The Classic Arcade and Console Era (1972-1989) - The Astyanax (a.k.a. The Lord of King)
Try out this co-op spiritual successor to The Legendary Axe that's a better game all around, provided you play the arcade original.
RELEASE DATE: 1989
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Aicom / Jaleco
BEST VERSIONS: Arcade
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Fairly playable
One of the most interesting aspects of playing games you haven’t even thought about for twenty or thirty years is that you sometimes discover that there’s more to some titles than you ever realized. Such was the case for me with Astyanax, a very mediocre and forgettable hack-and slash game I originally played on the NES.
In that version, you play as a 16-year old high school boy named Astyanax who carries an axe called “Bash” that can morph into a spear or sword. Pulled into an alternate reality called Remlia by a spandex-wearing fairy named Cutie, your mission is to save the Princess Rosebud from the evil Blackhorn and his skull-faced magician Thorndog. The story is surprisingly involved and depicted with nice anime-style graphics and a ridiculous amount of melodrama. The soundtrack and graphics are also quite good, and the boss encounters are memorable because of the big, detailed characters. The problem is that the game itself is incredibly boring, sort of like an off-brand Castlevania with too much precision-platforming and a very repetitive set of enemies who are constantly knocking you into pits. I never got past the first level when I played it in the 1990s, and even with an emulator and saved states, I found the game a chore because it requires so much rote memorization of enemy spawn points and patterns to master.
What I didn’t realize, however, is that the NES game is the very loose adaptation of a superior arcade game from 1989 called The Astyanax which was made by the same folks who made The Legendary Axe for the TurboGrafx-16. While I thought about including The Legendary Axe in this series, a replay reminded me it’s a rather frustrating hack and slash game because your attacks have a limited range and the enemies are so aggressive and hard to hit that cheap, pointless deaths happen frequently. The Astyanax can be irritating as well for many of the same reasons, but it’s saved by two improvements: unlimited continues and cooperative play.
Before I delve into the game, let me first comment on the strange name, which is derived from Greek mythology and refers to the very young crown prince Scamandrius of Troy who was, according to the legend, nicknamed the city’s protector and overlord - “The Astyanax” – because he was the son of the great hero Hector, a warrior so awesome that only the legendary hero Achilles could defeat him. The prince’s life was short and tragic - he was thrown to his death from the walls of Troy by the Greeks because they feared he might rise up and resurrect the Trojan empire if he was allowed to live. But there’s a quite interesting medieval literary tradition where the prince survives and goes on to become a great king, rising up in some versions as a great hero of France and in other versions to have adventures around the west Mediterranean and to become the ancestor of the Italian hero Ruggiero.
None of this has any bearing on the game, which largely seems to have selected the name on the basis of the word “ax” being embedded within it. In Japan, the game was called The Lord of King, which suggests that someone who was being too clever with the English language localization decided to apply their liberal arts degree rather than good sense in picking a title people could pronounce or properly understand. Whatever the case may be, though, at least the title is memorable, and you most definitely get to swing an axe.
In The Astyanax, you play as a warrior named Roche who’s granted the power of a magical axe that slowly charges with power until a flame erupts from it. Roche can also release a devastating lightning spell that grows increasingly devastating as he powers it up. Whereas the NES game has a buff dude waving weapons around in between cutscenes for the rather silly story, the arcade version hews much closer to a heavy metal fantasy aesthetic – the soundtrack is a pulse-pounding series of songs featuring synthesized guitars, the environments include stone ruins, mysterious forests, profane churches and creepy caves, and the defeat of each boss is accompanied by an impressive piece of artwork that could double as an album cover. The character sprites are big and impressively detailed, featuring all sorts of demonic creatures and mythological monsters of all shapes and sizes. The game even includes female warriors who cartwheel around and attack with powerful leaping sword attacks, at least until you chop off their clothes and they drop their swords and run around helplessly trying to cover their nudity with their hands.
If the bosses in the NES game were memorable for being big and nasty, the ones in the arcade version are additionally cool because some of them have body parts that can be dismembered. The first big boss, a sort of cross between a scorpion and a millipede, has to be taken apart section by section. A later boss, a huge two-headed dragon, has to be dispatched one head at a time, leaving behind a bloody stump at the halfway point. There’s also a six-armed swordsman and a humongous robed wizard to battle.
But perhaps the most surprising aspect of The Astyanax is the final stage, which is supposed to be the lair of an evil demon named Argos in the Castle of Algerine, but is actually hiding an H.R. Geiger-inspired spaceship full of facehugger aliens complete with a Xenomorph knock-off as the final boss. The game does nothing to explain any of this; the designers clearly just thought it’d be cool.
While those who have played The Legendary Axe will find a lot of the gameplay in The Astyanax familiar right down to smashing rock totems to retrieve power-ups, a big improvement is the addition of a shield, which must be picked up as an item and which can be destroyed after a few hits, but which makes the game potentially far more defensive since you can actually block cheap shots and then counterattack with a well-timed chop. While I wish the developers had incorporated this as a permanent upgrade rather than as a consumable pick-up, the item is fairly easy to acquire, and having a shield makes the game much more fun and interesting since it reduces the need to constantly slash at enemies and gives you time to charge up your axe for a devastating chop. Another cool defensive option is the ability to knock away spears and arrows with a well-timed chop, which again makes the game feel like less of a mindless hack and slash affair and more of a skill-based one.
While some gamers might not love the slow pace and general jankiness of Roche’s movement as he crouch-walks across the battlefield, The Astyanax is still an interesting action game because it feels so deliberate and focused on timing. It’s not quite up to the level of Castlevania, but fans of the early games in that series will definitely find that The Astyanax is similar in sensibilities and challenge.
The arcade release was never ported to another platform and has only recently been released on home consoles via HAMSTER Corporation’s Arcade Archives series, and the very different NES game is so mediocre that it’s tough to even recommend. My advice is to play the modern release and also find a friend to play with you – it’s a great co-op game to blow through in a half an hour or so.
As Our Series Continues…
It’s time to move on to console and arcade gaming in the 1970s and 80s, and we’re going to cover it all with an exploration into hundreds more games you’ve probably never played but definitely ought to check out. Come for amazingly great early 1980s games like Warlords, Super Locomotive, Shark! Shark!, Acrobatic Dog-Fight, Mysterious Stones: Dr. John’s Adventure and Intrepid and stick around for mid-to-late 1980s greats like Peter Pack-Rat, Penguin-kun Wars, Momoko 120%, UFO Robot Dangar, Wonder Momo, Raimais, Last Alert, The Legend of Valkyrie and the arcade version of Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe’s Brother, complete with a rockin’ soundtrack with wonderfully inscrutable lyrics.
If you’ve never heard of any of those games, you’re in for a treat as we explore them one by one. And If those games are all old hat to you, don’t worry; they’re just the tip of the iceberg for what we’ll be discussing!
If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 2. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!