XP Arcade: The Return of Ishtar

The sequel to The Tower of Druaga went in a very different direction, and is even lesser known outside of Japan.

This column is “XP Arcade,” in which I’ll focus on a game from the arcades, or one that is clearly inspired by arcade titles, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Bandai Namco is a huge company in the video game industry, one that’s been around for decades. The Namco side is even responsible for significant amounts of the early growth and popularity of it, and they’ve even done an excellent job of keeping their own extensive history alive in the present. It’s a little stunning to think, then, that there are Namco games for which there is just no footprint whatsoever outside of Japan. The Tower of Druaga is one such title: despite being massively popular in Japan, despite directly leading to the development of plenty of games that the west does know and love, despite being able to draw a direct line from Druaga to a modern-day game of the year candidate like Elden Ring, The Tower of Druaga remains mostly an unknown quantity outside of its origin country, an oddity whose history of success is confusing to many who come into contact with it.

You can imagine how little is known outside of Japan about Druaga’s sequels, then, if a towering achievement like that one is more of a footnote, if it’s anything at all, in North America. The Return of Ishtar was Druaga’s first sequel, the continuation of what came to be known as The Babylonian Castle Saga, and it completely changed Druaga’s gameplay. Now, rather than ascending the tower with Druaga at the top as Gil (short for Gilgamesh) in order to save the priestess, Ki, you are descending it, and playing as Ki. While also playing as Gil. You play with a second player, with the first controlling Ki and the second Gil, or you double up and control both at the same time. Each character has their strengths and weaknesses, almost nothing resembling the gameplay and mechanics of the first title made it to this sequel, and the tower is a different kind of challenge this time around, too.

While The Return of Ishtar released in 1986 in arcades, it did so only in Japan, and its various ports were all to various Japanese computers like the X68000, MSX, FM-7, PC-8801, and so on. While it wasn’t the hit Druaga was — the 1984 hit was played by millions of people, was the second-ranked top-grossing table arcade cabinet of August ‘84, and saw a wildly successful Famicom port, never mind its influence — it still managed to be the 16th-most popular arcade game in August of its release year per that month’s Amusement Press in Japan, five months after its initial release, and all of those ports didn’t happen just because Namco was hoping things would work out. The Return of Ishtar wasn’t a rousing, unconditional success, but it certainly didn’t kill off the series or anything: Namco would release another sequel, in another style, two years later for the Famicom, and the franchise would keep going from there, too.

The Return of Ishtar wouldn’t arrive in North America until Namco Museum Vol. 4 released on the Playstation in June of 1997, and reviewers were not enthused. Granted, there’s very little writing on it to even discuss from the time period, but what we do see is not positive. Jeff Gertsmann covered it for Gamespot, along with the rest of Namco Museum Vol. 4, saying, “The Return of Ishtar is just plain weird. It uses Robotron-style controls to maneuver two separate characters around a dungeon. It's a sequel [sic] the Tower of Druaga and incredibly boring.” That’s the entirety of the space given to the game. Electronic Gaming Monthly had four reviewers cover Vol. 4, but only one (Shawn Smith, listed as “Shawn”) devoted any space to The Return of Ishtar, specifically, and just to say that it (and The Genji and the Heike Clans) was “pretty lame due to difficult controls and the games being…well, not very fun.”

Both reviews focused on how Namco was, in essence, scraping the bottom of the barrel with their choices here. It’s unfortunate that this was the takeaway, too, because what Namco was doing was opening up their catalog in a way they had not in the 80s: these weren’t all games remembered from North Americans’ time in the arcades as a kid, but included some previously Japan-only titles that had stayed there even as they were successful enough to see home conversions. None of this is even being written to condemn or criticize Gerstmann or Smith, either: Namco released a bunch of collections in a row, at a time where modern games that didn’t show off every 3D possibility and impossibility were often criticized for being a waste of money, so of course a couple of weirdo oddities that take time to understand and appreciate weren’t going to get the attention they deserved in what were basically capsule reviews of a collection that barely took the time to explain the parts the reviewers did enjoy.

Now, though, The Return of Ishtar is part of Hamster’s Arcade Archive series, with a wide release on the Nintendo Switch and Playstation 4, and the context of what it is and where it’s coming from is a bit easier to understand and to find in 2023 than in 1997. Which is good, because even in the years in between, there was essentially just nothing written about the game. Hardcore Gaming 101’s excellent digest, Namco Arcade Classics, left out not just The Return of Ishtar but also The Tower of Druaga (though, with Kurt Kalata writing in the intro that there was another entire book possible with what was left out, with Druaga specifically getting a mention), and it hasn’t been given a write-up at HG101’s site yet, either. That’s how you know we’re talking about an obscurity.

---

Namco had no trouble changing things up for a sequel. It didn’t matter if you were a popular game or a landmark one, once that title was in the bank, it was time to figure out a new way to continue that series. Dig Dug II, for instance, is significantly different than the original Dig Dug, and Pac-Land took Pac-Man out of the maze and into the land of sidescrolling platformers. (While that wasn’t the first Pac-Man sequel by any means, many of the previous ones were handled not by Namco, but by Midway.) The Return of Ishtar, developed by Game Studio — the developer founded by Druaga and Xevious creator Masanobu Endo — rather than Namco, is one such case: whereas a non-insignificant portion of The Tower of Druaga’s gameplay was in finding impossibly hidden items to help you progress through a labyrinth while figuring out whether you should be attacking by ramming into an enemy with your sword, defending incoming attacks with your shield, or running away, The Return of Ishtar has you finding keys to open doors out in the open, and the fighting is sometimes almost incidental to the rest of it.

As Gil, you can still attack with a sword, but it’s unsheathed automatically as you near a foe (or one nears you), and you might be better off not engaging unless you have to, given Gil’s limited hit point supply and the fact that the game is over for both players if one of them dies. The true focal point is Ki, whose magic is the key to basically everything. There are 64 different spells for her to use in The Return of Ishtar, and mastering their deployment is what will help you descend the tower.

Attack spells are how you defeat foes without putting Gil in too much danger, and these range from a standard fireball that you start the game with to explosions to a “Killer Cloud” to a Death Spell that can even take out the Will O’ Wisps that are otherwise immune to your attacks. There are protection spells that shield Ki and Gil for as long as they’re on the floor they’re currently on, and can be used as a weapon against any enemies that touch the barrier, as well as healing spells that you’ll need if you don’t want to just be waiting for Gil’s hit points to slowly replenish themselves over time, or to heal adverse status effects like poison. “Assist” spells that let you cause your own status issues to enemies, “Light” spells that assist you in navigating or finding hidden secrets, and “Special” spells with some pretty wide-ranging effects, like the Blue Crystal Rod that opens up treasure chests for Ki (and is the narrative reason that both Ki and Gil were at the top of the tower in the first place), to turning Will O’ Wisps into statues, to freezing some more minor enemies in time while you freely navigate around them.

You don’t have to listen to what the sign says, you know.

There are 128 different rooms in the tower, but 60 floors you must descend to escape. You start at the aptly named Top of the Tower, and finish with the Entrant Hall and then Main Gate. In between, you’ll find various storage rooms, halls, chambers and temples of evil and chaos, crypts, cells — if you can imagine a kind of named room that’d be in a 128-room tower of evil, well, it’s probably in here. The mission is the same in each one: find a key, pick a door, and hope the key fits its lock. If not, grab another key, or go find another door to try the same key. Try not to die while all of this is happening, open up any treasure chests you find, and again, try not to die. Easier said than done, considering Ki cannot take a single hit and survive, but that’s what all those protection spells are for, as well as Gil coming in for the rescue to absorb the occasional hit that Ki cannot. There are a few different enemy types — vampires, slimes, magicians, knights, and more — but multiple classes of each, designated by colors. So while you might get used to the various types of enemies before too far into the game, they’ll become more and more difficult to tackle as you go.

The screen follows Ki around, and the game seems to forget that Gil exists if he goes offscreen: I had to go back to where he was with Ki in order to get him to reappear, which at least was something I tested out instead of a very annoying thing that kept happening to me. You want to keep the two close, whether you’re playing by yourself as both characters or with two players, for reasons beyond this, but that’s certainly one. Gil can’t ever come to the rescue if he doesn’t exist.

The music changes if you take too long in a way that makes you think you better get moving, and sticking around just to fight for the sake of it is just going to cause Ki to take unintended damage or for Gil to end up unnecessarily sacrificing all of his hit points. You want to take time to explore, yes, but finding a key and keeping things moving to treasures and an exit is the ultimate goal.

I can certainly see how reviewers felt the controls were weird or the game boring, even if I don’t agree with those conclusions. Controlling two characters with one controller is weird: on the Arcade Archives version of the game, you control Ki’s movement with the left analog stick and Gil’s with the right to simulate the two arcade joysticks, but all the buttons you’re using (unless you do some remapping) are on the right side of the controller. It’s easy to forget to move one character because you’re messing around with the other, but over time you’ll adjust and at least move the idle one out of harm’s way. Or else you’ll die, such as what would have happened here in this tight, cramped space — the first part of a new room I was dumped into after exiting the previous room — if I hadn’t moved Ki and Gil together and then settled on having Ki take out the enemy with rapid-fire fireballs:

Did I have more powerful spells? Sure! But the Fire Ball was equipped, and this was an emergency, so I worked with what I had. Optimally, you’ve got a bit more time to plan, and can shuffle through Ki’s spells before committing, rather than just being thrust right into something like this red slime’s being right where I was when the door opened — Ki’s spells are broken down by type in the menu, so you don’t need to go through all 64 in a row to find the one you want if you manage to have them all, but can instead shuffle specifically through Attack or Protect or what have you as needed. Conditions are not always optimal, however, hence spamming fire balls.

The Return of Ishtar can mostly be a little slow-paced, rather than boring, as it expects you to explore and keep your wits about you for dangers that might show up. The dangers do show up, but much of the game is also about being on your guard, in the same way that an easy guaranteed way to die in a dungeon crawler or roguelite is to relax and forget why it was you were so tense in the first place. You’ll be reminded shortly after you feel this way, every time. The Return of Ishtar is no different, and you’re somehow even more susceptible to death here than in your standard dungeon crawler, but at least if you have the spells you need to get by and remember to utilize them, you’ll be able to keep on going.

Opening up treasure chests with the Blue Crystal Rod to find more and more useful spells will help you progress, and is necessary. Having a friend to play with, as well, seems key: it’s not impossible to beat the game on your own, but having to consider half as much at any given time, and being able to have your hands free to focus entirely on one character, is a plus. While The Return of Ishtar is difficult to get through, given its various restrictions and how weak both Ki and Gil are defensively, it does have a password system, the first Namco ever instituted in any of their arcade games. (It’s also the first Namco arcade game to not include a scoring system, which might have played at least a small part in it being less popular than its predecessor). So at the least you can pick back up from where you left off, if you keep track of those, and power your way through in more than one sitting.

The Return of Ishtar isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s probably even less for everyone than its predecessor, since it can’t even claim the same legacy and influence. There’s something here, though, that fascinates me. The game is a true challenge that might seem a little boring on the surface — and maybe it will be boring for you on a deeper level, too — but the more you descend the tower and discover its secrets, the more you discover that there’s a complexity here that keeps it from being a betrayal of what the original Druaga was, even if the approach is completely different. My preference is for the original, and it isn’t close, but having the chance to actually play The Return of Ishtar — rather than having very little to go on about what it even is — was welcome all the same.

This newsletter is free for anyone to read, but if you’d like to support my ability to continue writing, you can become a Patreon supporter, or donate to my Ko-fi to fund future game coverage at Retro XP.