A highly influential and popular Japanese arcade game that helped launch action RPGs, a sense of community and teamwork in arcades themselves, and has been completely misunderstood elsewhere.
Thanks for covering this! I grew up with this game, as far as I can remember nearly 20 years it's been (I was probably about 5 years old) played it on my PlayStation. It's such an amazing game, yet underrated story but the deeper you go the more you understand its lore. Hard to believe it's been 40 years since its release and to this very day I'm still supporting it, I try to get my hands on as much "rare" merchandise as possible, including any re-releases of the original game and its sequels.
Apart from being the Action-RPG title that it is, it's no wonder how Namco continues to take inspiration and put that into their modern games such as Elden Ring and Dark Souls like you said, even if they haven't made any remakes or revivals, but hopefully something comes up - I'd imagine Namco brings it back so that both returning players and newcomers try out their newer version on this game, even if it doesn't happen, I won't give up my hopes just yet, maybe a museum compilation like they did with Pac-Man Museum+ then perhaps more people would appreciate this game.
It'd be nice to get at least the mainline games in one place, but I imagine it'd stay in Japan. Who knows, though, they bothered to release the anime subbed and dubbed, so maybe someday.
You ever considered looking at it's brother game Dragon Buster. It was just as influential for being not just an ARPG, but an action game with an expansive moveset. It's also still fun to play today.
I hadn't realized that already reached Arcade Archives! I have the Famicom sequel in one of those Namco Museum Archive collections, but hadn't tried the original yet. I'll get to it at some point for sure.
Thanks for covering this! I grew up with this game, as far as I can remember nearly 20 years it's been (I was probably about 5 years old) played it on my PlayStation. It's such an amazing game, yet underrated story but the deeper you go the more you understand its lore. Hard to believe it's been 40 years since its release and to this very day I'm still supporting it, I try to get my hands on as much "rare" merchandise as possible, including any re-releases of the original game and its sequels.
Apart from being the Action-RPG title that it is, it's no wonder how Namco continues to take inspiration and put that into their modern games such as Elden Ring and Dark Souls like you said, even if they haven't made any remakes or revivals, but hopefully something comes up - I'd imagine Namco brings it back so that both returning players and newcomers try out their newer version on this game, even if it doesn't happen, I won't give up my hopes just yet, maybe a museum compilation like they did with Pac-Man Museum+ then perhaps more people would appreciate this game.
It'd be nice to get at least the mainline games in one place, but I imagine it'd stay in Japan. Who knows, though, they bothered to release the anime subbed and dubbed, so maybe someday.
You ever considered looking at it's brother game Dragon Buster. It was just as influential for being not just an ARPG, but an action game with an expansive moveset. It's also still fun to play today.
I hadn't realized that already reached Arcade Archives! I have the Famicom sequel in one of those Namco Museum Archive collections, but hadn't tried the original yet. I'll get to it at some point for sure.
Hey look what I did https://retroxp.substack.com/p/its-new-to-me-dragon-buster