The Legend of Kage

Action/Platformer

August 1987 (Taito)

Oh. My. Goodness. Before anything else, I have to apologize to Slalom. I’m sorry Rare. Your game really isn’t that bad. I’m still not going to say that it’s good. But it sure does look like it compared to today’s gem.

The Legend of Kage is your basic video game story. Princess gets captured. Others have gone out to save her. They failed, and you are the last hope left. If you fail, she’s gone forever.

I really hope nobody’s holding their breath waiting for her return. That might not ever happen. It would also be a lot more helpful if you had the Jr. Woodchucks Guide Book instead of the actual game manual because the game manual doesn’t tell you anything at all that’s worth knowing.

Prayer. May it forever smite your enemies. And cause epileptic seizures.

The main problem with this game is that it just plops you down in the middle of a level with no indication on where to go. Most games want you to go from left to right. Some want you to go vertically in either direction. The Legend of Kage wants you to go left. This in itself would be fine, but the game gives you no indication as to how far you’ve actually gone in the level. To be fair, the concept of space and distance in video games is all relative and arbitrary anyway. We’ll get more into that later, but suffice to say I’m not amused by how Taito handled this one.

Mostly, it’s due to the fact that neither the game nor the manual really tells you what to do. I found a gameplay video online and the best I could come up with is that at some point you’re magically able to move onto the second level. No door appears, no flashing screen, nothing. You’re just somehow able to go further left than you could before and move onto the second level.

I finally figured out that when you get all the way left and kill enough enemies a special enemy will appear. Kill him and you get to move on. How did I do that you ask? Looked it up online. I shouldn’t have to do that.

I died right after this. Took forever just to get this far, I'm not doing it again.

So why am I spending so much time talking about why this game sucks and not more time talking about the game itself? Honestly, it’s because there isn’t much to talk about. The second level makes you kill 10 ninjas in a 2 level side scrolling section that sill feels weird for making you go left. Next comes a level where you go up a castle wall followed by a trip through the castle that looks an awful lot like Kung Fu.

Finally, the big boss comes out and things are on. As long as you remember to take out his guard butterfly first. Yeah, I don’t expect anything less at this point.

In true arcade game tradition, the game loops around a set of levels that increase in difficulty each time you go through them. The key here is that you’re seen running off with the princess only to have her kidnapped again before you have to start over. I don’t know about you, but if every other possible rescuer has at best gone missing and I’m the last hope I’m going to be a bit hesitant anyway. But if I get my soul crushed by having the princess stolen back while we’re on our escape run then there’s no way in Hell I’m going back in. Samurai honor be damned, I’ll go make myself a hut down by the river and hang out with the guy in the van every day.

This game is utter shit. There’s really no other word for it. I was going to say something about how the one hit kills just sucked. Then I somehow had my costume change colors and I was able to be hit without dieing. I guess that’s the super human power that the manual talks about. One hit kills aren’t a problem. Donkey Kong has that and it works fine. Super Mario Bros. has that default one hit kill that can be upgraded later, which might be a better comparison to make. But I’ve always felt that a simple palet swap is a cheap way to show that you can take more than one hit before you die.

I can’t wait until the end of the year so I can do another set of graphs. I have a feeling things will be a bit surprising.