who are more than happy to mechanically separate you like they worked at the Tyson plant and you were chicken meant for dog food. Skeletons, spiders the size of tanks, wandering asshole wizards… I’ve provided as much of a visual bestiary as I felt I could without just making this article one big gallery of scary shit. The lavish and horrid detail in which some of these creatures are rendered not only impresses me (since 8 bit graphics do tend to constrain more than release an artist’s details) but also provides a bit of a visceral shock when some of them crop up.

As you can see, plenty of these screenshots show (by way of the convenient bar graphs representing the party’s life/magic meters) my bold adventurers getting their asses handed to them by undead, mutant bats, trolls with switchblades, and whatever the hell that ghastly sneering thing is on the bottom middle.

However, the first thing you encounter is an old lunatic with pretty useless information.

“Adventure, or, you know, getting your buttholes destroyed by trolls… destiny is a tricky thing. Now get in there, and best of luck to you!”

Once he leaves you alone, you’re free to wander and find your way into certain goddamn death. I found that biding my time and carefully picking battles weighed in my group’s favor (and fleeing like a fucking coward when outmatched) was a capital strategy early on. I was actually able to get fairly far in the game on my first go, and not just because I’m so intimately familiar with dungeon-crawling that it hurts. You also want to keep everyone as healthy as you can with your magicians’ healing spells, because… well, there’s something in RPGs called action-economy, and you don’t want to be wasting time DURING a fight casting a spell you could have cast BEFORE it… but you’ll still have to do that plenty anyway. Division of labor is the rule of the day… have your whackers whack and your healers heal. To reiterate… YOU MAY STILL JUST GET WIPED. The dungeon, she does not forgive, nor is her kiss a gentle one.

The axe man is so pretty… so, so pretty… but don’t be fooled.

You’re able to go into characters’ inventories and access their spellbooks fairly easily, and the menus aren’t clumsy or counter-intuitive like can happen so often in this genre of video games. The only thing that bothers me from an aesthetic standpoint is that there is no “you.” That is to say, the adventuring party is not represented at all, really; Swords and Serpents shows you only the first-person and top-down representations of the space you’re invading… and anything that’s trying to murder you.

Flight. Listed below and very separately, so you know it’s for running away like a bitch.

The end goal is to make it down to the titular Serpent, who is every bit as doleful and horrible as some of the other monsters. He is also capable of constantly, FREQUENTLY attacking without much delay or space between, so you’d better have a plan going in and be buff enough to handle this shit. I never made it anywhere near this far but the playthrough I saw showed me the default strategy: dump everything destructive you have on the Serpent while doing your damnedest to keep everyone not-dead.

I mean for starters, he’s not thrilled you just invited yourself in. Can you tell by his horrible fucking face and soul-destroying gaze?

The music is pretty kickin’. It’s nothing worth gushing over for too long, but the tunes do get stuck in your head. It’s good RPG music. It fits really well and is probably the best part next to the grotesquely awesome monster graphics.

I’m going to be cruel on Swords and Serpents and give it 6/10. It’s visually impressive where Interplay chose to pour that magic into it, but it lacks depth in terms of immersion and really can get tedious after too long. It’s a game you definitely can’t play for long spans, but it’s fun if you frequently save and take breaks. It’s a worthwhile entry into the NES’s RPG library, and worth a look if you’ve never played.

That’s all for this one, folks. See you at the end of the month for more!

Where you grew up as a kid probably had an effect on what system you first played a Gauntlet port on. For me, it was the eastern USA, so I played the “illegal” Tengen copy for the NES. Some in Europe played it on the Sega Master System, and some even played it on various PC ports. However, Gauntlet was originally released in 1985 as an arcade game by Atari. I envy you if that’s what you grew up with, as the arcade original really is the best one. Not even later sequels capture the fun of the digitized speech, and the whole thing is its own self-contained experience.

To describe Gauntlet in more modern terms, I’d choose to call it a multiplayer dungeon crawl. You want to get treasure, murder (and avoid being murdered by) monsters, and make it through alive. Gauntlet is a 1 or 2 player game, with 2 player mode having its ups and downs. On the one hand, you’ll be able to survive better fighting hordes of monsters, but you’re also splitting assets (or fighting over them). Each player chooses between 4 different character types: Warrior (high HP and damage), Elf (REALLY fast), Valkyrie (resilient), or Wizard (good magic). Most people end up preferring the Wizard or Elf. I’m an Elf guy myself.

That elf does not have the face of a protagonist. 

Anything goes in Gauntlet. Some power ups grant you bouncing shots or improved damage, but most of what you’ll find in Gauntlet is potions and keys. Potions are more like bombs; they kill all enemies onscreen at the moment the potion is used. Keys, more obviously, open doors. The door/key economy goes up and down throughout the game, but they are always worth picking up. Food and booze can give back health, but a stray shot can destroy food. This can cause arguments, since food is life in Gauntlet. Not to mention how the game reminds you of your mortality by slowly ticking down your life total, even at rest.

All time not spent gathering resources is usually spent finding or making a way through multiple types of baddies. Some have ranged attacks, some do not. All seem to pour endlessly from their little source-hub things. Thankfully, these can be destroyed permanently with a few well placed shots. The same can be said for the monsters, except that there’s so many of them that sometimes you’re simply blasting through them instead of wiping them out. There’s club wielding “grunts,” demon worms, little gnomes that throw rocks at you… I mean, Gauntlet isn’t a friendly place. The game has no actual bosses, but sometimes Death shows up (sometimes in staggering duplicate) to ruin your f*cking day Himself. Only potions can kill Death, who just plods after you and drains away your life by touching you. If you have no bombs, your other option is to just let him drain you until he is sated (this may kill you anyway). If I hadn’t mentioned before, Gauntlet’s a brutal game. It is also a game without its own existential framework; very little plot or story is given. You simply exist, and you plumb the dungeon for wealth at the expense of death. Something for the philosophers out there.

Arcade ad circa 1986

For 1985, the game’s graphics are on the good side. What made Gauntlet stand out was the TMS5220C Speech Chip by Texas Instruments. The announcer’s voice was its own piece of hardware, and a very advanced one for its time. In fact, Gauntlet was Atari’s first coin-operated game to include a voice chip of any kind. That aside, the arcade version of the game doesn’t have much music (but the NES version does). The game’s programming itself is pretty elaborate, even from today’s standards. The franchise has remained strong throughout Atari’s history of ups and downs; sequels can still be found, and they are similar enough to their forebears to be recognizable.

The game was huge in the 80s. It even had t shirts!

Tune in at the end of the month for more sword-and-sorcery mayhem!