1990s RPGs: The Story of Thor
The RPG phenomenon hit me during the 16-bit gaming years. The first one I played properly and with full devoted attention was Story of Thor, but I had some early exposure to Prince of Persia… actually you could possibly say the orignal TMNT was something of an RPG aswell.., and I at least had a glance of Sin City.
But I think for it to be legit it has to have a general aesthetic of swords, shields, armour, ghouls, castles, dungeons, fire, treasure chests and so on. Some exceptions can be made (as with the FInal Fantasy series or Sid Meier games) but that’s the template i generally want to see.
This was a massive 1990s childhood obsession:
Story of Thor, Shining Force I and II, Suikoden, Final Fantasy, Diablo, Civ III, Age of Empires 1 and especially 2, gulp… Pokemon (yeah…), Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Star Ocean II, Caesar, Pharaoh….
There were alot of moving fighting troupes across tiled squares, alot of hidden gems and amulets to get, secret swords, magic spells, summoning spirits and demons, hidden doors and passageways, boobie traps, muscle goons with spiked clubs, princesses in distress, chicks casting spells, evil rogue barons and outlaws, betrayals, character deaths, 2nd and 3rd lives, floating demon heads… This was serious business…
The Story Of Thor. Released on The Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive in 1994/95
Its not unusual for naming discrepancies to come up with the 90s video games. When I played this one it was known as The Story of Thor, That’s what I referred to it as, but it’s formal proper name in some regions was Beyond Oasis: The Story Of Thor. Developed by Ancient Productions. Depicted at right is the cover art and title as I was familiar with it back in the day.
Despite what the title suggests, it has no relation to any traditional tales of the Nordic God Thor, none that I know of at least.
The main bloke is essentially a jap-anime looking-version of a blonde boy-band singer, think Nick Carter, dressed like he’s from 1000 Arabian NIghts (The character’s default name is Ali, and i think this was the first Ali that I had ever heard of) running around karate-kicking giant rats, zombies, armoured thugs… He has a part-time floating demon-genie sidekick with roid biceps, His parents are a European-looking king and queen, The amulet bears some resemblence to Indo-European'/Nordic knotted design patterns. He spends alot of time running around on medieval-European castle ramparts. His “Ha!” sound-effects are eastern martial-arts effects. Theres a couple of 80s/90s haircuts and horror elements borrowed from Giger/Alien and probably a couple of others.. It’s all a hodgepodge. And it was fucking awesome.
The idea was that the main character had a magic gold amulet and travelled through a medieval fantasy realm slashing baddies with bladed weapons, kicks or crossbows, doing the odd acrobat jump, getting key and magic powers to get an edge etc. The hidden villain is a mysterious cloaked figure possessing a silver amulet and surrounded by some kind of demon force.
Back in those days the text was a written pixel script on a page. I liked this as it allowed you to develop your own voices for these characters, like in a book and in this era, the anxiety over too much Americanism creeping in was always a worry. Sparing us Aussie kids too much of their accent was a big deal. The music itself is cinematic with bits of medieval triumph trumpets thrown in. The sound effects are nice and punchy with a classic sample or two thrown in from wider culture (you kill the big warlock and he goes “““yyeeaaaarrrrrrrrrggghh!!!! and so on…. you’ll know it if you hear it… we spoke previously of the legendary Sega Sound chip).
To be fair it’s what some might call an Action-RPG. You are just one character for the whole game and there’s a lot of free-flowing slashing and kicking basically. You don’t have to overthink things. In fact you’ll be punished if you do, as the ghouls move quickly. The game runs quick and smooth too thanks to that superior Sega arcade-standard graphics technology, which like the sound chip, we spoke about back in the Sonic articles.
Reading some of the commentary underneath this youtube playthrough video, I feel like this commentator has it right:
@dragonrider0601 - 5 years ago (edited)
Lol it's like Legend of Zelda had a baby with Streets of Rage, cool stuff
Indeed good sir, Indeed.
One thing I can’t quite remember was whether this game was progress-saveable. It wasn’t entirely a foregone conclusion in the 16-bit era, and even if it was possible, the cartridge’s memory was limited. If you were only renting these games (as I often was), you ran a very high risk of having your save overwritten by a lesser player if they rented it out before you got the chance to rent it back and play it again. So you really had to clock some heavy hours playing as much as possible before returning it to Blockbuster Video or Video Games Express
The giant evil turtle-dragon at the 1:15 minute mark of the video takes some obvious inspiration from the Alien movies. Another western-horror borrowing looks to be the Venus fly-trap from Rocky Horror Picture Show. The fiery humanoid salamander seems to act like a stalker or creepy weirdo reminiscent of the Blade-Runner acrobat that jumps out and recedes from view, or maybe I’m drawing a long bow here. I don’t know.
This is how it was. There wasn’t much going on in the real world: The La Riots, Grunge, Gangsta Rap, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, The OJ Simpson Car Chase, the footy, celebrity gossip, some shortsighted FTAs and pension schemes. The bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Nightclubs, the Internet…
This is how we rolled.
All I can say is at least the education system was still half-decent and I learned to read and write English pretty well. And thank God I can save these articles as I write them, even though I can’t play the games anymore.
The front cover as it appeared on the shelves of the rental section at Blockbuster/Video Games Express. Spoiler alert for images below.
The magic amulet as seen in the opening title sequence.
The wise old guardian of the gold amulet forewarning you the user about its darker twin, the silver amulet. “Oasis” was the name of the kingdom the game is set in.
This game can be split into about 3-4 acts, with a major boss at the end of each. This massive demon tortoise-head is the big showstopper to that appears about a third of the way into the game. As you can see it pops out a mini version out of its mouth, a-la the Alien movies. Complicating things would be the sucking vortex as it would try to suck you in, the falling rubble and the risk of gettign crushed at the wall at the left-edge of the screen as it advanced forward. You’re meant to get past this guy by striking at the little head whenever you can. It’s a lesson well learned from Sigourney Weaver and co: Alwaysbe mindful of the potential for these fuckers to have a little head burst out of their jaws.
Sweet bloody mayhem. Spikes shooting up out of the ground, a flipping lozenge blob, evil giant rats, winged demons, on-screen tornado. None of this happened when I last went to Italy.
Another one of the sub-boss fights. The teleporting monks with shooting energy balls. The big fiery genie is one of your sidekicks whom you get the ability to summon in the game.
Bloody salamander. These blokes caught fire once you hit them, in homage to the mythical associations that salamanders had with being born of fire or fire-tolerant. Note also the winged demon carrying in a feral rat wielding a bone club.
“He defeated the monsters in the fortress and got the Warp device”.
A profound piece of literary text. Many times in my life I have needed a warp device to get out of annoying social situations.
“I reward you with your death!”
Meeting the mysterious silver-amulet nemesis.
I hope he doesn’t take this the wrong way if he ever reads this as I do like and respect him, but the big-boss does kinda look like my ex’s Dad, complete with the horn growing in the middle of his head (which in the latter’s case, was eventually removed with surgical assistance. Not joking).
Bloody oath. So it was his older sister all along. Shock, Horror. Stunned. Speechless. Looking back at this game after 30 years, I can see the analogies of real-life. Have fun at the clubs and parties kids, but don’t get too caught up in the dark side of the nightlife or you may find yourself demonically possessed. Watch out for the ladies who are dressed a little too well.