Back off man, I'm a SCIENTIST: Let's Play... CRYSTALIS

In the halls of Zelda-esque (Zeldesque, as I call them) games on the NES, a few titles stand out, for good or ill. Certainly the Zelda games themselvesare held in high regard, and there are those who speak of Willow or The Magic of Sheherazade in hushed tones. Precious few people regard Deadly Towers with anything short of blood-chilling disregard. I am seemingly the only one who liked Hydlide. But there is one that is consistantly near the top of everyones list for the sub-genre: SNKs Crystalis!

Released in 1990, not long before the SNES came out and gave everyone a good case of the razzle-dazzle, and before they decided to only release games starring ferreous gastropods and puglistic royalty, SNK put out this little number. It starred an action-scientist out to save the world from various evils. Usually by sticking a sword into the head of the offending... err... offender. Sadly, despite it being loved by damn near everyone who played it, SNK never followed it up with anything, nor did they include it it in any compilation of their older games. There was a Gameboy Color port released about a decade later, but that was made by Nintendo. And it was a pretty crummy port (the game part is still good, however But I'll elaborate on this later). But I am getting ahead of myself. Ladies, gentlemen, hyperintelligent shades of blue, and all points inbetween I give you... CRYSTALIS!








Okay, that's a bit heavy for an NES game from 1990. Seems that humanity pretty much wiped itself out one day in 1997, and in so doing, caused a massive polar shift. From the debris, a bunch of right-minded scientists built a huge-ass floating tower to "oppress evil forever". Whatever that means. It is probably something decidedly unpleasant for everybody, not just evil people.

Now, if I recall my Discovery Channel watching correctly, I think that the Earths poles shifting over the course of one day would probably rip the planet to pieces. Not reduce (most of) humanity to the middle ages and cause wild mutations to occur. And there would certainly not be enough people left behind who have the means to build a flying tower. And, on that note, even without an apocalypse, I don't think that 1997 technology was sufficient to build a flying tower. Let alone one capable of arbitrarily opressing an abstract concept. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief on all this however. This time.

Anyhoo, let's press Start and get this wreck a rollin'!

Chapter 1: Welcome... to THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!




You can't tell by static screens, but that sequence had some pretty nice animation. I will let it slide that 100 years is probably not enough time to society to completely rebuild itself, let alone a vast amount of new genomes to form for practically every organism on the planet. And, on that note, precious little of the planet was actually dealt any particularly noticeable damage from the cataclysm. Let's assume that they dropped off a zero or two from the length of time. 1-10 thousand years is a bit more acceptable for the world as we see it.



After the nice little intro which re-iterates that, whatever that tower is supposed to do, it is not good, we see a computer boot up and ask us to name our character. Let's do this by my usual method of streaming consciousness: As I look around me, the first thing I see if my DVD rack, which is prominently displaying a Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD. And one of my favorite episodes of MST3K is...



Ladies and gentlemen; our silent protagonst and savior of the world: SANTA CLAUS! (If this bothers you, just pretend this is an anachronistic Lets Play Christmas Special)

Santa is appropriate, because April 1st has been Christmas on this board today!

- Eddie

Emerging from his cryogenic slumber, Santa takes stock of the situation:



Santa has no weapons, no armor, no items, no money, 48 HP and 34 MP. He also has no memories of anything extending past when he was thawed out of the machine. All he knows is his name. He is ready to piece together the means to SAVE THIS WORLD! But not so much from within a cryogenic storage cavern, so he heads out.



And as soon as Santa Claus leaves the Storage Room, the entrance collapses. And, frightened by the Jolly Elf and cave-in a passerby leaps STRAIGHT INTO THE SKY and runs off. Don't be afraid of Santa, brown-clad man! Santa will give you toys! Anyway, the man runs off to the west, and Santa gives chase. Santa is quite speedy, it should be noted. No wonder he can go across the whole world in one night!



Okay, a bustling town about 4 feet from out of a cave containing a man from a bygone era. Neat.



The brown clad man has calmed down quite a bit from seeing Santa come out of an exploding cavern. He fills us in on the local scuttle-butt in regards to a man named Zebu being dissatisfied with the Lighthouse attendants sleeping habits. Perhaps we should track down this Mr. Zebu for clarification on the matter! There's a house right behind the Brown Man, let's see if Zebu is in there.





It's not Zebu, but it IS the Village Elder. And he is pretty pleased to see me. So pleased, in fact, that he hands over a legendary sword "to defeat evil". Usually Santa uses coal on the naughty, not swords. But Santa is nothing if not gracious when receving deadly implements.



The combat in Crystalis is nothing particularly unique for the genre, but it is more to it then in the Zeldas; by tapping the B button, Santa stabs out with his sword, but you can hold in the button to build a charge for a long-range attack. As you progress through the game, you get treasures that upgrade the amount of charges your Sword can hold at once, boosting the damage and having enviromental effects. You also get different swords with unique abilities. This being the un-upgraded first sword, it can do nothing more then fire a single wimpy bullet. Maaaaaaan.

The house next to the Village Elder has an old man who gives me money, courtesy of Zebu. I haven't even met the guy and he's already my favorite NPC!



Now that Santas purse is fat with a crisp $100 bill, he heads to the Armor Shop, as he emerged from Cryo-Stasis with nothing more then the shirt on his back. And the pants on his rump. The shop offers some Tanned Hide armor and a Carapace Shield. The Armor costs a bit more, But neither piece of equipment is any better then the other. He buys the Armor anyway, so he will feel less naked.



Not that he can afford anything in there, but Santa also heads into the Item Shop, just to see what is available:
Medical Herb: Which restores a bit of HP
Antidote Herb: Which heals the poison status
Warp Boots: Warps to any previously visited town
Alarm Flute: Wakes up sleeping people



Well, that's all there is in the town of Leaf. So lets head out... into the WORLD!

MORE AS IT DEVELOPS!

God I love this game.

I love it so much I bought a copy, but it was pretty torn up and the label on the front was in bad shape, so I bought another copy which looks much nicer.

Then I gave the other copy away to someone I didn't even know, because spreading Crystalis love is guaranteed to get you into Heaven.

Also I named my Warcraft character after this game.

Santa's front sprite looks like he's gonna keep on truckin'.

Crystalis was the first LP I wanted to do (it's my favorite game!) but you're doing a much better job of it than I would have. My only request is that you show how you can skip getting the Fog Lamp by using the warp trick.

*GLEE*

that is all, please continue my cephalopedic friend!

Octopus Prime is good people. This perhaps my favorite 8 bit video game and the only one I've ever made a point to play through often, playing it once a year for nearly 10 years. I don't really do that anymore, perhaps I should make an exception this year...

Oh shit yeah. One of my favorite NES games, and I couldn't even figure out how to play it for years because I didn't understand the concept of experience points.

Be sure to include more disparaging comments about the GBC version!

Oh god the music

Crystalis LP now? Oh God, I wish this'd hit Virtual Console. I still consider it one of the best overhead adventure RPGs on the NES. Shame the only other release it's seen was where NST adapted it to Game Boy Color but then threw a cowpie on it in the process. -.-;

Oh God, the GBC version.

I remember buying that thinking I could finally play through the game since my NES had bitten the dust at that point. I could only get a few hours in before the music just killed it for me.

As James Rolfe has expressed so many times before: What where they THINKING?!

I still have the GBC cart. If I turn my head enough from this position I can just barely see it. I'm giving it the stink eye right now.

I somehow don't remember hating the port. But my younger brother left his Game Boy Color at the hotel during the vacation I played it, so I guess I blame the game.

Santa is known to be proficient with weapons. I mean, look at the folks he grew up with

Hell yes, I love this game. When I was a young lad I used to go to a friend's house almost every day just to watch him play through Crystalis. We spent the rest of our time designing games named Chrysalis and Crystalist and Crystal Quest, which were totally not ripoffs.

I am listening to Crystalis.nsf as I read this. The tune for the opening movie is one of my favourites.
It took a while to figure out what you meant by ferrous gastropod, but then pugilistic royalty made sense too. I am most entertained.

Is there a behind the scenes look at the Rankin-Bass TV specials somewhere out there? I remember Santa Claus is Coming to Town's credits being full of Japanese names, and that scene's pretty clearly of the same stock as their Japanese-animated cartoon stuff, like The Hobbit and Thundercats.

Now maybe it's just decade-old memories talking, but I don't recall the GBC one being that bad.

Sure, the screen was blurry and it was cropped so close that you couldn't see anything around Santa, and the new intro looked like crap, and they changed the plot for the worse, and the music was awful... but it was still fun to play!

And I always had my GBCs speaker muted anyway.

If any good came from the remake, it's that the enemies and bosses weren't invincible if your level was too low.

This was quite possibly my favorite NES game. A Story about a guy and his Caves before it was cool.

<equips geologist hat>

There's actually a theory out there that suggests the earth's rotation shifted by about 90 degrees in a relatively short period of time. It's called "true polar wander" and is often affiliated with the more well known "snowball earth" hypothesis. Maybe Crystalis is really set in the Neoproterozoic?

this is one of my favorite games, based solely on the awesome nintendo power coverage alone. that it's a fun game on top of that is merely icing on the cake.

Do who in the what now?
The farthest I ever played on a rental was where you get to ride on a Dolphin

Man, I'm going to steal from Brick's view of FFIII, but this is a game I wish I had when I was a kid. I would have played the SHIT out of it. But every time I play it now, I get bogged down on trying to grind or getting lost or something else that's a side effect of the game's age. Looking forward to seeing the end of it for once!

Chapter 2: Things Just Happen to People who don't drink Willikins!

Please ignore the large lines going through some of the screen shots. I was having emulator troubles.



Just outside the town, Santa comes across his first naughty piece of work: a slime. Slimes, being the prototypical starting monster in an RPG, are almost totally harmless. It squishes about, to and fro, just waiting for St. Nick to hasten the creatures exit from the mortal coil. His efforts are rewarded with a coin and a single experience point. 29 more and he reaches level 2!



There is also a were-tiger. Which is twice as powerful as a Slime, and gives twice as much money... but that is all there is in the fields outside of Leaf.



While slaughtering the local wildlife, Santa comes across a cave. Being no stranger to spelunking, he hops on down.



Hey! The cave is where Zebu lives! Apparently, whoever he is, he knew of Santa and what Santa aims to do. Which is awfully clever of him since Santa has no idea what is expected of him. Other then the vague "Defeat evil" and slightly less vague "Deliver presents to good boys and girls". But that latter point is non-canon as far as the game is concerned. Anyhoo, Zebu will help me more if I can wake up that Windmill guard. Which will be gladly done, once we find the stupid guy.



Besides Zebu, the cave also has a wall made of Ice. This MAY VERY WELL be important later. But right now? It's just a nuisance! So annoying that Santa is going to leave the man,and find himself a bridge and just... just cross it



What a lucky coincidence that there happened to be a bridge nearby. And there was also a cave on the other side. I wonder whats inside it?



The cave contains a sleeping man. Who is dressed in the same color as the cave. He is camoflaged so nobody knows that he is napping! What a tricky individual.



And the other end of the tunnel has a windmill. Which means that the sleeping man is the Windmill Guard! What a shocking twist this is!

The nappy man won't respond to Santa poking him, kicking him, clapping his hands really close to his ears or saying "Hey... HEY! Hey, are you awake?". Hmm... was there any other way to wake people up?

Oh yeah! That's handy! Thank you, Recollection!



On his way back to Leaf to buy the Alarm Flute, Santa hits Level 2! Which bequeaths a tiny stat boost! Awesome times in the world of Crystalis!



Well, it cost Santa almost every penny he had, but Santa bought himself a Whistle. good for him!

A firm 'toot' wakes the narcoleptic guard right up! That'll teach him to loaf on the job! Besides telling Santa about an awesome little doohickey that is inside a nearby cave, The Windmill Guard gives us a key to activate the Windmill which is promptly done...



And the energy generated from the windmill is promptly channeled into a hillside; making it explode spectacularly? WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!



And, fulfilling his end of the bargain, Zebu teaches Santa the healing spell 'Refresh' as a reward for waking up the inattentive guard. Usually Santa gives gifts to other people, so this whole experience has been very unique for him! Now, it would appear that the next place that Santa should head is that cave, to find that thingy that the Guard mentioned.

...buuuuuut that cave is probably stuffed full of SUPER SCARY monsters. So Santa opts to wander around the field, killing Weretigers and slimes until he can afford that shield.

You're the best...



Arou~ound



No one is ever going



To keep you down



All right, while getting enough money to buy both pieces of armor, and afford a stay in the inn to restore MP and HP, Santa hits level 3! Now he's strong enough to kill Weretigers in a single blow! Let's go spelunk us a cave!

I think I might need to get this game if it ever shows up on VC!

I kind of want to bust my old cart out and see how far I got the last time I played this ... but I'm pretty sure the battery couldn't have held my save for this long, and I don't want to be saddened. Maybe after I'm done with Earthbound I'll put this on my Dingoo and try to beat it on the go.