Video game remake
A video game remake is a video game adapted from an earlier title for the purpose of modernizing a game for newer hardware and contemporary audiences. A remake of such game software shares the same title, fundamental gameplay concepts, core story elements of the original game. Remakes are made by the original developer or copyright holder, sometimes by the fan community. If created by the community, video game remakes are sometimes called fan game and can be seen as part of the retrogaming phenomenon. A remake offers a newer interpretation of an older work, characterized by changed assets. A remake maintains the same story and fundamental gameplay ideas of the original work; the intent of a remake is to take an older game that has become outdated and update it for a new platform and audience. A remake may include expanded stories to conform to the conventions of contemporary games or titles in the same series in order to make a game marketable to a new audience. For example, Sierra's 1991 remake of Space Quest, the developers used the engine, point-and-click interface, graphical style of Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and The Time Rippers, replacing the dated graphics and text parser interface of the original.
However, elements that had not become dated, like the narrative and sets, were preserved. Another example is Black Mesa, a Half-Life 2 mod that improves in-game textures and models, facial animations, while taking place in the events of the original Half-Life game. Games that use an existing brand but are conceptually different from the original, such as Battlezone and Defender or Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider are regarded as reboots rather than remakes. A port is a conversion of a game to a new platform that relies on existing work and assets. A port may include various enhancements like improved performance and sometimes additional content, but differs from a remake in that it still relies on the original assets and engine of the source game. A port that contains a great deal of remade assets may sometimes be considered a remastering or a partial remake, although video game publishers are not always clear on the distinction. In the early history of video games, remakes were regarded as "conversions" and associated with nostalgia.
Due to limited and highly divergent hardware, games appearing on multiple platforms had to be remade. These conversions included considerable changes to the graphics and gameplay, could be regarded retroactively as remakes, but are distinguished from remakes by intent. A conversion is created with the primary goal of tailoring a game to a specific piece of hardware contemporaneous or nearly contemporaneous with the original release. An early example was Gun Fight, Midway's 1975 reprogrammed version of Taito's arcade game Western Gun, with the main difference being the use of a microprocessor in the reprogrammed version, which allowed improved graphics and smoother animation than the discrete logic of the original. In 1980, Atari released the first licensed home console game conversion of an arcade title, Taito's 1978 hit Space Invaders, for the Atari 2600; the game became the first "killer app" for a video game console by quadrupling the system's sales. Since it became a common trend to port arcade games to home systems since the second console generation, though at the time they were more limited than the original arcade games due to the technical limitations of home consoles.
In 1985, Sega released a pair of arcade remakes of older home video games. Pitfall II: Lost Caverns was a remake of both the original Pitfall! and its sequel with new level layouts and colorful, detailed graphics. That same year, Sega adapted the 1982 computer game Choplifter for the arcades, taking the fundamental gameplay of the original and expanding it, adding new environments and gameplay elements; this version was successful, adapted to the Master System and Famicom. Both of these games were distinguished from most earlier conversions in that they took major liberties with the source material, attempting to modernize both the gameplay as well as the graphics; some of the earliest remakes to be recognized as such were attempts to modernize games to the standards of games in the series. Some were on the same platforms as the original, for example Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, a 1986 remake of the original that appeared on multiple platforms, including the Apple II, the same platform the source game originated on.
Other early remakes of this type include Sierra's early-1990s releases of King's Quest, Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. These games used the technology and interface of the most recent games in Sierra's series, original assets in a different style; the intent was not to bring the game to a new platform, but to modernize older games which had in various ways become dated. With the birth of the retrogaming phenomenon, remakes became a way for companies to revive nostalgic brands. Galaga'88 and Super Space Invaders'91 were both attempts to revitalize aging arcade franchises with modernized graphics and new gameplay elements, while preserving many signature aspects of the original games; the 16-bit generation of console games was marked by enhanced graphics compared to the previous generation, but relatively similar gameplay, which led to an increased interest in remakes of games from the previous generation. Super Mario All-Stars remade the entire NES Mario series, was met with great commercial success.
Remake compilations of the Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man se
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
Video game genre
A video game genre is a classification assigned to a video game based on its gameplay interaction rather than visual or narrative differences. A video game genre is defined by a set of gameplay challenges and are classified independently of their setting or game-world content, unlike other works of fiction such as films or books. For example, a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of when it takes place; as with nearly all varieties of genre classification, the matter of any individual video game's specific genre is open to personal interpretation. Moreover, each individual game may belong to several genres at once; the first attempt to classify different genres of video games was made by Chris Crawford in his book The Art of Computer Game Design in 1984. In this book, Crawford focused on the player's experience and activities required for gameplay. Here, he stated that "the state of computer game design is changing quickly. We would therefore expect the taxonomy presented to become obsolete or inadequate in a short time."
Since among other genres, the platformer and 3D shooter genres, which hardly existed at the time, have gained a lot of popularity. As hardware capabilities have increased, new genres have become possible, with examples being increased memory, the move from 2D to 3D, new peripherals and location. Though genres were just interesting for game studies in the 1980s, the business of video games expanded in the 1990s and both smaller and independent publishers had little chance of surviving; because of this, games settled more into set genres that larger publishers and retailers could use for marketing. Due to "direct and active participation" of the player, video game genres differ from literary and film genres. Though one could state that Space Invaders is a science-fiction video game, such a classification "ignores the differences and similarities which are to be found in the player's experience of the game." In contrast to the visual aesthetics of games, which can vary it is argued that it is interactivity characteristics that are common to all games.
Descriptive names of genres take into account the goals of the game, the protagonist and the perspective offered to the player. For example, a first-person shooter is a game, played from a first-person perspective and involves the practice of shooting; the term "subgenre" may be used to refer to a category within a genre to further specify the genre of the game under discussion. Whereas "shooter game" is a genre name, "first-person shooter" and "third-person shooter" are common subgenres of the shooter genre. Other examples of such prefixes are real-time, turn based, side-scrolling; the target audience, underlying theme or purpose of a game are sometimes used as a genre identifier, such as with "games for girls," games for cats,"Christian game" and "Serious game" respectively. However, because these terms do not indicate anything about the gameplay of a video game, these are not considered genres. Video game genres vary in specificity, with popular video game reviews using genre names varying from "action" to "baseball."
In this practice, basic themes and more fundamental characteristics are used alongside each other. A game may combine aspects of multiple genres in such a way that it becomes hard to classify under existing genres. For example, because Grand Theft Auto III combined shooting and roleplaying in an unusual way, it was hard to classify using existing terms. Since the term Grand Theft Auto clone has been used to describe games mechanically similar to Grand Theft Auto III; the term roguelike has been developed for games that share similarities with Rogue. Elements of the role-playing genre, which focuses on storytelling and character growth, have been implemented in many different genres of video games; this is because the addition of a story and character enhancement to an action, strategy or puzzle video game does not take away from its core gameplay, but adds an incentive other than survival to the experience. According to some analysts, the count of each broad genre in the best selling physical games worldwide is broken down as follows.
The most popular genres are Shooter, Role-playing and Sports, with Platformer and Racing having both declined in the last decade. Puzzle games have declined when measured by sales, however, on mobile, where the majority of games are free-to-play, this genre remains the most popular worldwide. List of video game genres
MSX
MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft on June 16, 1983. It was conceived and marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi vice-president at Microsoft Japan and director at ASCII Corporation. Nishi conceived the project as an attempt to create unified standards among various home computing system manufacturers of the period. MSX systems were popular in several other countries, it is difficult to determine how many MSX computers were sold worldwide, but 5 million MSX-based units were sold in Japan alone. Despite Microsoft's involvement, few MSX-based machines were released in the United States. Before the great success of Nintendo's Family Computer, MSX was the platform for which major Japanese game studios such as Konami and Hudson Soft produced video games; the Metal Gear series, for example, was first written for MSX hardware. The exact meaning of the "MSX" abbreviation remains a matter of debate. In 2001, Kazuhiko Nishi recalled that many assumed it was derived from "Microsoft extended", referring to the built-in Microsoft Extended BASIC adapted by Microsoft for the MSX system.
However, he said, the team's original definition was "Machines with Software eXchangeability". In the early 1980s, most home computers manufactured in Japan such as the NEC PC-6001 and PC-8000 series, Fujitsu's FM-7 and FM-8, Hitachi's Basic Master featured a variant of the Microsoft BASIC interpreter integrated into their on-board ROMs; the hardware design of these computers and the various dialects of their BASICs were incompatible. Other Japanese consumer electronics firms such as Panasonic, Casio, Yamaha and Sanyo were searching for ways to enter the new home computer market. Nishi proposed MSX as an attempt to create a single industry standard for home computers. Inspired by the success of VHS as a standard for video cassette recorders, many Japanese electronic manufacturers along with GoldStar and Spectravideo built and promoted MSX computers. Any piece of hardware or software with the MSX logo on it was compatible with MSX products of other manufacturers. In particular, the expansion cartridge form and function were part of the standard.
Nishi's standard was built around the Spectravideo SV-328 computer. The standard consisted of several off-the-shelf parts; this was a choice of components, shared by many other home computers and games consoles of the period, such as the ColecoVision home computer, the Sega SG-1000 video game system. To reduce overall system cost, many MSX models used a custom IC known as "MSX-Engine", which integrated glue logic, 8255 PPI, YM2149 compatible soundchip and more, sometimes the Z80 CPU; however all MSX systems used a professional keyboard instead of a chiclet keyboard, driving the price up compared to the original SV-328. These components alongside Microsoft's MSX BASIC made the MSX a competitive, though somewhat expensive, home computer package. On 27 June 1983, the MSX was formally announced during a press conference, a slew of big Japanese firms declared their plans to introduce machines; the Japanese companies avoided the intensely competitive U. S. home computer market, in the throes of a Commodore-led price war.
Only Spectravideo and Yamaha marketed MSX machines in the U. S. Spectravideo's MSX enjoyed little success, Yamaha's CX5M model, built to interface with various types of MIDI equipment, was billed more as a digital music tool than a standard personal computer. During the 1980s, Europe became the largest computer games market in the world, the popular Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, Sinclair ZX Spectrum computers dominated. By the time the MSX was launched in Europe, several more popular 8-bit home computers had arrived, it was far too late to capture the crowded European 8-bit computer market. A problem for some game software developers was that the method by which MSX-1 computers addressed their video RAM could be quite slow compared to systems that gave direct access to the video memory. This, the fact that the different features the MSX-1's video chip had to compensate for the slower video access were not efficiently used while porting software, made the MSX-1 appear slower when running ported games.
Some minor compatibility issues plagued ported Spectrum games. For example, the Toshiba HX-10 machine was unable to read certain key combinations at the same time, preventing the Spectrum "standard" of "Q, A, O, P steering", whereas machines by other manufacturers worked fine. Games tended to use the MSX-1 joystick port or used MSX's official arrow keys and space bar, or offered the option to choose other keys with which to control the program, solving the problem. A larger problem was that the designers of the MSX standard bank switching protocol did not prescribe to hardware manufacturers in which banks the cartridges and, more the RAM should be found. Moreover, the MSX's BIOS did not provide this information either, thus requiring programmers to implement complex routines to "find" these resources. Pr
North America
North America is a continent within the Northern Hemisphere and all within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16.5% of the earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, the fourth by population after Asia and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population, if nearby islands are included. North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge 40,000 to 17,000 years ago; the so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago. The Classic stage spans the 6th to 13th centuries.
The Pre-Columbian era ended in 1492, the transatlantic migrations—the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery and the Early Modern period. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants. Owing to the European colonization of the Americas, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, their culture reflects Western traditions; the Americas are accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a world map, in which he placed the word "America" on the continent of South America, in the middle of what is today Brazil, he explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio:... ab Americo inventore... quasi Americi terram sive Americam.
For Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespucci's name, but in its feminine form "America", following the examples of "Europa", "Asia" and "Africa". Other mapmakers extended the name America to the northern continent, In 1538, Gerard Mercator used America on his map of the world for all the Western Hemisphere; some argue that because the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries, the derivation from "Amerigo Vespucci" could be put in question. In 1874, Thomas Belt proposed a derivation from the Amerrique mountains of Central America. Marcou corresponded with Augustus Le Plongeon, who wrote: "The name AMERICA or AMERRIQUE in the Mayan language means, a country of perpetually strong wind, or the Land of the Wind, and... the can mean... a spirit that breathes, life itself." The United Nations formally recognizes "North America" as comprising three areas: Northern America, Central America, The Caribbean.
This has been formally defined by the UN Statistics Division. The term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with context. In Canadian English, North America refers to the land mass as a whole consisting of Mexico, the United States, Canada, although it is ambiguous which other countries are included, is defined by context. In the United States of America, usage of the term may refer only to Canada and the US, sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands. In France, Portugal, Romania and the countries of Latin America, the cognates of North America designate a subcontinent of the Americas comprising Canada, the United States, Mexico, Greenland, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, Bermuda. North America has been referred to by other names. Spanish North America was referred to as Northern America, this was the first official name given to Mexico. Geographically the North American continent has many subregions; these include cultural and geographic regions. Economic regions included those formed by trade blocs, such as the North American Trade Agreement bloc and Central American Trade Agreement.
Linguistically and culturally, the continent could be divided into Latin America. Anglo-America includes most of Northern America and Caribbean islands with English-speaking populations; the southern North American continent is composed of two regions. These are the Caribbean; the north of the continent maintains recognized regions as well. In contrast to the common definition of "North America", which encompasses the whole continent, the term "North America" is sometimes used to refer only to Mexico, the United States, Greenland; the term Northern America refers to the northern-most countries and territories of North America: the United States, Bermuda, St. Pierre and Miquelon and Greenland. Although the term does not refer to a unifie
Sega
Sega Games Co. Ltd. is a Japanese multinational video game developer and publisher headquartered in Tokyo. The company known as Sega Enterprises Ltd. and Sega Corporation, is a subsidiary of Sega Holdings Co. Ltd., part of Sega Sammy Holdings. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega of Europe, are headquartered in Irvine and London. Sega's arcade division, once part of Sega Corporation, has existed as Sega Interactive Co. Ltd. a Sega Holdings subsidiary, since 2015. The company was founded by Martin Bromley as Nihon Goraku Bussan on June 3, 1960, which became known as Sega Enterprises, Ltd. after acquiring Rosen Enterprises, an importer of coin-operated games. Sega developed its first coin-operated game with Periscope in the late 1960s. In 1969, Sega was sold to Western Industries. Following a downturn in the arcade business in the early 1980s, Sega began to develop video game consoles, starting with the SG-1000 and Master System, but struggled against competitors such as the Nintendo Entertainment System.
In 1984, Sega executives David Rosen and Hayao Nakayama led a management buyout of the company with backing from CSK Corporation. Sega released its next console, the Sega Genesis, in 1988. Although it was a distant third in Japan, the Genesis found major success after the release of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 and outsold its main competitor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, in the U. S; however in the decade, Sega suffered commercial failures such as the 32X, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast consoles. In 2001, Sega stopped manufacturing consoles to become a third-party developer and publisher, was acquired by Sammy Corporation in 2004. In the years since the acquisition, Sega has been more profitable, but has been criticized for prioritizing quantity of game releases over quality. Sega produces multi-million-selling game franchises including Sonic the Hedgehog, Total War, Yakuza, is the world's most prolific arcade game producer, it operates amusement arcades and produces other entertainment products, including Sega Toys.
Sega is a subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings, a corporate conglomerate with over 60 individual subsidiaries. In 1940, American businessmen Martin Bromley, Irving Bromberg, James Humpert formed Standard Games in Honolulu, Hawaii, to provide coin-operated amusement machines to military bases, they saw that the increase in military personnel with the onset of World War II would create demand for entertainment at military bases. After the war, the founders sold Standard Games and established a new distributor, Service Games, named for the military focus. In 1951, the United States government outlawed slot machines in US territories, so in 1952 Bromley sent two employees, Richard Stewart and Ray LeMaire, to Tokyo to establish a new distributor; the company provided coin-operated slot machines to U. S. bases in Japan, by 1953 had changed its name to Service Games of Japan. The name Sega, an abbreviation of Service Games, was first used in 1954 on the Diamond Star Machine, a slot machine. On May 31, 1960, Service Games of Japan was dissolved.
On June 3, Bromley established two companies to take over its business activities: Nihon Goraku Bussan and Nihon Kikai Seizō. Kikai Seizō focused on manufacturing Sega machines, while Goraku Bussan served as a distributor and operator of coin-operated machines jukeboxes; the two companies merged in 1964. In 1954, David Rosen, an American officer in the United States Air Force stationed in Japan, launched a two-minute photo booth business in Tokyo; this company became Rosen Enterprises, in 1957 began importing coin-operated games to Japan. In 1965, Nihon Goraku Bussan acquired Rosen Enterprise to form Sega Enterprises, Ltd. Rosen was installed as the CEO and managing director. Shortly afterward, Sega stopped leasing to military bases and moved its focus from slot machines to become a publicly traded company of coin-operated amusement machines, its imports included Rock-Ola jukeboxes, pinball games by Williams, gun games by Midway Manufacturing. Because Sega imported second-hand machines that required maintenance, Sega began the transition from importer to manufacturer by constructing replacement guns and flippers for its imported games.
According to former Sega director Akira Nagai, this led to Sega developing their own games as well. The first electromechanical game Sega manufactured was the submarine simulator game Periscope, released worldwide in the late 1960s; the game sported light and sound effects considered innovative, was successful in Japan. It was placed in malls and department stores, it cost 25 cents per play in the United States. Sega was surprised by the success, for the next two years produced and exported between eight and ten games per year. Despite this, rampant piracy in the industry would lead to Sega stepping away from exporting its games. In order to advance the company, Rosen had a goal to take the company public, decided this would be easier to accomplish in the United States than in Japan. Rosen was advised that this would be easiest accomplished by Sega being acquired by a larger company. In 1969, Sega was sold to American conglomerate Gulf and Western Industries, although Rosen remained CEO following the sale.
Rosen continued to develop his relationship with Gulf and Western chairman Charles Bluhdorn, in 1974 Gulf and Western made Sega Enterprises, Ltd. a subsidiary of an American company renamed Sega Enterprises, Inc. Sega released Pong-Tron, its first video-based game, in 1973. Despite late competition from Taito's hit arcade game Space Invaders in 1978, Sega prospered from the arcade gam
Hydlide
Hydlide is a 1984 open world action role-playing video game developed and published by T&E Soft. It was released for the NEC PC-6001 and PC-8801 computers in 1984, in Japan only. A Nintendo Famicom version was first released under the name Hydlide Special on March 18, 1986 in Japan; the game sold 2 million copies across all platforms. On April 28, 1995, a remake was released for the Sega Saturn under the title Virtual Hydlide, both in Japan and western countries. In the kingdom of Fairyland, three magic jewels were enshrined in the palace to maintain peace in the kingdom. One day, an evil man stole one of the three magic jewels. Without the third jewel, the two remaining jewels lost their magic sparkle; the magic spell that sealed the power of Varalys, the most vicious demon in the kingdom, was broken. During the turmoil which followed, the last two jewels were stolen. Varalys cast a special magic on Princess Ann, turning her into three fairies, hid her somewhere in the kingdom, he let loose a horde of monsters across the land and became the ruler of the kingdom.
The young knight Jim took action to restore peace in the kingdom. He bravely made his way into the wilderness in full armor to fight the monsters... The game was created by T&E Soft's Tokohiro Naito, his idea behind Hydlide was to mix together RPG elements into a new "action RPG" genre. He was inspired by The Tower of Druaga and The Black Onyx, but said that The Black Onyx was not a direct influence, as Hydlide's design leans more towards action rather than role-playing. Hydlide took The Tower of Druaga formula to a colorful open world, added RPG mechanics. Naito noted that he was unaware of Western role-playing games like Ultima and Wizardry when he was developing Hydlide, as he had never used the Apple II before, he said that he only became aware of two other Japanese action RPG projects, Dragon Slayer and Courageous Perseus, while reading a magazine during Hydlide's development, was shocked to find that Hydlide was not the only attempt at the concept. He underestimated Dragon Slayer but felt threatened by Courageous Perseus, believing the latter to be more visually impressive.
Hydlide was well-received and considered an innovator when released in Japan back in 1984. Hydlide was one of the first action role-playing games, along with Courageous Perseus and Dragon Slayer. Hydlide was an early open world game, rewarding exploration in an open world environment, it had the ability to switch between attack mode and defense mode, quick save and load options which can be used at any moment of the game, the introduction of a health regeneration mechanic where health regenerates when standing still. It sold 2 million copies in Japan, including 1 million for home computers and 1 million for the Famicom console, it was the first computer game to receive a Platinum award from Toshiba EMI for a million sales. However, it failed to capture the same attention beyond Japan; the game was influential including titles such as Ys. For example, Ys uses a similar health-regeneration mechanic; the recharging health mechanic first introduced by Hydlide in 1984 would, decades become a common mechanic used in many video games, including shooter games such as Halo.
Hydlide's open world game design inspired Hideo Kojima, who designed Metal Gear Solid V so that it captures the open-world feel he felt when he first played Hydlide on PC. PlatinumGames director Hideki Kamiya was inspired by the Hydlide series, which he cited as an influence on Scalebound, an open world action RPG. Hydlide was released outside of Japan through the European release of the MSX version. Beyond that, 1989 saw the release of a localization of Hydlide Special for the NES titled Hydlide itself. Unlike Dragon Quest 1, improved upon for its US localization, Hydlide was left unaltered beyond minor changes to the title screen and some prompts/messages, it received a negative reception compared unfavorably to The Legend of Zelda, which had improved upon Hydlide. The NES version of Hydlide became notorious in the West for its repetitive background music that bears similarity to John Williams' Indiana Jones theme or Disney's It's a Small World After All; the repetitive nature is because it is one of only two NROM RPG/adventure games for the Famicom/NES.
Hydlide had several follow-ups: Hydlide II: Shine of Darkness was released for the NEC PC-8801 in 1985 and ported to the MSX in Japan. An official English version was released through the Dutch MSX games distribution platform WOOMB.net in late 2006, the first official release outside Japan. The game introduced a morality meter, where the player can be aligned with Normal, or Evil. Killing humans or good monsters lowers the player's morality, while fighting evil monsters increases it. If the player has an evil alignment, the townsfolk will ignore the player, denying access to certain clues, dialogues and training; the game introduced a time option, allowing the player to speed up or slow down the gameplay. Hydlide 3: The Space
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