ActRaiser
Crazy One-Shot #5
Type of Game
The ultimate alliance of two genres that, at first glance, seem impossible to pair. Like the best sweet and savoury dish in the world.
Release date on our machines
March 1993, I was just eight years old! Eh! Ah! Well, well, um, nothing.
Developer
Quintet Co., Ltd. A big name in the JRPG world in the 1990s. Apparently still exists, but inactive since the early 2000s. Free this studio, already!
Publisher
Enix Corporation, when they were still fighting with Square, before becoming best friends.
ActRaiser : available at no place at all ! Because I won’t talk about ActRaiser Renaissance, that kind of remake / reboot / retake, published in 2021, which can be found pretty much everywhere.
ActRaiser is one of those games that I caught a glimpse of during two or three sessions at my cousin Walter Valise's house, and which had a similar effect on me as Secret of Mana; namely boundless adoration, an almost vital need to visit my mentor every day, pitching a tent in his garden and knocking on his window every morning like a hungry vampire, if necessary. But, as with his other cartridges, my cousin finished the game fairly quickly, in my absence, and never really wanted to start it up again to ease my suffering. Well, did he really finish it, or did he just get bored with it? Whatever, it just devastated me. In his defence, he had SimCity, Lost Vikings and Syndicate on the go. And Star Wing. And Young Merlin. And Jurassic Park. And others. He ended up bribing me with Top Gear versus games to leave him alone.
Divine Apparition
Still, I was left with a kind of emptiness inside me, the same kind that gnaws at your gut when you lose a loved one (one day, I'll calm down with my scale of values). When I got caught up in the frenzy of emulation, I downloaded the ROM pretty quickly. But unlike Secret of Mana, I barely played it, perhaps to keep my memories intact and not risk spoiling anything. Haha! Nonsense and rubbish. I was just being lazy.
Religious interconnection
Am I the only one who loved ActRaiser so much because it combined two concepts in one? The god game and the action platform that take turns throwing the ball back and forth? The magazines of the time must have talked about it, right? I can't remember, since I wasn't reading them yet. But, um, IT WAS SO INNOVATIVE! A miracle of game design pulled out of the magic hat by Quintet studios! Seriously, imagine playing a mission in Warcraft II and then moving on to a level in Hexen, or going for a race in Wipeout interspersed with sessions of Incubation? Yes, by reworking the transitions and the respective universes, of course. But all those fusions of gameplays would have driven me crazy, hmbmhblblblbargagag! Can you say ‘gameplays’ with an s? Gameplaies ? For today, for ActRaiser, yes we can.
Because in fact, you play as an avatar of God (sigh) who beats up everything and anything in big badass knight mode (yay, nice!), and once he's cleared the current stage, he turns into a cute little angel (pfffouaarfe) who helps villagers build an increasingly prosperous city (yay, nice²!).In terms of the platform aspect, I can't find anything that transcends the style. The game actually dates back to late 1990, even though we poor, disadvantaged little Europeans didn't see it arrive until early 1993. Oops, I promise I'll never refer to myself as a disadvantaged little European again. Sorry. But yes, there's no throwing weapons heavier than yourself in all four directions like in Ghouls'N Ghosts, or level design that defies imagination and metaphysics like in Psycho Fox or Yoshi's Island.
But yes, there's no throwing weapons heavier than yourself in all four directions like in Ghouls'N Ghosts, or level design that defies imagination and metaphysics like in Psycho Fox or Yoshi's Island. It's still very effective and well calibrated, offering an epic boss to slash with your big sword to complete the level, and it gives you a real sense of progression. Because a victory in the ‘action’ part of the game unlocks a new area in the ‘management’ part, or new features in the current area. I didn't quite understand when, how, or why we changed areas to build a village elsewhere. I think you have to go through two fight phases before you can colonise another region. And while the horizontal scrolling stages seem fairly easy at first, from what I've seen, they become almost harder than Super Ghouls'n Ghosts towards the end.
What stands out to me about the God Game aspect? The horrifying sound of the dialogue box, which is almost non-stop! No, seriously, apart from that detail, I have no complaints! At the beginning, only two small worshippers populate our temple, lost in the middle of a land untouched by human activity. A quarter of an hour later, dozens of shacks have sprung up everywhere, replacing the flora and mountains for eternity. Yes, here we even destroy mountains in the name of economic growth. We also slaughter wildlife, and that's where the comparison with SimCity ends. The wildlife consists of bloodthirsty demons who aspire only to kidnap our honest and pious citizens, so... of course we eliminate them with angelic arrows. Meanwhile, the villagers take care of closing the portals through which the monsters appear continuously.
Here too, we could believe we are in an action game, after all. And then, our kind and fervent subjects bring us magical items every five minutes, as long as we do what they ask (which often involves burning trees and blowing up mountains). These items can be used in the next platform phase! Like a bow, for example, or... um, let me check a longplay to find another example, I'm having a memory lapse right now. In my memory, the playing time was divided equally between the two phases, but in fact, it's more like 85% to 15% in favour of the management part. So, pampering our cute little fanatics is the majority of the gaming experience. At the same time, they adore us so much that it's almost embarrassing. Seriously, they need to stop with their fanatical messages! I don't know where to put myself!
Psalms of Rage
Yuzo Koshiro composed the soundtrack. Oh yeah! I didn't see that one coming. The work dates back to 1990, so it predates Streets of Rage, the supreme marker that crystallised the launch of the man's career. And while I don't really recognise his style based on his Mega Drive productions, I can see that on Super NES too, the guy manages to transcend the sound equipment at his disposal. The church organ tones come across as surprisingly clear and airy. The platform sections are sometimes reminiscent of the punchy textures that made Streets of Rage so legendary, with a more epic than urban vibe here, which makes sense. And during the boss fights, you'd swear you were listening to the best parts of the Super Ghouls'n Ghosts O.S.T. Overall, it's enjoyable to listen to, but I wouldn't go overboard on the subject. I didn't play ActRaiser enough at the time for the soundtrack to find a place in the compulsive nostalgia compartment of my brain. Too bad, I could have always moved some furniture around, though. I don't know what happened in a year, but Yuzo Koshiro has made remarkable progress. Now, to brighten up the day a little, I'll share the track that accompanies us during the management phases. Most of the time, anyway. It's a cheerful little tune by a troubadour, a troubadour who's also a synth wizard. It's well worth taking five minutes to listen to.
Conservative console
When I think back on it, I should have teased Walter at least twice as much to get him to give me a super detailed walkthrough of ActRaiser. That game deserves it! And so do I! Well, no, my cousin doesn't owe me anything, after all. He deserves my endless gratitude for teaching me so much about the subject, while all I did in return was eat his biscuits. Here, I'm going to do what he did in 1993 and announce that the Super NES beats the Mega Drive in every way. I don't mean a word of it, but I can say it once in a while to be nice, and without having a heart attack, too. I often wonder how my childhood would have turned out if I had owned Nintendo's 16-bit console instead of SEGA's. Would I be working in finance? Would I vote for the conservative party and spend all my summers in St-Tropez? Maybe, or maybe it wouldn't have changed anything. Except for one thing. ActRaiser would definitely have turned me into an evangelist, my father would have disowned me, and I'd be living in a weird community in Versailles. In any case, this story makes me lean towards the reactionaries. Well, I'll stick with my pro-SEGA timeline, sorry.
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