Hidden Gem; Hangover Edition

Hidden Gem is the name of a "series" of posts where I will share some of the games mostly from, but not limited to, the older days of gaming. These titles aren't necessarily going to be that hidden, but whenever I talk about these titles... no-one really seems to know these games.

Disclaimer: These ARE NOT "underrated" games by any means, I just wanna bring some of these games into the light so others can - if they want - go back and relive some of my personal favourites.

So while I just sit here waiting for the hangover to pass... I might as well share a little hidden gem with you:

The Battle of Olympus

NES

(September 26, 1991)

This is a guilty pleasure for me, reason being is that this was the first adventure game I played as a kid and I can tell you that at the time... I didn't know what the actual fuck was going on :P

As most of you "retro-gamers" probably already noticed, yes, this is a Zelda II clone (for better or worse). The same physics are here, the combat system is slightly broken compared to Zelda II in the sense that there are no pause frames between attacks so the only thing holding you back from completely spamming the attack button the the small wind up time (1 frame I think) before you actually attack, BUT there's so much more to do in this compared to Zelda II. There are more upgrades than it's "predecessor", the world is more structured, no more bullshit overhead random battle shit, but there's a fairly huge down side to all of this... grinding. Now I know that Zelda II also had it's grinding in terms of levels, but you sort of gained those levels "automatically" as you played, atleast compared to this game.

The grinding needed in this game is collecting olives that you need in order to gain the favour of some gods, what I mean by that is that you trade these olives for items and weapons. Granted that there aren't too many instances where whatever item/weapon you get from the gods are crucial to your progress, personally I think that it's the biggest thing holding this game back from being a really excellent game.

Just to give you a quick rundown of the story; it's a "spin-off" of the story of Orpheus and his quest to retrieve his love Eurydice from the underworld... except that the canon name of his love is this game is Helene... don't ask, I don't know. Either way, you start in Arcadia with no direct instructions whatsoever (real quick, the first thing you have to do is find and visit Zeus) and so you're left to find your own path to success. As you go along your way, you'll fight a bunch of monsters from Greek mythology and just to name a few: Cyclops, Cerberus, the Sisters of Fate, Hydra and many more. Along the way you find materialised love from Helene in the form of hearts (I think ??) which serve as letters from her to you and these hearts are needed in order to enter the underworld.

The biggest problem I have with this game is the same as almost everyone has with Castlevania II, although is a lot more forgiving in this game. If and when you die, you get a choice of either continuing or retrying, if you choose 'Continue' you'll respawn at the door where you enter your current area, but you lose half of your olives and this really sucks once you get to the mountains of Phthia. If you choose 'Retry' you'll be sent back to the last place you saved a.k.a visited a god (speaking of saving, this game doesn't have a save function in the same way as Zelda II, it uses the goddamn password system and holy flippin' hell it's one the longest password system I've ever seen!!) BUT you'll keep all of your olives so it's this sort of risk vs. reward thing. Do you either continue and press on with the hope of finding olives along the way and in that way compensating the ones you've lost, or do you keep choosing retry and possibly getting stuck at a place where you continuously keep fucking up and dying because your health is always too low for the damage boost you need ??

When all's said and done, it's a very satisfying game. When you get stuck at a boss and finally beat it, you feel as though you truly overcame the challenge. Do yourself a favour, get this game if you find it on e-bay or somewhere, shove it into your NES and have the love-hate journey of your life .

Remember to stay awesome, TAG signing out! :)