Well, it was the year 1987 (ehr... not the year of this story) when Taito published this game. The competition was ferocious: the same year such impressive games as Double Dragon, Contra and Rainbow Islands were also released... Rastan would have been forgotten quite quickly in case it had nothing special. You might say "OK, where is the news?".... well the news is that Rastan has nothing particular but it is still recollected as one of the best videogames from the "golden age" (1983-1989).
But let's begin the actual review.

You role a classic fashioned barbarian, having lot of muscles and a very masculine fur-skirt. Being as every respectable barbarian, you also own a sword.
If you watch at the demo mode, you'll see an old king on his throne, who tells you a story. Well that is the end of the real story: you'll role the old king in his youth (a very troubled youth) and you will cover the steps that made him become a king. Those steps include killing lots of mythological creatures (lizards, chimeras, medusas, devils and, least but not last, dragons) and survive across a series of artificial and natural barriers (waterfalls, rolling stones, lava pits and so on) using ropes (like Harry Pitfall also did), chains and so on.

During your journey you can collect new weapons (axes, warhammers and powerful fire-swords) and powerups (shields, cloaks, and armors) in order to reduce enemies' attack power. There are also medicine and poisons that increase/decrease you life gauge; the golden aries restores all health; the ring speeds up your weapon attacks, and jewels are worth some bonus points. There is also the misterious rod... I still don't understand the purpose of that powerup...
Sometimes you'll also find a few little puzzles, like fake rocks that can be destroyed and allow you to access different paths. The suggestion is to follow the alternate paths whenever you find any, since you'll probably find new weapons... and bats. Those nasty beasts are very troublesome and hard to kill.

Rastan is a classic horizontal scrolling fighting game, and it's composed of six stages. Each one is split into two main segments: the first one in open spaces and the second one inside the boss' castle. You'll have to fight and kill the boss in order to complete level. There's no time limit, but if you don't hurry up, a storm of small bats will appear and force you to co on.
Speaking of the technical degree of the game, I have to say that it features a lot of graphics resources: each character is accurate and well designed. All the open spaces levels has a nice parallax scrolling background, even though it's not that accurate on sometime.
The inner castle levels are boring, each one is similar to its predecessor, just having slightly different maps and enemies.

Each time your character dies, you'll restart restart from the most recently reached logical location. There are four logical locations per each open spaces stage, and two for the internal ones.
The sound fits the game, though it's not that impressive. There are two tunes: one for the open spaces stages and one for the internal ones.
So why this game is so popular? I don't really know. All I know is that it's very hard, especially the first times you playe it: enemies never leave you quiet for a single moment; jumps must be accurate in order to succeeding avoiding holes; it's also impossible to complete a level still having a powered weapon in their own hands (the fire-sword is the best one).

The logical locations management is sometimes exhausting: it's hard to restart a stage from a far position when you've reached advanced places (maybe after overcoming some difficult parts of the stage). But as you get more skilled, you'll find Rastan is a erally good game. For example, after one or two playings, you'll be skilled enough to complete the first level without even lose one life, and when you'll understand the correct timing for jumps, you'll find that pits and waterfalls are not that dangerous.
Finally, Rastan is a good game, not so good to reach the Heaven of arcade, but not so bad to be thrown in the hell of the same...