Rygar
Grade: A+
Publisher: Tecmo (1987)
Reviewed: 9/3/2020

The sprawling world and hordes of seemingly unbeatable enemies took us down quite quickly. We had to buy a Player's Guide to even attempt to find our way around. Through many weeks we labored until finally by some chance we defeated Ligar in his flying castle. We were overjoyed.

Rygar seemed to go unappreciated in the history of Nintendo. Compared to today's 3D megagames and such, it is not the most impressive, but for its time it was a great work of art. The graphics were superior to most games of its time. It also had some other nuances that made it great, like the vastness of the land of Argool, and the attempted overhead perspective was an impressive touch. Rygar's gameplay was exception as well. The main character, Rygar, could run, jump, shoot his disk armor, climb, and use his various tools with the greatest of ease. In the day, that was not completely common.

The plot to this game was fairly epic. The dark king of Argool, named Ligar (a tall green lion headed beast with two dragon heads coming out of him), has stolen the door to peace and the only hope for the end of his reign of terror is Rygar, a hero risen from the dead to bring peace to the land. To defeat Ligar, you must find the five war gods, called Indoras, who each hold a sacred weapon they will give to you once they are rescued. However, this is not easy because Ligar has imprisoned them across the regions of Argool and put terrible beasts in charge of their imprisonment.

Once you rescue the Indoras and get the sacred weapons (a wind pulley, crossbow, coat of arms, suit of armor, and the Flute of Pegasus) then you can open the way to Ligar's castle, floating high above the land below.

One of the particular fun things about this game was that you could jump off the side of the floating castle and get to a another castle, an oddly constructed mass of nothing that the programmers strangely included. I was unable to find any value in it, but perhaps something is in there.

Rygar also took a good long while to complete if you didn't know what you were doing, and the lack of a save feature meant you had to do it in one sitting, and thus quite challenging in the beginning. Gradually over the years, the three hours it took to defeat turned to two hours, to one hour, and now a mere half hour. At first though, it is not easy in the slightest. It seems hopeless... until you figure out how to get the experience points and life units, and then you're unstopable.

I would recommend this game to any game enthusiast. Seek it out where you can, or find the rom. With the exception of its Tecmo Super Bowl game for NES, I would venture to say that this game is Tecmo's greatest achievement. It is a greatly unappreciated game that has not received its due place in the world of classic video games. So give Rygar a try, save Argool, and remember "You are really a true hero."

Rygar is classic NES action all the way. In this better-than-average platformer, you control a mysterious warrior armed with a weapon that resembles a huge yo-yo. Rygar is mainly a side scrolling affair, but there are a few overhead stages, although these are marred by a lack of diagonal movement. The creatures you encounter are weird beyond description, with mutated birds leading the pack. Rygar is great fun despite some significant slow-down and graphic break-up. A mysterious dojo appears every so often to provide guidance, but it's usually pretty cryptic stuff. My favorite aspect of this game is the music. It sounds like every other tune you've ever heard on your NES, but it's great nonetheless.

Rygar is that rare game that is truly more than the sum of its parts. Taken on their own, each individual aspect of Rygar is just somewhat above average, but they somehow combine into an extremely fun, unique, compelling gaming experience that is very much unlike anything else on the nes. There are problems. Some enemies are cheap, and some graphics glitch, and some music is repeated, and some jumps are stupidly hard, but dag nab it, Rygar is a really good game! Yeah!

Graphics: 9
The best thing Rygar has going for it graphically is variety. Nothing will blow you away, but the various areas look vastly different from each other in style and theme, with all kinds of environments represented, from arid mountains to rivers to treetops to swamps to caves to high snowy mountains to castles to grasslands to more castles. Each new area is very stylized, with cool sunsets going on in some and generally impressive ways of showing backgrounds in most that are unlike most platformers. The enemies are equally varied, with all kinds of strange creations populating the areas, and none of them simply normal animals or people.

Music: 9
Very cool music plays throughout Rygar. A few pieces are repeated too often in a lot of areas, especially the main theme that starts the game off. It all really feels right in the game though, further enhancing the 'Rygar mood' created by the graphical style. Probably made by the same composer(s) that worked on Ninja Gaiden, hence the quality.

Gameplay: 9
Coolness. Unlike platform series with many sequels like Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden, Rygar's gameplay is actually fun. The main flow of the game is like Metroid or Castlevania 2: there are no sequential levels. However, unlike the original Metroid and CV2, Rygar is balanced, without sections that look so similar they must be mapped or impossible to understand puzzles. Rygar is simple. It is a pure action game, but you can go anywhere and you must acquire items by beating bosses to progress. If anything, it is reminiscent of Castlevania: SotN. No one particular part of the gameplay is original, but the way the entire game is constructed was completely new at the time. Besides that, the enemies come in many varieties and are usually large and have their own patterns. Rygar (the character) uses a kind of giant spiked yo-yo, which can be upgraded like Castlevanai's whip. The upgrade is handled by points you get for killing enemies, and these points can alternatively be used to heal or do double damage for a time. Rygar can also jump very high, and most enemies will be stunned if he lands on them. Fighting the most basic enemies is more about using a strategy than simply having quick enough reflexes. Interestingly, bosses are usually the opposite, and are best dispatched by being fast and furious before you die rather than exploiting patterns. Finally, some portions of the game switch to an overhead perspective, adding even further variety. This all sounds rather typical of nes games, but believe me, Rygar truly is worth your time. Whatever it is that makes a game fun on a basic, intrinsic level, Rygar has that, even if it doesn't have the perfect gameplay of a Zelda that also that special quality.

Concept: 10
Every aspect of Rygar is stylized and original. A truly unique game.

I love that game so much i played it for hours one day it was just fun

The original post in this thread is a copy and paste of the review from http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=GameMuseum.Detail&id=38
The origingal author is Kay Armstrong.
After investigation it has been found that LunaRoseAngel is NOT Kay Armstrong, the author of this peice, and as such this is plagerism and shall be closed.