Top 10 hack 'n' slash games

More of a sub-genre of beat 'em ups than a genre in its own right, hack 'n' slash games differ from other beat 'em ups and fighting games in that they tends to have medieval and fantasy settings rather than being about dingy backstreet dust ups. So, it's time to put on your elf ears, dwarf beards and maybe dig out your shurikens too, as we look at MTW's top 10 hack 'n' slash games:

Golden Axe series

Of course Sega's seminal Golden Axe was going to be in the list, so let's get it out of the way to begin with. Although there had been co-operative games before, with Golden Axe it felt like the way the game was meant to be played. I've always put this down to how well the three characters' skills complemented each other. My favourite, the dwarf Gilius Thunderhead, has melee range, but weak magic; the barbarian, Ax Battler, has balanced melee and magic; the armoured bikini-wearing Tyris Flare had the best magic, but the weakest melee skills. By playing Golden Axe with a friend you didn't just double your fire power, you increased your tactics too.

Rastan Saga

Taito's Rastan Saga is was one the granddaddies of the hack 'n' slash genre. The titular hero is your typical, Conan-esque barbarian, who has to carve his way through hordes of lizardmen to rescue, what else, a princess. Rastan's gameplay has almost as much in common with platformers as it does hack 'n' slash beat 'em ups, with Rastan having to jump and plunge his way around the landscape in order to reach his destination at the end of each level.

Ninja Spirit

After Tolkien-esque fantasy, the next most common topic for the hack 'n' slash genre is ninjas. Few arcade games give players as strong a sense of being a stealthy night blade as Irem's Ninja Spirit. From the outset players are able to choose which of four weapons they want to use (a katana, shurikens, bombs or a kusarigama), but things get really interesting when our hero, Gekkou, collects the magic gems that summon ninja spirits, which follow him and repeat his actions (with about a half second delay). But don't let all this arsenal fool you, Ninja Spirit is rock hard! 

Rygar

Playing Rygar again for this article, I'd forgotten just how bloody fast it is. The game throws everything at the player and there's a surprising variety of creatures and minions to deal with too, like pteranodons, headless hulks, burrowing centipede monsters and rhino dog things. Thankfully, Rygar's flying, spiked shield has plenty of reach, so with a bit of good timing it's possible to stop all of these monstrosities from ever getting close.

Magic Sword: Heroic Fantasy

In the early 90s, Capcom released a load of great fantasy hack 'n' slash games, starting with this, Magic Sword. The game has character classes that will be instantly familiar to anyone who's ever played a tabletop role-playing game or indeed a MMORPG. There's a knight, a priest, a thief, a wizard, a ninja, an amazon, a lizardman and the bizarrely named bigman. Whatever. Each one has their pros and cons, such as the priest who is generally the weakest, but is particularly powerful against the undead. What's different here is that the players do not take control of these different classes. Instead you control a generic warrior and have to rescue the other classes, at which point they will fight alongside you, mimicking your moves (a bit like the spirits in Ninja Spirit). The game also got ported to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network a few years, in the Final Fight: Double Impact compilation, so there's no excuse to miss out on this one.

Knights of the Round

Released in 1991, Capcom's Knights of the Round is obviously based on the legend of King Arthur. Players get to choose from Arthur, Lancelot or Perceval and in classic style, each one has their own skills and abilities. In a nod to role-playing games, each character can be levelled up during the course of the game (a theme that we'll see repeated a lot in this top 10). Ostensibly, KotR is pretty basic, but it's the game's blocking system that really makes it shine. Hit attack and back at the right time and you gain a few seconds of invincibility. It's a simple and effective system, that was rarely seen at the time.

Shadow Dancer

Despite the ninja hero, the Eastern magic and the white wolf, we switch to modern day (or at least modern at the time) for our next game. Sega's Shinobi series is legendary, but the series really upped its game with this instalment. The addition of Shinobi's canine companion seemed remarkable at the time, especially as you were given limited control of the beast in order to set him on certain, otherwise hard to reach, enemies (such as the sniper in the screenshot above).

Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy

Released 13 years after the original, Gauntlet Legends and the sequel from the following year, Dark Legacy, features 3D polygon graphics and an isometric view that's more akin to modern action RPGs such as Torchlight, Path of Exile and Diable III as anything else. I originally played Legends on my Dreamcast, but it was a pretty close conversion by all accounts. As with other fantasy-themed games in this list, Legend and Dark Legacy feature a rudimentary levelling sysem, but the health and gold works much as it did in the original games. Unlike the original, the game has much more focus on melee combat, as opposed to throwing an endless supply of axes at your foe (how did the barbarian ever carry so many?), which is why it gets to join this list.

Strider

When I first saw Strider, I was blown away by how agile Hiryu was and dazzled by the flashing arc of his katana as he cut a swathe through scores of Soviate soldiers and bizarre robots, such as the ape pictured above. The game's future Russian setting and multi-lingual voices also made this one stand out from the crowd. For me, this is the game that first made me pay attention to Capcom and as this list has shown, they were a company to watch in the late 80s and early 90s.

Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom/Shadow Over Mystara

With the official Dungeons & Dragons licence attached to it, Capcom's pair of hack 'n' slash games Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara are perhaps the closer to a proper role-playing game than any other arcade game. Both games are great, which is why they are sharing a spot in this list, but for me Shadow Over Mystara probably has the edge. With all the typical classes and creatures, a rudimentary inventory system for both clothing and weapons, and dripping with fantasy lore, this game has pretty much everything you'd want from an arcade D&D game. Both games are available on Steam, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network as a double pack called Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, so as with Magic Sword, there's no need to miss out.

There we have it, all the swords, knights, ninjas, magic, princesses and dragons an arcade throwback could want. As with any of my top 10s, there are bound to be games other people would have included in their list (I have no doubt there are a few people screaming, "What about Ninja Gaiden?!" or "Err.. you forgot King of Dragons!" but these are the ones I'd be putting 20p into, given the choice.

MTW

Relabelling session

Adding labels (AKA tags) to posts is a fine art. It's all to easy to add labels that are either too vague (and so you end up with loads of posts with the same label) or too specific (in which case the label gets used once or twice and that's it). For Arcade Throwback's labels I've always used manufacturer names so that fans can find all the posts about manufacturer, but after that my labels have been improvised. So I've decided to have a tidy up. The following labels are now gone :

• Clones *
• Conversions *
• Emulation *
• Feature
• Homages *
• Play now 
• Ports *
• Remakes *
• Show reels
• Tournaments *

* Posts with these labels now have one of the following new labels:

• Clones & Homages
• Expos & Tournaments
• Emulation & Ports

Hopefully things keeps things tidier and also groups up several related posts that were previous separate.

Classic of the Month - Lunar Lander

Developer:	Atari
Manufacturer:	Atari
Genre:	Simulation
Board:	Dedicated 6502-board
Year:	1979

Released in 1979, not only was Lunar Lander one of the earliest video arcade games, it was Atari's first vector graphics game and ushered in such classics as Asteroids, Battlezone, Tempest, Gravitar and Star Wars. But what are vector graphics? Well, if you imagine a child's dot-to-do drawing, but with perfectly straight lines between the dots, you'll get basic principles of the technology. The lines are the vectors and unlike a sprite, which is just an arrangement of pixels of different colours, the shape of a vector drawing is controlled mathematically. This means if you rotate, expand or shrink the shape, each point is moved relative to the position of all the other points; the angles of all the lines that make up the shape stay the same, so the shape itself is never distorted. Again, this is unlike a sprite, which is distorted when its rotated, because the individual pixels cannot be rotated, just moved, so they no longer fit in exactly the same position relative to their neighbours; everything has to be rejigged. Likewise, sprites don't scale well, because the only way to scale a sprite is to add or remove pixels; removing pixels loses detail and adding pixels disrupts the ratio of each coloured pixel (unless scaled by a factor of 2, but now we're perhaps getting a little too technical), so the shape becomes warped. These simple graphics emulate the stark landscape of the moon and the vastness of space beautifully, which is probably why so many early games were set in space. Vector graphics were the precursor to polygonal graphics, which take exactly the same rules as vectors, but apply shaded faces to the area between the points to make the shape appear solid. Later, we learnt to apply sprites to these faces, to give the polygonal shape the detail of a sprite and the flexibility of a vector.

But let's get back to the game itself. Arcade games are usually fast-paced, hectic affairs, but not so with Lunar Lander. The game was inspired by the Apollo 11's moon landing of ten years earlier and puts players in control of their own "Eagle". Play starts with the lander at the top of the screen and the rocky, nay mountainous landscape below. On surface of this vector moon there are several flat spots, each with a point multiplier written below. The trickier the landing (such as on a narrow ledge or in a deep gully) the higher the multiplier. Players must rotate the lander and use their limited supply of thrust to control the landing of the vessel on one of these spots. As you approach the landing zone, the screen switches to a zoomed in view, which gives players the chance to fine tune their approach. And fine tune you must if you are to stand any chance of landing without destroying or at the very least damaging the lander. A successful landing adds points to your high score, along with whatever multiplier was associated with the zone you landed on, then it all starts again.

It's a very simple game that rewards patience and care over quick reflexes or pattern recognition. This makes it a very rare beast among arcade games and about the only comparable experience I can think of is Rampart, not in terms of gameplay, but in terms of the mindset required to play it. As early arcade games go, this is one of the most rewarding and that is in part down to the rarity of the experience it provides - even by today's standards.

MTW