![]() ![]() The original Xanadu is the second in the Dragon Slayer line. ![]() While most of the Dragon Slayer games aren't technically related, the early games shared much the same staff, and you can find small similarities in graphics and music between them. While simplistic by today's standards, the overhead action RPG garnered a huge following, and thus began a whole big line of sequels. One of the biggest supports of the PC88 was Falcom, and one of their first games was an RPG called Dragon Slayer. While the color depth wasn't much better, the graphics were much higher resolution, and the sound capabilities were far better than the standard PC speaker - this was before even Adlib sound cards were standard, and way before Sound Blasters. While our part of the world was playing games on our IBM PCs with 4 color CGA graphics (or 16 color EGA, if we were lucky), Japan's computer gamers had NEC's PC88. The computer gaming market in the mid 80s in America was dominated by companies like Sierra, Electronic Arts and Broderbund. ![]() Outside of a few townsfolk and fellow adventures, the only other primary character is a little girl who makes you lunchboxes (and occasionally translates stone tablets that reveal bits of history about the lost kingdom of Xanadu). Although you're revived from the brink of death, you're also now cursed, and need to find a way to cure yourself, which revolves around finding the legendary Dragon Slayer sword. ![]() You're some adventurer, in a new town, and you have a problem - right after you find your first dungeon, you get your ass handed to you by a much more powerful warrior. Since Xanadu Next is focused on dungeon exploration, there's very little in the way of plot or exposition. Not that that's a bad thing - Xanadu Next takes the tired mold of Diablo, injects it with a Metroid-like world structure, Falcom-style action and Zelda-like puzzle solving (although there are a fair share of box puzzles, but we'll forgive them for that.) The result is one of the best hack and slashers in a long time. Other than the name and a few bits of arranged music, there's really nothing that links this 2005 dungeon crawler to the original 1984 game. ![]()
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