Manufacturer:
Year: 1986

The Earth was young when humans begun to colonize it. Cruel wars were made in order to conquer fertile territories and guarantee survival to the tribes. It was a continuous battle... In such an unstable situation, it wouldn't be difficult for a well-trained army to overwhelm primitive populations, take them to slavery and dominate the whole world. So it happened. But the conqueror wasn't a brave warrior: it was an demon coming from Hell, willing to eliminate the human race. A large amount of monstrous warriors invaded the land and razed whatever they found on their paths... the once-were-opponent tribes then became partners and built up a solid alliance in order to combat the recent, terrible menace.

But it was all but easy... even the most capable warriors died, and mankind had to surrender the enemy supremacy. The demon settled and become the one and only master of the Earth. A dark time begins in mankind history. But there still was a little chance to revenge... Somebody escaped slavery though, and walked north to the impervious mountains, where they could hide in caverns. A new tribe was founded, and a child was born. He was given the name of Rygar. The whole tribe thought it was a sign of the destiny: he had to be sent from positive gods and had to be a warrior. He was to free the human race and bring peace to the world.

Years passed by, Rygar trained and became a warrior, ready to face the demon and his army... That day had come. Holding his razor sharp-disk in his right hand, and using a shield as a protection, Rygar moved towards the demon's castle, willing to send him back to Hell forever. The legendary warrior has to be driven through twentyseven lands, full of infernal creatures attacking from the sky, floor and subsoil. The on-screen display shows many informations: current score, highest score, current round, time left (around 100 available time units per round), lives left plus a sort of map, the warrior's weaponry (those five icons in the bottom part of the screen) and Rygar's current rank (over the current score indicator). At the end of each round, we'll receive a bonus depending on rank, time left and killed enemies.

Odd rocks/tombstones often emerge from the ground. As Rygar crashes them, they reveal their content: potions, stars-shaped medallions and various mystical objects marked by symbols. It's not easy to understand the effect they have on our warrior. The object marked with "T" extends the remaining time, stars are worth up to 100.000 points, the cross is a time-limited shield making Rygar invincible for around 30 seconds. Other objects power his attack abilities up (vertical, longer and stronger attack). Enemies can be killed by hitting them with the razor disk. But we can also stun them by jumping on their head - but if we got the tiger-shaped power-up we'll even kill them with a jump! There's also a sort of "smart bomb" which kills every on-screen enemy.

The game hard part of the game is that it's not just a fight against the hell army. There are typical platform-style phases where we'll have to cross rivers and waterfalls by jumping on emerging rocks, climbing ropes inside of caves... always having lots of demons around! There's a wide variety of monsters: minotaurs, pterodactlys, rhinoceros, demons (they remind much the ones of Capcom's classic Ghosts'n Goblins), enormous toads, warrior giants, armored insects and... the final demon of course! You'll have to kill him in order to bring peace back to Earth and receive an ovation from Rygar's tribe: the world is free and the primitive populations will then be ready to... go and make war one each other again...

click me to read the
instructions manual

Ratings

PRESENTATION: 67%
Typical intro as most games from
the 80's: short demo and high score
table. Lots of infos about game.

GRAPHICS: 77%
Colourful and smart. Very nice
sprites, beautiful and simple (poor
sometimes) backgrounds.

SOUND: 69%
Not impressive both for
quality and variety. Few cool
sound effects though.

ORIGINALITY: 73%
An old, rusty concept
enriched by a few additions
you'll see while playing.

HOOKABILITY: 83%
How can you refuse playing such
classic game? It's attractive...

LASTABILITY: 73%
...but you won't find it
attractive for long time.

Here it is, a videogame where's no need to use your brains! You have to just jump and fight various creatures in an ancient era, probably earlier than the one of Rastan (the barbarian warrior created by Taito), who knows?
Nice introductory screen and presentation in general. Sprites and backgrounds are have been drawn with powerful colours, extremely likely to watch. Great animations too - technically speaking, Rygar is a great product. Soundtrack is nice but becomes boring quite soon, luckily there are great sound effects so let's say the whole is average.
The game is unfortunately ruined by its trivial game scheme: all stages look the same except for very few variants - which even become less interesting as game progresses...
Finally: an unpretentiously videogame nice to watch, hear and play - for some time at least!

Rygar is a very simple platform mix of action games but that does not mean it’s not a tasty game. The action is meaty and the player does not really get time to rest as each level requires a steady hand and quick trigger finger. While all this could be overkill, the game is very enjoyable to sit down and play for a few hours to beat those high scores - something that keeps me game playing. Tackling the various hordes of creatures brought out the monster in me and within minutes you are bashing thousands of the undead. The graphics are done well with small sprites bouncing around the screen with good if a little rough animation. The soundtrack thunders along to itself and is quite unnoticeable. Of course the game was built for a quick session and this is obvious but it is fun and had me hooked for a while. Rygar is a pure example of 80’s games and a neat one at that. Let's Fight!
 

The way remembrances often confuse our perceptions is quite odd... and when this happens with regards to one of the videogames I always had in my heart, well I have to say that after fifteen years my perceptions changed a lot! Tecnically speaking I admit Rygar is a first class videogame: perfectly drawn and designed graphics, flowing animations, enemies of various kinds, lots of touches of class in gameplay (stages with rope climbing especially), never boring soundtrack, perfect sound effects. But... well game is terribly hard! It's almost imposible to complete more than five levels with a single credit and, well what if you could ever do that? Would you find it funny? Gameplay is almost flat and tedious, and the only reason why you'll want to proceed is seeing some beautiful graphics in further levels...
I suggest you to try this game, it's a must-try for sure, but I hardly believe you'll have fun with it for more than thirty minutes.

Ladies and gentleman, we're standing in front of an authentic masterpiece coming from the 80's. I remember no other horizontal scrolling videogame having such features: it's excellent both for sounds and graphics. The gameplay structure is extremely simple, but designers have been able to transform it in an absolutely complete product.
Every enemy has their own features... there are lots of genres: some flying, some other walking, others coming from the underground. The game designer is a genius... I could stay here for hours and describe this masterpiece but I believe the best you can do is try it! I recommend it to every videogamer around the world!
And oh, I heard they recently released a remake on Sony Playstation. I have no idea whether it's a good game, but I believe it can't be better than this one!