I used to be a thief and murderer. Otherwise, I could not survive in such difficult times. Sit beside me and listen to my story of days full of adventure.

You know how excited you get when you come across something from your childhood that you haven’t thought about in years? Well that was pretty much how I felt when I came across a copy of Rastan. I remember pumping countless quarters into this game at the arcade way back when I was like 10. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for men in loin clothes (see He-man and Conan) and I’m pretty sure Taito violated some Conan trademarks with this game. Hell, even the whole “thief–>king” storyline is pretty much what happened to Conan.

I was originally going to try to beat Rastan and write up a review instead of going out on a Friday night like a good yuppie should, but I have just given up. This game is just fucking impossible. I even resorted to cheating by using saved states and I still can’t get past the second stage. There’s a great review of Rastan Saga over at insomnia.ac. They don’t think it’s hard, but they obviously are some kind of gaming gurus because I nearly smashed my computer monitor with my controller when I got killed by a bunch of bats for the 23084324th time. Fuck those things.

And fuck this game.

Sure it had some of the best graphics of its time and some wonderful gameplay, but what Rastan Saga was really about was taking as many quarters from you as possible. (This explains why many old school games were so difficult compared to today’s games. The only level of difficulty in current games is whether or not you can devote tons of man hours to completing a game.) I’m glad I was a poor kid because I could have easily bought the damn machine with all the money I would spent on this thing.

From insomnia.ac:

Making matters worse, as in quite a few other games of that era, you are not allowed to continue in the final Round. This means that the last three stages must be completed on a single credit. What you need to do in order to make this even remotely possible is die at the end of the fifth Round while fighting the boss, then continue and beat him while losing as little health as possible. This will allow you to take on the final Round with a full complement of lives, and effectively gives you a fighting chance. Needless to say, only those who fall in love with the game get to see the ending. Given how masterfully designed and perfectly executed it is, that should be quite a few.

I think any desire of me trying to beat this game just evaporated. If you’re like me and really suck at video games and just want to see the ending, head on over to vgmuseum.com. It’s a lot quicker and will save you a lot of heartache.

So yeah, since I wasn’t able to beat Rastan Saga, even using cheats, I’m not going to give it a score. However I recommend everyone give this game a shot… even though it is an effort in futility.

Related Posts:

→ Legendary Axe
→ I <3 Winmugen
→ You Should Read Conan
→ Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin