Mystic Defender
Hyper-spooky game #7
Type of Game
A title that could have really used an age rating. Or maybe not—back then, we just let the kids absorb whatever they wanted. And was that okay? No idea.
Release date on our machines
1990 for the PAL version, with no further details (nobody cares about Europe—it’s crazy). So let’s say sometime between September and December.
Developer
SEGA Enterprises Ltd. The best at porting their own arcade games, of course.
Publisher
SEGA Enterprises Ltd. The best publishers of their own games, of course.
Mystic Defender: Not available anywhere! Well, I guess there aren't any fans of body horror, demon children, or tortured women among the rights holders?
This title was one of the first to join my Mega Drive collection—a collection that still belonged to my stepfather back when he used to buy cartridges just for himself. Super Monaco GP, Ghouls’n Ghosts, and… uh, well, Mystic Defender ended up in my hands without me having to ask for anything, but without having the right to complain about it either—let’s not get carried away. A few months after he bought it and gave it a nice display at Christmas 1990, he simply left the console to my older sister Elena Vestibule and me, no doubt already bored with his new toy. Why had he set his sights on that cover featuring a Benny Safdie lookalike ready to unleash a Kamehameha? No idea. In fact, I have no memory of him playing it; neither does my stepfather, nor Benny Safdie, who was only four at the time and didn’t live in Le Havre at all. It would have been pretty weird for him to see himself fifteen years in the future on a video game cover. I think I would have liked that to happen to me. Can I really say this actually happened to me?
When video games fell from the sky
Unfortunately, with the James Pond 2 box, or the Zoom one, if I want to be consistent with my face. Okay, what am I even talking about? Thanks for the surprise game, Step-Dad. I played Mystic Defender for two, since you never wanted us to share a single moment of togetherness with me. And I freaked out for three, too.
Dirt as far as the eye can see
Apparently, a Master System game already told the beginning of the story, and it all started with a manga. Sure, I’m willing to believe that. Then again, it could have come out of nowhere, since Mystic Defender follows the ultra-classic trope of the pure-hearted warrior who has to save his girlfriend—whether she’s his current one or his future one, it doesn’t matter. I really wonder what kind of storyline the previous game developed to get us to this point on the Mega Drive. A snack theft during recess that went wrong, or a dispute during a game of Dragon Ball card-throwing, perhaps. Well, I say I played it for two, but in reality, I almost never made it past the third stage. I did see the fourth level once or twice, though, thanks to my neighbors Nelson and Mortimer Paprika, who always got further than me in any video game. I’d lent them that one as a thank-you for letting me have Toejam & Earl and Moonwalker at my place for a few weeks. I still gave Mystic Defender another try every once in a while—about thirty attempts in total. I say that, COMPLETELY guessing randomly, even though I feel like I had a hard time letting it go.
So you play as a sort of enhanced monk who fights demons using various powers, in the purest action-platformer style; a bit like Shinobi, but taking out everyone from a distance. It’s a variation on a run-and-gun game, with magic instead of guns, even though the protagonist doesn’t seem all that rushed. “Trot and Cast” would be a better fit, then. All of this takes place in fairly vertical levels—more like big rectangles than long strips—when zoomed out all the way. And the abilities? A basic little Kikoha that you can charge up to turn into a sort of triple Kamehameha (at least the box art wasn’t misleading like in Bomber Raid), a column of flames you can move up and down at will for a few seconds, projectiles that bounce all over the place, and finally a huge three-headed dragon that wipes out the entire screen with its awful screech.
Ugh, that one’s in my top 10 worst sounds produced by the console. Tyris Flare’s ultimate spell in Golden Axe is still classier in my book, sorry. I've read here and there that the manga is similar to Fist of the North Star in terms of violence. Sure, Mystic Defender doesn't hold back, but it's still pretty tame compared to other, much more over-the-top titles, like Robocop vs. Terminator, for example. Most enemies just vanish in a little explosion, without spilling a single drop of blood or anything. On the other hand, it stands out waaaay above the competition in terms of its ultra-grimy art style and the perfectly toxic atmosphere it creates. As a kid, I thought it was cool, but I was still pretty scared. I hadn’t heard of Berserk yet, but I sometimes see some similarities in the creators’ twisted imagination. OK, Level 1, a forest, it starts off calmly, although... A forest with demons in it, so you’ve got to be careful, right?
But in Level 2, the one that bothered me the most (and that I liked the most, which feels really weird as I’m writing this), you still face ninjas capable of turning into giant bouncing heads, or puddles oozing from holes in the wall that morph into evil children. All made of green and purple flesh. And when you hit these kids once, they turn to goo again and wriggle around on the floor, like hideous, snotty, tortured slugs. Whoa! You’re actually allowed to slap these ones, but don’t try this on real brats, okay? Does the boss take it even further? You bet! A group of cultists who, once defeated and lying lifeless on the ground, slip away from the screen by growing spider legs. The graphic designers must have just watched The Thing, I imagine. And to think my mom actually forbade me from watching Fist of the North Star, hahahahah!
“Sure, you can play video games, son. At least they won’t traumatize you like those horrible Japanese cartoons. They’ll fry your brain and turn you into a sociopath, though—but never as well as I will. Hahahaha!” Yeah, hilarious. Um… what were we talking about again? I didn't like the third level. The walls made of clumps of organic stuff… it might have worked if someone hadn't covered everything in silver paint. Maybe that's why I never really tried to go any further. Or maybe I was just too bad at it—which is more likely. And so, having gotten no further than stage 4—where I thought the pillars floating on the lava looked like delicious veal rolls—what exactly did I miss? In terms of the scenery, not much.
The second half of the game is pretty disappointing in that regard, especially the stage that uses exactly the same templates as level 3, but with light green paint. On the other hand, I missed out on a few extra traumas from the increasingly disturbing bestiary. I’m not talking about the knight in armor straight out of the Crusades, whose design has no place here, but the return of the spider corpses in particular, or a bust mounted on several brown organic spheres (I’ll let you guess the exact material of this conglomerate). Special mention goes to the final boss, a sort of shapeless column of flesh covered in faces that are more or less human. At its peak? The kidnapped woman from the beginning, naked of course.
Aaaah, but that’s exactly why my stepdad bought this game! A nude woman tormented by slimy, misshapen monsters—everything that filthy old pervert loves. Following complaints from parents, a censored version released later put some clothes back on the lady’s private parts. The green and purple of the liquid kids in green comes from there too, since previously they had perfectly human pink skin. So were we supposed to blast real cherubs? Very disturbing. But those horrible, moaning aberrations—are we just leaving them like that? Yeah, no problem. Oh, okay. On a few sites where I read a handful of reviews, we’re told that this woman isn’t the hero’s girlfriend, but his daughter. Huh? Oh dear, that makes it even more uncomfortable!
The Sounds of the Demon
Although I haven't played more than 50% of the game, I've apparently listened to almost the entire soundtrack. Honestly, the sound quality isn't great most of the time. It feels like an early console game, just like the lack of detail in the sprites, starting with the protagonist himself. That said, it’s impossible to mistake him for Benny Safdie once the adventure begins. Yeah, in the context of 1990, it went over without too much of a hitch, blah blah blah. Just to contradict myself, the melodies totally drew me in. Especially those from the first two levels, which wrap the journey in just the right amount of mysticism and occult. The bosses theme captures the alarmist vibe well, too. The rest… meh. Often overloaded (Stage 3—I really hate that one), or a bit too messy. Even in the early nineties, I had a bit of a hard time with some of these compositions. And yet, I managed to put up with some truly awful music, like the tracks from James Pond 2, to name just the most annoying ones. That leaves the two I’ve never heard before. While I forgot the first one right after listening to it on YouTube, the one that plays during the final level still has a certain flair. But hey, I’m sticking to my love for Stage 2, all that… By the way, its music is called “Scene 4”—go figure. My apologies to Chikako Kamatani; nothing personal, really. I’ll go listen to the soundtracks of Fantasy Zone 2 and Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle to make up for it.
Satisfying of the experiences to carrying out
Despite everything I’ve said, I’m still satisfied with my experience playing Mystic Defender. I’m left with a sort of pleasant shock from the game’s opening, oblivious to the repetitiveness and disappointments of the second half, while still imagining that an even more terrifying world awaited me in the levels I hadn’t yet explored. You unlock all the powers at the end of level 2, except for the infamous screeching dragon. It’s certainly very cool and powerful, despite its awful sound effect, but its charges are limited. The gross blob at the end would have given me nightmares, with nothing else to offer that comes close to matching the nauseating atmosphere of stage 2. In fact, it’s still in this stage 2 that we’re treated to a really stylish gameplay sequence, where you have to jump in sync with the active fire spell to hope to reach one of the final platforms. I don’t think I’ve seen any other challenges like that since, where the level design directly supports the gameplay.
So yeah, I could’ve even stopped at Stage 2, come to think of it. The only thing I regret is not being able to read the little closing text, with five grammar mistakes per sentence in the purest tradition of botched Japanese translations. If “All your base are belong to us” remains one of the most famous, what can I say about: “Congratulations on your successfully completing this game. Many thanks for your having enabled Joe Yamato to save Alexandra.” Uh, yeah, you’re welcome, for my successful from rescuing and the destroying castle! Actually, I didn’t understand a single word of English, so I wouldn’t have even been able to enjoy it. Still, it’s a solid title for my beloved console, with a very strong visual identity—as long as you can stomach the reused backgrounds painted in tacky, over-the-top colors, and the liquid babies. Especially the liquid babies, my God. It deserves better than near-universal indifference, poor thing.
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