Hydlide for the Nintendo Entertainment System!

[TheRetroVideoGameAddict]

So recently I decided to take it upon myself to sit down recently and play some Hydlide for the NES, and man, what a mistake that was. Well, maybe it wasn't a mistake, but it was definitely a challenge for more reasons than the fact that the game isn't "all that", but I still felt compelled to play it for a bit since it's been a while. Personally, I don't think it was nearly as bad as other major reviewers made it out to be but it does suffer from quite a bit of bad gameplay, graphics, and sometimes the controls can be a bit clunky too, but it has some enjoyable elements as well. I wouldn't rank it among the worst video games of all-time, or even the worst on the NES, but it's definitely not a worthwhile game to sit there and play through it until the end. Here is a piece of a recent blog I wrote about Hydlide, the link to the full blog is in my signiture. Enjoy!

This game really doesn't have much going for it, either. The graphics are extremely poor, the control is kinda slow and chunky, and it's one of those games where you cant really tell if you're hitting the enemies or not. In combat when you attack nothing really happens except for a small health bar that appears at the top of the screen and depletes when an enemy is dying. This makes things really difficult when fighting monsters because you have no sense of spacing, you end up taking a lot of damage thanks to your sword not moving outward to hit your opponent. Also, if your enemy hits you first you have to back up before attacking again otherwise you'll continue to lose heath, which is extremely annoying and makes you want to punt an elderly woman in her jaw. Or better yet, it's so annoying it makes you want to unleash a poisonous snake into an
infant ward at a hospital.

What do you guys think about the game? Love it? Hate it? Any stories to share? Let's talk about Hydlide for a minute and go back to a time when gaming was a little more relaxed in the RPG world than it is now, and Hydlide is definitely "relaxed" in more ways than one.

[bigbacon]

wow dude, can you spam your posts across any more boards?

[TheRetroVideoGameAddict]

Just this one and Nintendo Age. Both boards have different members with different likes, so I figured I would get good discussion and hear both sides of the coin. Relax.

[Graham Mitchell]

I really like hydlide. When it was released in the 80s I bought it intentionally because I thought it was cool, and somehow managed to play it to completion. It's a precursor to ys, which I also think is neat.

I tried playing super hydlide on the genesis recently. It's pretty cool, but gets very frustrating when you die and lose an hour of work still, it's worth a try if you like hydlide. It's a superior game in literally every aspect, and has a great soundtrack.

[TheRetroVideoGameAddict]

You know something? It isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be in reviews, even my review I noted that there were some charming parts in the game and that playing it wasn't a waste of time. I've never played the Hydlide game on the Genesis so maybe I need to give that one a look eventually, I'm sure it's probably better than the NES game and I'm sure it's got more animation to it and a deeper story.

[Graham Mitchell]

You know something? It isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be in reviews, even my review I noted that there were some charming parts in the game and that playing it wasn't a waste of time. I've never played the Hydlide game on the Genesis so maybe I need to give that one a look eventually, I'm sure it's probably better than the NES game and I'm sure it's got more animation to it and a deeper story.

It's got all those things, plus the soundtrack is done by the same person who did the Target Earth/Assault Suit Leynos soundtrack, and it's awesome.

And for what it's worth, Virtual Hydlide on the Saturn is pretty cool taken in context. I thoroughly enjoyed it back then, and it's pretty cool that it randomizes the world on each playthrough. It's a bit touch to play today, but again, it's not as terrible as people make it out to be.

[Aussie2B]

Hydlide is a series that needs to be assessed with perspective, but it sadly rarely gets it from Western gamers because they know nothing about the history of the series. Hydlide on NES isn't a great port and it wasn't at all released in a timely manner, so it's not a good release to judge the series by, or even that particular game. It was an extremely important and influential game in Japan, and anybody who likes Ys at least should be giving it more respect.

[Polygon]

I never heard of it growing up. Now I'm avoiding it due to the reviews.

[BeaglePuss]

Having owned and played every game for the NES, Hylide is still my least favorite.

Shit. Sandwich.

[Edmond Dantes]

I actually have a slight soft-spot for the original Hydlide, although it isn't a great game by any means. But I think most critics are completely ignorant of the fact that it was originally made in 1984, so its not gonna be as advanced as Zelda.

That said, Super Hydlide on the Sega Genesis is much better.

[goldenband]

I had no problems with Hydlide when I played and beat it around 1990. I even played it right after Dragon Warrior, so all the brouhaha about how it was irrelevant once DW and FF came out seems overblown to me. It's primitive in some respects, and the soundtrack is as repetitive as it gets, but I appreciate the fact that it offers something a little different. When I fired it up a little while ago just to test my copy out, I found myself sucked in for a good 15-20 minutes.

Super Hydlide is a nifty game, but the weight system can be very frustrating because you have no way to store excess items, plus there's no way to save a single game to multiple save slots. Later on, when the weight limits force you to guess which items you can safely dump and which ones you actually need, you can actually make the game impossible to complete.

I'd like to try Hydlide II sometime. Virtual Hydlide looks ridiculous, but since I've already beaten half the series, I'll pick it up sometime and play through it.

[fairyland]

*HISSES* I am still angry at this game some 20+ years later. I had expected it to be an RPG like Dragon Warrior because of the box art. So I rented it expecting a weekend of RPG love, played it for 10 minutes, got so beyond pissed off and returned it back to get a better game (Rockin' Kats) all in under an hour. It's quite possibly the most deceptive, most annoyingly broken piece of crap game I've ever played and I'm really tolerant and accepting of bad games. I love ET for Atari 2600 and Milon's Secret Castle for example but this just so beyond awful. It is my most hated game of all games for me. I still get angry whenever I come across one in the wild or see a thread like this.

[SparTonberry]

The only thing I can think to excuse Hydlide is that it was released very early on the Famicom (in 1986), and probably one of the very few games made after 1985 to use a no-mapper PCB (max 32KB program ROM and 8KB graphics). Again, probably why it's so primitive.

All I remember of Super Hydlide (which I think is the same game as Hydlide 3 for Famicom, never released on NES. Strange they never ported Hydlide 2, to my knowledge.) is that the game did introduce a weight system so buying super armor would make you walk slow as hell (I'm hoping that as you leveled-up you'd eventually be able to use it without it making you take a minute to walk the screen length :P )

[Graham Mitchell]

Yeah as you level up in super hydlide you can carry a bigger load. I tried buying the best armor at the beginning of the game and that didn't pan out so well.

[TheRetroVideoGameAddict]

Well, as noted in my blog review for Hydlide I didn't truly hate it. Heck, I didn't even totally dislike it, I just feel that as a whole it wasn't the best game within it's genre and really didn't have anything that made it stand out beyond the pack. I wouldn't pass up a chance to play this game again someday, but I don't think that day is going to come for quite some time to come.

[Nes]

Having owned and played every game for the NES, Hylide is still my least favorite.

Shit. Sandwich.

Did you enjoy Star Voyager?

[Aussie2B]

Well, as noted in my blog review for Hydlide I didn't truly hate it. Heck, I didn't even totally dislike it, I just feel that as a whole it wasn't the best game within it's genre and really didn't have anything that made it stand out beyond the pack. I wouldn't pass up a chance to play this game again someday, but I don't think that day is going to come for quite some time to come.

When Hydlide originally came out in Japan (on various Japanese computers), there was no "pack" to speak of. This was pre-Zelda, pre-Ys, pre-Dragon Quest, pre-Final Fantasy. Basically the only similar games of note that came before Hydlide were Ultima, Tower of Druaga, and some Falcom stuff like Dragon Slayer and Xanadu, but Hydlide had its own unique play style so it was very innovative and influential for its time. That doesn't necessarily make it that fun to play these days (or even when the NES port finally came out in the US) when there are later, far more refined games available, but if anything could be said for Hydlide, it's that it most definitely stood out when it was released.

[BeaglePuss]

Did you enjoy Star Voyager?

Nope. That game sucks too, but I'd play it over Hylide any day of the week.

[Graham Mitchell]

Nope. That game sucks too, but I'd play it over Hylide any day of the week.

I actually kind of like star voyager, lol!
It's got a cool ambience, despite being kind of cheaply made.

[Soviet Conscript]

This was one of the first games I tried when I got my NES at a young age. It almost turned me off to RPG like games forever. I remember telling my older neighbor how bad it was and he proclaimed "I like all games, let me try it" He returned it a few hours later admitting I was correct. I went back to the game a few years ago and decided to beat it. Its not the worst game ever but its not good.