Post subject: Arkista's Ring
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 17
I was playing the ROM of Arkista's Ring, a NES game that I owned back in the day that no one else seems to have heard of. (I've read that it wasn't released in the US, which is odd; I live in Ohio and my parents found a copy of it somewhere and bought it.) It's sort of like a Gauntlet/Legend of Zelda hybrid. Christine, an elf, has to fight through something like 30 short stages, killing enemies with her bow and limitless arrows. In each level, she has to kill enough monsters to make the key appear, unlock the door(s) blocking the entrance to the next level, and get to the stairs or door or whatever. Enemies drop items, including health upgrades, bow and arrow improvements, two relics (one makes the game much easier, the other is useless in a TAS) and a handful of usable items; these drops could probably be manipulated. Oh, and there are ninjas (the strongest of which can jump over walls, take many hits to kill, even with the best bow/arrow, and is more difficult, IMO, than the actual final boss.) The goal is to find a relic called Arkista's Ring, which you get after beating the final boss the first time around. The problem with this game is that, to get the ending, you have to play through the stages four times, with the monsters getting faster each time. Not only would this get boring fast, I don't know if it's physically possible; Christine is, at times, swarmed with enemies that move faster than her and sit on top of her, some of the enemies near the end of each loop cause two damage (out of 10 with all health upgrades) per hit, and she doesn't stay invulnerable for more than a moment. I ended up using an infinite lives code and, in the final loop, one stage took me fifteen lives to actually complete. Has anyone else even played it?
Former player
Joined: 11/13/2005
Posts: 1587
I doubt it will make an interesting or entertaining run. The game is just boring.
Former player
Joined: 9/2/2004
Posts: 109
Location: Québec
Well, it was kinda fun at first, but it gets boring real quick.
Joined: 10/6/2006
Posts: 8
This game was released in the US.
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 17
...so maybe it's not the best game to TAS. Back to the drawing board....
mills wrote:
This game was released in the US.
Ah. So the (quite popular) review I keep finding must be wrong, then. It makes finding it in Ohio more plausible, then; even now, with internet, I've never noticed an imported game in a game store, even on import-friendly handhelds. Maybe I should start looking at GBA games; most of the big NES ones seem to have been done already....
Editor, Experienced player (730)
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
I'd suggest N64 games, but atm the best games that don't desynch are being worked on. GBA games sounds good, but there's still a few hidden gems to be discovered for SNES.
Homepage ☣ Retired
Joined: 1/9/2005
Posts: 16
My cousin used to be able to beat this game legitimately when we were younger, so it can be done. It'd make a crappy TAS though.
Post subject: Arkista's Ring.
Joined: 4/29/2005
Posts: 1212
Moderator edit: Merged this post into an existing topic. I had never heard of this game until I saw a Long Play for it pop up on LongPlays.org today. It looks like it is a fairly random game in terms of where enemies spawn and stuff, so I think with the right manipulation, it could make a fairly entertaining TAS. The character you control is a Elven Huntress. As she kills enemies, she finds items that are randomly dropped, and the items dropped themselves are random, from pieces of armor, to Healing Potions, to Fire Wands and stuff like that. The Healing Potions kick in after you've lost all five of your hearts. Not sure how everything else works yet, since I haven't watched that much of it just yet. But it looks amusing enough.
Joined: 4/29/2005
Posts: 1212
The Long Play is about half an hour in length, and it didn't get boring for some reason. Looks like you can use the Healing Potions before your Hearts run out too. Depending on if you can manipulate where the enemies spawn, a TAS of this game would be sub 25 minutes, maybe less. The enemies will also drop hearts to replenish your health. A TAS of this game might be entertaining, but it also might not be at the same time. The person doing the Long Play kind of took his time during the first ten minutes of the game. I dunno.
Skilled player (1886)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I have a (short) WIP of this game here. Maybe I'll continue this someday, it was pretty fun to TAS.
Player (200)
Joined: 1/24/2011
Posts: 108
I own this one... it's pretty fun to run through once in a while, but I agree that it wouldn't be an interesting TAS unless there are some game-breaking glitches to be found.
Rayas wrote:
Dunno if I'm really clear. I need to drink more.
<br>
adelikat wrote:
The idea was to kill off my family to avoid lost time to them getting sick and other inconvenient things.
Post subject: arkista's ring wip: youtube + encode
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Ambassador, Experienced player (697)
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
I watched Feasel's SGDQ run on this game and it looked pretty neat. He went through the first set of levels in about 16 minutes. I think it would be entertaining enough to escape the vault. VoD of the run here: http://twitch.tv/sda/b/541421316?t=2h25m10s