Uh, Oh! Somebody on the development team made a big mistake! I think the title screen is wrong. The game is called Nastar, produced by Taito in 1988, but the game makes reference to Rastania, Rastan and even says the story of the "Rastan Saga 1" will continue. A site search revealed that there were several games titled Rastan, so Nastar is most likely where all the others originated. Basically, an evil group of monsters took control of a place called the skyscraper and whoever conquered this skyscraper would rule Rastania. So, it's your job to re-conquer it and become the Rastan, the ruler. One thing that I don't understand is if your goal is to become the Rastan, why is it possible for two players to play simultaneously. If you both win the game, is there a fight to the death to see who the Rastan is?

This side scrolling hack and slash game is a hidden gem in many ways but has one fatal flaw. Every time you attack you have to jump as well. This flaw breaks the game play fundamentally. You'll have five or six monsters coming at you from both directions and all you want to do is stand and fight but you end up jumping on top of them. You start the game with a short sword and shield combination but later in level one an enemy drops a pair of Wolverine-like claws and then a little further along a two-handed bastard sword becomes available. Unfortunately, you are forced to jump while attacking with these weapons too. In every other way the fighting is adequate: you can crouch and attack, jump and attack straight up and jump and attack straight down. But for some unknown reason you can't stand upright and just attack! Of course, in the arcade this game would have ate close to a hundred tokens just for me to beat the game. So, maybe it was an intentional flaw.

At the bottom of the screen you have a health bar, a time limit and a level indicator. While I was playing, before dropping another token in to continue, I noticed that I was at level one. Then after I continued the level indicator was reset to zero. I'm sure that there is some benefit to leveling up but it seems lost on such a token black hole like this game. If not for the aforementioned jumping problem this may have been a useful feature.

For 1988, the graphics were great and the monsters were absolutely amazing. Some of the more notable monsters include a?giant snake that uses a sword and shield, a dog with a bloody ram's head attached to the scruff of its neck, a giant sword wielding skeleton with four arms, and I can't forget the half eaten zombies that use their arms to drag their bloody torso along. The 5 bosses are also done well but are definite token eaters. The final boss, an 8 armed reptile man that holds two swords, two shields and shoots electric puppies out of his remaining hands, must have taken at least fifty hits to defeat.

The best part of this game, in my humble opinion, was the sound. More precisely it was the music. It started off OK but then you hear these chicks laughing or sort of chanting every now and then. It reminded me of some kind of dark magic spell chanting. It gave me the feeling that I was actually fighting true evil and that's the kind of vibe that you want to get from a fantasy hack and slash game like this. Also, once you've beaten the game, stick around to hear the music during the end credits. My compliments to the music composer whose name is... Ogr?!

Overall: 7.2

Graphics: 10
Top notch for 1988 standards.

Sound: 10
The music makes the game worth playing just once.

Addictiveness: 3
I'm not feeling the need to ever replay this game. Once, all the way through, was enough.

Story: 6
The story was better than "Beat up these bad guys!" The Nastar, Rastan, Rastania gave it some mystery.

Depth: 5
More depth than others from the same time period.?

Difficulty: 9
"GRRRR, why can't I just attack!"