Crystalis opens with an apocalypse that has since come and gone. According to the game, a war engulfed the Earth on 1 October 1997, and when Nintendo Power looked back at the game in its hundredth issue, in September 1997, it advised readers to “wear lead underwear”. The player wakes a hundred years later from a cryogenic sleep. Civilisation has crept back, but it has turned away from science: people live in walled villages, monsters roam the land, magic has replaced machines, an empire called Draygonia is seizing power, and a century-old tower hangs in the sky.
SNK made it for Nintendo’s console, first in Japan as God Slayer and then, in July 1990, in North America as Crystalis. It plays like The Legend of Zelda, seen from above, with a sword and a large world to explore, but it adds experience levels, magic and swords that fire.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: SNK.
- Released: 1990, in Japan on the Famicom as God Slayer: Haruka Tenkū no Sonata and in North America on the NES as Crystalis.
- Saving: a battery-backed cartridge that keeps two adventures.
- Music: Yoko Osaka.
- Remake: a Game Boy Color version by Nintendo Software Technology Corporation, published by Nintendo in 2000.
- Re-release: the NES version is part of the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection (2018).
Waking up
“For years you were frozen in a cryogenic cocoon. Now your time has come,” Nintendo Power told readers in its May/June 1990 preview. The first village, Leaf, gives the hero clues, items and a first sword, and an inn restores lost health. From there the journey crosses mountains, caves, rivers, a desert pyramid and a town of women called Amazones, where a male hero has to disguise himself with a Change spell to be let in.
Four wise people help along the way. Nintendo Power named them in its July/August 1990 feature: Zebu the elder, Tornel, Asina and Kensu, who between them teach the eight spells, among them Refresh, which restores health, Paralysis, which freezes enemies for five seconds, Telepathy, for asking the helpers for advice, and Teleport, Change and Flight.
Four swords and a fifth
The hero collects four elemental swords: Wind, Fire, Water and Thunder. Each opens the way in its own part of the world. The Sword and Ball of Water, for example, freeze a river into a bridge, and the Water Sword “can shoot blades of swirling snow”. Holding the button charges the sword to fire its element as a blast. With the right items, each element’s ball and bracelet, the charge rises to a second and a third level; the Bracelet of Wind, Nintendo Power noted, “boosts your Power”.
The swords matter most against bosses. The Hardcore Gaming 101 history of the game points out that most bosses are immune to all but one element, so the fight is partly a matter of bringing the right sword. The Thunder Sword, said Nintendo Power, was “second only to the Crystalis”, the fifth sword that gives the game its name.
Defeated enemies give experience points, and the hero’s level rises as in a role-playing game. When the hero dies, the player continues with the experience already earned. Nintendo Power’s first look singled out the “great play control (your character is very nimble and quick)”.
Under the bonnet
The NES draws one scrolling background, and a game with a status bar has to keep that bar still while the world moves. Crystalis uses the scanline counter in Nintendo’s MMC3 cartridge chip to split the screen at a moving line as the player walks up and down the map, which makes it a known test for emulators. The NESdev community’s notes record that wrong MMC3 timing “will create a moving seam as you wander up and down the map”.
Reception
Nintendo’s own staff liked it. In the “Pros’ Picks” chart of the November/December 1990 Nintendo Power, voted by Nintendo’s own staff, Crystalis came third, behind Final Fantasy and Super Mario Bros. 3: “Both are exciting fantasy adventures that have kept the pros at Nintendo on the edges of their seats.” Its Counselors’ Corner tips pages returned to it again and again, from the Amazones disguise to the hidden Psycho Shield, “the most powerful shield ever”.
Later writers have been as warm. Hardcore Gaming 101 called it “a Zelda clone for the NES”, but one that “expounded so much on Nintendo’s formula that oftentimes, it’s even better”, and saw the influence of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in some of its designs.
The Game Boy Color version
In May 1999 Nintendo Power reported that Nintendo Software Technology Corporation, a new Nintendo development branch in Redmond, Washington, was “busily recreating” Bionic Commando and Crystalis for the Game Boy Color. Nintendo published the result in 2000.
It was not a straight conversion. The Game Boy Color’s lower resolution shows less of the world at once, so the view is cramped. Hardcore Gaming 101 found the new music “completely different, and far worse”, and complained that the remake “butchered the one unique and surprising plot element of the original game”. Its verdict was that both versions are worth a try, “even though the NES version is more satisfying”.
The original returned in 2018, when Digital Eclipse included the NES version in the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection.
Sources
- Nintendo Power issue 11, March/April 1990, p. 91: preview (“a post-holocaust world”, “a century old tower in the sky”, play control, the battery-backed save, continuing with experience).
- Nintendo Power issue 12, May/June 1990, pp. 66–67: preview (the cryogenic cocoon, the first town, eight kinds of magic, Refresh and Paralysis, the Bracelet of Wind, the four swords and the Crystalis).
- Nintendo Power issue 14, July/August 1990, pp. 46–52: feature and maps (100 years frozen, Draygonia, the battery-backed save for two adventures, the wise men and their spells, Leaf and Oak).
- Nintendo Power issue 16, September/October 1990, p. 42, and issue 18, November/December 1990, p. 27: Counselors’ Corner tips (Kensu, Amazones and the Change spell, the Psycho Shield, the Sword and Ball of Water).
- Nintendo Power issue 18, November/December 1990, p. 74: Top 30, Crystalis third in the Pros’ Picks.
- Nintendo Power issue 100, September 1997, p. 108: “SNK—NES—July 1990”; the war of 1 October 1997.
- Nintendo Power issue 120, May 1999, p. 80: Nintendo Software Technology Corporation’s Game Boy Color versions of Bionic Commando and Crystalis.
- Computer Gaming World issue 197, December 2000, p. 193: Chips & Bits advertisement listing Crystalis as a July 2000 release.
- Robert Greene, “Crystalis”, Hardcore Gaming 101, 1 August 2017 (web, secondary): the Japanese title, the charge levels, the bosses’ elemental immunities, the Zelda and Nausicaä comparisons, and the Game Boy Color version’s changes. http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/crystalis/
- NESdev Wiki, “Tricky-to-emulate games” and “List of NES music composers” (community reference, web, secondary): the MMC3 split, and Yoko Osaka (“Yoko.O”) as composer. https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Tricky-to-emulate_games
- Wikipedia, “Crystalis” and “SNK 40th Anniversary Collection” (web, secondary): the Japanese release date and full title, the Game Boy Color release in 2000, and the NES version in Digital Eclipse’s 2018 collection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystalis