Sleeper of the Week: Arcus Odyssey (Sega Genesis)
Sleeper of the Week: Arcus Odyssey (Sega Genesis)
Yep, another Genesis game. Sadly, it seems like a lot of really great Genesis stuff got ignored when it was released. I’m here to tell you that there are some really great games for the poor unappreciated little system though! Some of my favorites were printed by a small company called Renovation. Based in Los Gatos (near San Jose), California, they ported various Japanese titles under their own label. They released a lot of games, and mostly all games that would never have otherwise come stateside. This particular titles was ported by Renovation, but made by Wolfteam. Wolfteam made a ton of absolutely great action games in Japan, though all of their games that were released domestically were under the umbrella of localization companies such as Renovation.
Today, we’re looking at a little known action classic, Arcus Odyssey. Arcus Odyssey is an isometric action game similar in style to Gauntlet. You have four characters to choose from: swordsman, warrior-maiden, archeress, and “magic-stick fighter”. Hey, don’t blame me…I don’t write this stuff! Anyway, your goal is to recapture the Sword of Light and stop the dark sorceress Castomira. And you can do it with one or two players simultaneously. No split screen though, you’ll have to work together!
Sounds simple huh? Well…it is. It’s basic gameplay at its best. The music is nothing special, the graphics are basic 16-bit stuff, but the game in its entirety is something special. It’s damned fun in fact. You can power up your magic by picking up items in the dungeons. Each character has, of course, a different weapon. The swordsman has a simple energy blast, the warrior-maiden an extending flail that she can spin, the archeress has arrows that bounce off surfaces (great for shooting around corners!), and the laughably titled “magic-stick fighter” has fireballs. You can move in eight directions even though the game screen is angled diagonally. Basically, the plan is simple. Kill everything!
It takes a bit of time to get used to the gameplay however. Instead of A or B, attack is with the C button, and if you hold the button down too long, a magic shield blocks your enemies. Press the same button quickly enough and you’ll instead attack. The B button opens a menu where you manage your magic depending on how much you’ve built up, and view or use the items and keys you’ve collected. The A button does nothing but select things in the B menu. The battle system makes this a bit of a button masher, but you’ll get used to it fast.
A bit ahead of it’s time, Arcus Odyssey entails a few adventure elements as well. In dungeons you talk to people that have been captured and get bits of actual story that makes sense, rare for a title this old. The gameplay is fun and frantic on occasion, the bosses are cool, and the whole game is well-designed. More than a trip down memory lane, Arcus Odyssey is a fun, solid action game that warrants a second look if you’ve been passing it by!
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Originally Posted by CasualCoreGamer
I've been looking everywhere for El Viento for ages, though, leaving me to wonder if that title was Renovation's smallest (or last) production run.
