Archon is perhaps one of the strangest ideas for a video game I’ve seen in quite some time. I don’t know what to say about the premise except that it is truly the ultimate battle between the light and the dark.

This game is very simple, down and dirty. One would almost say too simple. Within the actual game there is no story or subtext. Just the title screen, and then the game. There are no levels, no difficulty settings. Just you and your opponent. Clearly this game was meant to be played with another person present, and the CPU opponent only added to hone your skills.

But within that simple premise, one could imagine any sort of story! This game is simply the battle between the Light and the Dark. That could be good and evil, that could mean it’s the battle between heaven and Hell, or even the Final Judgement! This could be just a great war from history, or even a possible future! It’s up to the player, and that’s part of what makes the game so exciting.

When you start a game, you will immediately notice some similarities to chess, in that you have an nine by nine square grid, instead of the traditional eight by eight, and two rows of units at your disposal, the first row obviously being the weaker “pawns” and the second row being your stronger, more resilient units. However, the similarities end there. All units can move in any direction they want--even backward. However, there is a distinction between ground units and flying units. Flying units, as in most strategy games, may move over any obstacle in their paths, whilst clearly, a ground unit can not move over any other unit, even ones own by the same player. Each unit also has a movement radius specific to that unit, and once they have gone that distance, they can go no further.

The Game Grid



Another difference from the classical chess of yore is the game grid. Aside from having one more strip in each direction, making a nine by nine grid instead of an eight by eight, you’ll notice that in the center of the top, middle, and bottom lines there are tiles with a glowing ring around them. These are called “Power Tiles” and are protected from Sorceress and Wizard magic, which really doesn’t amount to much. Wizards and Sorceresses can teleport units around--which can be a big boon, as the unit can move anywhere on the field without using it’s movement allotment, and call forth elementals to battle for you, along with a few other things. You’ll also see that the grid isn’t checkered like a normal chess board. Each colored tile represents a different type of battle field, some of which which may certain units advantages.

Combat

Which brings us to the biggest difference between this game and the classic Chess... Combat. Typically, in chess, when a unit over takes another piece, the overtaken unit is placed out of bounds. But in Archon, when a unit is overtaken, battle ensues. The two units are placed on a battle field corresponding to the type of tile in which the battle was initiated. The Light player on the left side, and the Dark player on the right.



Each type of unit has a different set of abilities. Knights and Goblins, for instance, only have short range melee attacks, whilst Valkyries and Manticores have long range weapons. Some units have their own special abilities, such as the Shape Shifter automatically becoming an exact duplicate of the Light player’s pokemon unit. Each unit also has a certain amount of hit points, as any good fighting game would have.

Wait, did he say fighting game? Yes, I did. For all of this game’s strategy elements, the combat is where it all comes down to. Any player who is more proficient at this will have the ability to win, even if he or she can’t think of a good strategy to win. Of course, the strategic element of this game pretty much comes down to picking a unit to attack that has a lower amount of hit points than the attacking unit.

And that’s a shame, because the battle system is actually quite boring. After each attack, your unit must recharge, and although it is able to move about freely, this pretty much renders combat to running around the game screen, shooting toward your opponent, then running around again. There are objects for you to hide behind, but that doesn’t help when your opponent is already standing right next to you. Furthermore, all units move at the same speed, and have roughly the same charge time. The only real difference between units is the range of their attacks.

And that’s really all there is to this game. The main goal of the game is to destroy your opponent’s Sorceress or Wizard, which usually entails destroying all other creatures as well. The cartridge has no save feature, so no high scores are recorded, and even if they were, there’s really nothing to tabulate. The game does not track time, or units lost, or anything. At the end of the game you simply have the option of starting a new game.

Meta

So the idea of the game itself is disappointing, but what about the other niceties reviews always have? Surprisingly, the graphics for this game are actually pretty good. Okay, they’re pretty good by Nintendo Entertainment System standards. The units are about 20 pixels tall, and, for how small they are, clearly marked and visible. The same sprites are used in Combat as well as on the main game board, and in combat the the battle arenas are nicely detailed--again, by NES standards.

The music for the game is actually very excellent! The music at the title screen nicely displays the epic and grandiose nature of the game--that is, the epic and grandiose nature they wanted the game to have. I mean, it is the ultimate battle between the Light and the Dark, right? It’s actually somewhat a shame that there is nothing to do on the title screen except watch the two dragons fight, because the music is very fun and well composed.

On the game board, the music has a slower pace, which make one think of a pair of old alchemists sitting over a chess board, locked in a friendly battle of wits. It has a very classic “NES fantasy setting” theme, that I think would bring back feelings of nostalgia for similar games, even if you’ve never played this one. During combat, the music again changes, gaining a more upbeat quality, more fitting for the battle that will soon be raging--or already should be. Again, the music has a very classic feel to it, one very indicative of the time in which the game was made. The short nature of combat and the frequency of turns keep the music from getting too repetitive, but even still, with only these two songs for the entire length of the game, one kind of wishes there had been a couple other tracks to be played.

The Final Word

I went into the Retro Game Room to play this one because, growing up, it was one of my favorites. I used to play this all the time with my friends, but now I sort of wonder why. This game is very old, and its age shows. Being basically a board game, there’s no incentive to play it a computerized video game system, when a game of chess is so much more exhilarating and mentally challenging. Archon is also definitely not one to be played alone, as the fun of the game is more in challenging an opponent rather than challenging yourself against the artificial intelligence.

I liked this game in it's time, and I think that anyone, with the right opponent and rival, could excel at playing this game of strategy and reflex, but there are just so many better games to be had. All in all, I would say keep this one in your memories, and if you haven’t played it, you’re not really missing out on much.

Edit: To remove layout.

I bought this game randomly from a game store because they just had a pile of old NES games for sale. I had no idea what this game was or what it was like. I was pretty pleased with it. At first, I thought it would be like a chess game or something. As much as I like chess, I'm glad this wasn't the case. The Dragon and the Djinn were way too powerful though. The shape shifter was only good if you were fighting a powerful enemy. One thing that was super annoying was when it was a battle between the Pheonix and the Shape shifter. Those battles would last forever because you would do your blast attack, and the enemy would do the same, so nobody took damage. It just ended up being like a 10 minute battle of the enemy and I blasting trying to blast each other just not harm eachother, retreat to recharge our attack, and repeat. 

rcarter2 : Yeah I've been in plenty of battles like that. It's sort of the worst. Do you ever play with another human or just against the computer? I've found that although the computer is really terrible at strategy, it's just way too good in battle mode and it beats me almost every time.

I played with my older brother from time to time, but he really sucked at the battle part of the game. I could beat his Dragon, Djinn, or wizard with a clubber (pawn). It pissed him off so much. As far as the computer, I pretty much got to the point where I could win about 90% of the time. However, there was one enemy both on the dark or light side that would be the ones to make me lose. For the light side, it was fighting those darn unicorns. For the dark side, it was those banshees. The main reason is because those projectiles are insanely fast, and they charge almost as fast as the clubbers. It was impossible to dodge the projectiles unless you were already moving out of the way before they fired. Those were a pain in the neck. If I got too frustrated with them, I would ignore trying to win by killing all the pieces and just getting control of the 5 power squares.