Rising Star Games are set to bring Rygar: The Battle for Argus to European Wii’s this very day, and so this week’s Retro Review is a pleasingly topical selection; Tecmo’s Rygar: The Legendary Adventure for the PlayStation2. Released back in 2003, Rygar: The Legendary Adventure was welcomed by critics, but it’s placement on European shop shelves resulted in the title going largely unnoticed in the territory. With Tecmo having decided to redesign the title for Nintendo’s incredibly successful Wii, they quite clearly believe the poor sales of the PlayStation2 version were unwarranted, and when playing through the original release, you may well find it hard to disagree with them.

            Rygar: The Legendary Adventure launched during the mid of the PlayStation2’s peak-era. Arriving two years prior to God of War and during the wake of Devil May Cry 2, with the Current-Generation systems still appearing as little more than dreams in the minds of gamers and the Xbox and GameCube still yet to gather any dust on shop shelves, Tecmo’s underdog performs surprisingly well when in comparison to the competition. The game plays as a Scrolling Beat-‘Em-Up with Platform elements incorporated. Bashing your way through intricately detailed environments the player takes down numerous Titans before leaping across a crevice and facing-off with a screen-filling Boss, Rygar: The Legendary Adventure is all about the spectacle, and at a time when most developers were still struggling with what the PlayStation2 was truly capable of, Tecmo devised a stunningly well-realised world in which gamers will embark upon their adventure.

            The bulk on the game centres around the combat; a presentation which it would be easy to believe was direct inspiration for Sony’s aforementioned multi-million selling God of War series. Using the fabled Diskarmour, players initiate combos with the chain-based weaponry by simply pressing the Square or Circle Buttons repeatedly. More complicated manoeuvres are available through varying combinations of presses of these buttons and incorporating movement of the Left Analogue Stick, and further depth is incorporated through the use of three variants of Diskarmour and their associated summons.

            Each of the three types of Diskarmour – Hades, Sea and Heaven – are equipped with their own unique Familiar, which can be summoned into battle at will, providing the players Icol Meter is sufficiently filled. Each can be Levelled-Up in-game as with Rygar himself, creating some satisfyingly devastating attacks later on in the game.

While the visual quality obviously pales in comparison to similar releases today, and in fact, even to later releases on the PlayStation2, for it’s time Rygar: The Legendary Adventure is a commendable presentation. Chunky character models fill the screen and many of the outside environments are stunningly attractive. The Cut-Scenes portray a more mature, battle-hardened Rygar than that of the in-game Character Model, offering a more distinctive reference as to where the inspiration for the particularly Nu-Metal vision of the character seen in Rygar: The Battle for Argus has come from.

Rygar: The Legendary Adventure may have been long superseded, but there’s no denying that many games since have truly listened to what Tecmo had been trying to say. The gorgeously detailed fantasy world has been a clear inspiration for many titles across a variety of genres, and the connection between the player’s abilities and the level design is rarely as well established in even the most modern big budget releases. At the time of release, Rygar: The Legendary Adventure may have been largely overlooked at retail as, on paper, it could be said to appear very familiar, but with the benefit of hindsight, we can now see just how forward thinking the project was.

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