
For whatever the reason, Faxanadu is one of those games that sort of stuck with me through time despite absolutely hating it. Back when it was released on the NES circa 1989, the game seemed to make somewhat of a splash among players and was quite popular. If I remember correctly, the game graced the cover of Nintendo Power magazine (considering it was published by NOA, it makes sense) and was even featured in the cartoon Captain N: The Game Master. I remember being rather pumped to play it myself, but was let down by how difficult it turned out to be. I wasn’t just let down by the game, I down right hated it.Fast forward to today. Friday afternoon I took a trip to a local Game store that specializes in classics. I was browsing the NES section when I came across Faxanadu. I looked at it for a moment and decided to buy it. Maybe I was to young when it came out, maybe I just didn’t quite grasp what in the world I was doing. After playing the game for a solid 45 minutes, I can say with certainty that this game has and always will suck.
The game is very similar to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, in that it’s a 2D side scrolling action RPG. You travel towns, get new weapons, learn magic spells, earn “golds” (as they say in the game) and do just about everything you’d expect to in an action RPG. You begin the game with absolutely nothing, not even a sword, just a worthless punch and an equally as worthless jump. In order to do anything, you need to talk to the king and who in turn gives you some golds. You use the golds to buy yourself a sword and key, which you need to pass the first monster, a big jump eye ball. Unlike Zelda II, your hero doesn’t control with the grace that Link does. As mentioned before, his jumps are worthless, and he can’t crouch down and attack, which sucks because most of the early bad guys can only be killed by crouching. Maybe you earn the ability to do that later? I have no idea, I just know I can’t attack half of the bad guys I’m coming across. Thanks to the shit controls, I can’t even attack the stupid jumping eye balls either.