Retro Game of the Day! The Krion Conquest

Welcome folks, as we beef up promotion here at HeadcaseGames.com (hey, let's call a spade a spade, shall we?) it seems like a cool idea to talk about one of our favorite things: the glorification of retro games from yesteryear, as your great-great granpa would say. Basically, we'll just dip into the vault and draw some memorable game up from the ether and pick it apart, however briefly. Some are awesome and timeless, some are kinda blah and forgettable, but rest assured each will be noteworthy and memorable for whatever reason.



First up is a game called The Krion Conquest, released for NES by Vic Tokai at the cusp of the final decade of the last century. It appeared on the scene without much fanfare - actually the promo art for it looked pretty stupid, so I passed on it altogether at the time. I did investigate it years later when emulation made everything much more accessible, and regretted that it had taken me so long to give it a look.




So yes, it first glance it really just looks like a Mega Man ripoff, and well- that's honestly what that is. But I ask, is that a BAD thing? Surprisingly, we didn't see many Mega Man ripoffs back in the day (and that game had excellent design and mechanic, really). So long as it's carried out faithfully, then it could be said that any professional endeavor of the sort had some room to make noise. Sadly, this game has some unappealing character design (particularly the main character) as opposed to similar efforts like Power Blade - though that game had a blander-than-bland character, at least he looked respectable and not out-of-place. anyway this game had the exact same-feeling of control, the different weapons and respective energy levels, all the things that made Mega Man work so well -


A little hard to tell from these dinky screens, but the game has actually got some pretty nice graphics, this is noticeable when you play it - lots of detail, very colorful, rather varied (if somewhat garish at times) - I am impressed for 8-bit. This stuff is not jaw-dropping, but certainly what you'd consider vintage. Some of the bigger bosses look rather bad-ass and well designed. If I saw this back in the day I would have been pretty excited - why not put THIS stuff up in the advertising? Tch Tch, Vic Tokai--





Anyway, we will leave it at that for now. I haven't got very far through this game, it is punishing right out of the gate. Absolutely worth a look..