#42 - Arkista's Ring

That cape is boss.

It looks more complex than it really is.

The Legend of Zelda was a great game. American Sammy thought so too, though it didn't care much for the pesky exploring, so it took the combat of Zelda and essentially made an entire game around it entitled "Arkista's Ring." Many gamers like to badmouth rip-offs of extremely successful games, like Zelda or Mario, but "Arkista's Ring" is surprisingly well-made for what it is. It's not going to quench your thirst for adventure like Zelda does, but it will give you a couple hours of enjoyment.

There is a story here about a ring and the elven kingdom and other such Tolkien nonsense, but none of it is important. You play a spunky elven princess named Christine, and your main goal is to trudge through 32 levels of shoot-and-run gameplay... well, 32 main levels. The game actually repeats a couple times after you've beaten it, so you could technically go up to stage 125. Even if you like this game, like I did, I really doubt you would want to as the gameplay grows wearisome after a couple hours. But I digress.  Equipped with your trusty arrows, your only goal is to shoot the enemies around you - worms, ninjas, bats, vortexes, trolls, anything goes in this strange world. Once you have shot enough enemies to quench the level's bloodlust, a key will appear in some random hole in the level. You obtain the key and progress to the next level. Occasionally, the enemies will drop item bags which give you different items to help you on your journey. The items include potions, weapon upgrade (to flamethrower!!!!!111), a wand that obliterates every enemy on-screen, among others. You can also pick up extra health points (in the form of strange items, like Dracula's cape) and lives, but these are far more rare. Should you happen to lose all your lives, continues are plentiful, and the game only seems to get harder after level 32.

Graphics are serviceable, music is kind of bad, and controls are a little clunky but they get the job done. That's it folks. Honestly, this game is about as average as they come. It's really only half or a third of a game, if you think about it. If Zelda could combine dungeon crawling, world-exploring, and excellent combat, then American Sammy easily could have added a little more depth to this relatively unknown game. Still, for being a competent clone of Zelda's combat system, it's not half bad. If you're a NES or Zelda aficionado and you haven't tried on Arkista's Ring, you'd do well to remedy this immediately. Anybody else, keep your distance.

B-