A Gem You Don’t Want To Miss

Hello and welcome to another From The Vault Review from the Broken Controller Club, where I take a look back at my favorite and most notable games of yesteryear. It’s also where I get to let my inner old man out and tell you young’uns how it was back in the day. My name’s Ed and I’m your host.

Back in 1988 Broderbund released the US version of the subject of today’s review – The Battle of Olympus on the NES. It was a magical year that saw the release of Gob Bluth anthem The Final Countdown by Europe, Girl You Know It’s True (x3) by Milli Vanilli, and Straight Outta Compton by NWA. If you’re like me and refuse to watch any new movies because they’re mostly badly written reboots and sequels by people who openly hate their audience, you’ll be just tickled to know that some of the excellent releases that year were Big, Young Guns, and Bloodsport. A special 1988 shout out goes to the movie Mac & Me, which if you’re not familiar with it, search Paul Rudd and Mac & Me on Conan O’Brian after you’re done watching this, I promise it’s hilarious.

If you don’t know Broderbund by name, then you likely recognize at least some of the classic games they released, like Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego, the OG Prince of Persia games, The Guardian Legend, The Oregon Trail, Myst, and the original SimCity. There’s actually a lot more where that came from but those were the most well-known ones. There’s is a catalogue that spans decades and to this day provides a lot of enjoyment and has influenced countless titles we play today, and there’s not a micro-transaction or season pass among them. Boy were those the days.

The game was developed by Infinity, which was their first game and you’ll see that they got some of its inpiration from Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, which a lot of fans know as the odd-man out in the Zelda games. There was also a Game Boy port made by Radical Entertainment, though as of this video I have not played it yet. Going off screenshots though, it looks pretty faithful to the original.

Battle of Olympus is a 2d action-adventure game set during ancient Greece that does play a lot like Zelda 2. You play as Orpheus, whose girlfriend Helene is kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld who for the record has nothing to do with Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld, who is busy terrorizing Greece for whatever reason. Really this was back during a time when players didn’t need a reason. Players just needed to know that the bad guy was a dick who needed his ass kicked in, in this case for kidnapping his girlfriend.

So basically Orpheus spends the game travelling back and forth between all these different parts of Greece in order to meet the different gods and gain their favor, which always involves some sort of equipment like a sword, shield, things like that. You’ll beat lots of bosses along the way, like the hydra, the minotaur, cerberus, and more. All of these things will lead you to your main goal, which is to collect 3 fragments of love, so that he can get access to Tartarus for his final showdown with Hades himself. There’s a lot to do here, so it was a little disappointing but not unusual that there’s no battery backup for your saves, but there is a password system to record your progress. Anybody who used those back then knows that one typo means you just lost a lot of time. I myself remember double and triple checking passwords before shutting the game off because it was just daunting to enter something in, get it wrong, and then have to refer back to a password that did work. Heck, I used it this time around and encountered the same problem all over again.

It’s a pretty epic adventure by NES standards and the game doesn’t really hold your hand.

It’s a pretty epic adventure by NES standards and the game doesn’t really hold your hand. There’s a fair amount of backtracking and the game’s directions are a little obtuse in how you get to each area, so you’ll have to talk to the different villagers to get clues on where to go. Some of the villagers live in houses, caves, and a lot live in trees. The clues are definitely better than either Zelda 2 or Simon’s Quest, which let’s be honest, it doesn’t really get worse than Simon’s Quest. Getting lost in this game is kind of a pain because it’s really easy to get killed on the way to your next destination, which reduces your money by half. So be ready to walk around broke for most of the game because you’ll die a lot.

The graphics are detailed for an NES game and they’re colorful with multiple layers to give the backgrounds some depth. During your travels you go to places like Arcadia, Attica, and Crete, where you’ll see dungeons, caves, and cities, and I’ve always thought the enemies were pretty fun also challenging. The music is also good and personally I liked it a lot better than Zelda 2, especially the title and name entry screens. The boss music is a little weird but oddly catchy. The animation varies. Some enemies are animated pretty well and some, just…(show footage of that bull thing) they’re more funny than anything else.The sound effects when you nail a boss along with watching them flash are pretty satisfying, though.

Reaching each god to see what they have to say along with what they give you is really fun as well. Getting a new sword or shield feels great and being able to roflstomp (show meaning in picture) enemies with your new gear is even better. Also just a side note, talking to the gods repeatedly get you the passwords to write down.

So if you’ve got an NES or have any way to access this game, I highly suggest you give it a shot. It’s a fun game and playing this as a kid actually got me interested in ancient history. The names of the locations, gods, and enemies are accurate and when I’d take a break from the game I’d read history books about Greek mythology, which made going back to play it more interesting. That doesn’t make it an educational game any more than it would make God of War educational, but the game is good enough that it’s easy to want to learn more about the material it’s based on. Also yes, I’m a giant geek.

So that’s it for this episode’s walk down memory lane – There’s plenty more where that came from though so check out the rest of the reviews I’ve got available and subscribe to get notified of future content, and I’ll see you next time.