Rygar
I have recently ‘re-discovered’ the sheer brilliance of Rygar – an arcade game I used to pump coins into as a kid up at Terry’s Corner Store. Playing this game again brought back memories of all of the fun I had after school with my ’spare’ pocket money.
Here is a screen shot of the arcade version of Rygar:
About Rygar
Rygar was created by Tecmo in 1986 and is is a scrolling ‘platform’ game where you play as Rygar, the “Legendary Warrior”. Moving through the levels, you will come across many different enemies, increasing in skill the further your progress.
Your main method of attack is via your Diskarmor, a large chain wielded disk (shield) weapon. landscape. During the game, you can acquire one of five special power icons to assist your attacks. These are:
Star Icon: Provides a longer chain to hit your enemy from a greater distance.
Crown Icon: Provides a stronger disk to hit more enemies with q single attack.
Tiger Icon: Gives ability to jump on enemies and kill them.
Cross Icon: Gives a temporary shield lasting from 10 to 45 seconds.
Sun Icon: Gives ability to shoot directly upwards, rather than the sweeping motion.
The other great attraction to Rygar is the number of hidden bonus items that can be found. There are hidden golden stars (which give you an extra life when you have collected 7 of them), hidden bomb icons that clear the screen of all enemies and time icons that extend your time in that round.
More information on Rygar, including level walkthroughs and hints, can be found at Rygar Info Site
Emulation and Rygar
The best version of Rygar available on emulation is the Sharp X68000 version. It is almost a perfect arcade machine port and is such a great version of this game. To play this game on your PC you will need to get a Sharp X68000 emulator and the Rygar disk image. You can download the emulator and the Rygar disk image from the Japanese Computer Emulation Centre. Have fun!