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ZeliardGame Arts, 1987DOS, NEC PC-8801 and X1As happenedwith many othergames at thetime, Zeliard’s USbox tries to maskthe Japaneseaesthetic of thegame, featuringa viking on thecover instead ofthe manga-styledcharacter thatactually stars thegame.The hints providedby the townsfolk arevital to uncoveringsecrets and finishingthe game.Zeliard is among my earliest gaming memoriesand I remember it mainly for three reasons:the game is huge, extremely difficult and Ionly finished it a few years after my progress stalledin the final dungeon. At the time when I first playedit, I could barely understand English so had to parsethe in-game text with a dictionary and missed animportant hint. Thankfully I kept my save games anda few years later managed to finally finish it.One of the first free-roaming, explorationdrivenplatform games (popularly known as the“metroidvania” genre), Zeliard was originally releasedin Japan in 1987 – a year after Metroid and Castlevania.It’s also one of the earliest games of its kind that hasa slight influx of RPG elements. It features a hiddenexperience system (you never see the numbers) andonce in a while you level up when sages in town deemyou experienced enough, which increases hit points,damage and magic.Zeliard also has a simplistic inventory system:one slot for a weapon, one for armor and one for ashield – which will break after a certain number of hits.The various potions you can buy in towns regeneratehealth, magic, raise damage or repair your shields.You can attack with horizontal, upwards anddownwards sword slashes, and after defeating eachboss monster you will also get new spells – all of themoffensive in nature. As in other “metroidvania” gamesthere are also items that grant you access to otherwiseunreachable areas, such as boots to climb slopes, or acloak to resist intense heat.Story-wise, it’s your usual fantasy fare; you’reDuke Garland, sent to save the Kingdom of Zeliardand its princess from an ancient demon who can onlybe destroyed by assembling nine mystical orbs hiddendeep inside eight dungeons.All of which doesn’t sound very impressive whencompared to other “metroidvania” variants, especiallymodern ones. However, Zeliard stands as the onlygame of its kind that recaptures the feeling of oldschoolCRPG dungeon crawls. It cannot be masteredby just being good at the action part, you have toalso map the entire game meticulously, explore everyinch of each level and also note down every hint thetownspeople utter to succeed.Mapping is made difficult both by the fact thatlater levels consist of two or three layers intricatelyinterlinked and by a very unusual quirk of the overalltopology: the maps are circular. Wherever you maybe, if you go far enough right or left, up or down, youwill end up where you started. It easy to get lost evenin the first level, and without a map you won’t get farin the later ones. And while the game came with allmaps printed out, those didn’t show invisible wallsand other obstacles or where the doors led.Zeliard’s platforming mechanics have longbeen surpassed and its fusion of 2D action and RPGelements is by no means unique these days, but theoverall dungeon design make it stand in a class of itsown even today. If you enjoy a challenge, that is. JG36