A long long time ago, I owned a single game system: a NES. Now, most of the games I owned or played were extremely blocky, clumsy, and primitive, but as nothing better existed at the time, I enjoyed them. Most of these games were also apparently translated from Japanese to English by someone who spoke only Portuguese, but this fact, at the time, did not bear heavily upon my mind either.
While these games were neither marvels of technological sophistication, by today's standards, nor masterpieces of plot and character, they did, at the time, inspire me. Some of them even managed to imprint themselves upon my vulnerable psyche and continue to torment... er, fuel my imagination to this day. This page is my little tribute to those games which had a particularly lasting and/or traumatic effect upon me, in hopes that others may be inspired to look anew at these old creations and say, "Wow, this really DOES suck!"
The first thing that strikes the player about this game is its stark, unrelenting ugliness. It is, indeed, an unapologetically ugly game. You begin with your near-mute, personalityless hero- who also jumps like a weenie- in his extremely ugly hometown, which seems to be decorated entirely in shades of what, in the lingo of the 50s and 60s, were known as "earth tones." Talk to the extremely ugly people, who provide you with a ring to see the king (ha, ha, ha. It really is a line of dialogue), and Our Hero then leaves his hometown, possibly because he wasn't ugly enough or his colors clashed with the rest.
There is, in fact, a plot to the game, albeit a rather muddled and piecemeal one. When you get your ring to see the king (okay, okay, I'll shut up about that now. I promise), you get the beginnings of an odd little story. Apparently, everyone in this world is either an Elf or a Dwarf, and lives in a giant tree known as the World Tree. Our Hero and all the ugly people of the towns are apparently Elves, despite their lack of pointy ears, sylvan features, or any other distinguishing trait generally associated in the popular mind with elves.
This brings us to the enemies of the game. Now, far be it from me to criticize anyone's inspiration, but I swear somebody in Japan must have stopped by a Hieronymous Bosch retrospective, taken a look at all his twisted images of Purgatory and Hell, and thought, "Hey! This would make a REALLY COOL video game!" And somehow, possibly owing to the fact that Japan allows the over-the-counter sale of cough syrup with codeine in drugstores, someone gave said person the money to make it. Anyhow, the result, as one might expect, is that all of the enemies in this game are very very very very ugly. Possibly the most intentionally grotesque things I've ever seen in an 8-bit game, save perhaps the entirety of "Bad Dudes." At any rate, or at least according to the English Tlansration, these demented Boschian creatures are supposed to be Dwarves. And they're evil. The plot is a bit more complicated than this, involving something about a meteorite, poisoned water springs, and the cleverly named Evil One, but frankly, I had no idea what the hell was going on throughout most of it.
There is a slightly more sinister undercurrent to the plot, involving the fact that the townspeople are all evil. Now, while this is never directly stated anywhere in the game, they prove their evilness beyond a shadow of a doubt by giving you such helpful advice as "Don't try too hard." I kid you not. Yes, a nebulous Evil Force is taking over the world, poisoning water, turning people into monsters and causing everything to be puice-colored, and the townspeople are telling you, "Don't try too hard." The twisted intents of the friendly-looking townspeople are also made apparent by the music which plays inside stores and houses. Now, some of the music featured in this game is actually pretty damn good given 8-bit limitations, but the music which plays inside the stores... is not. It's a hideous, dementedly simplistic little rhythm which will insinuate itself into your brain and torment your dreams for years to come.
In theory, the game is password-based. In practice, this translates to making occasional visits to an ambiguously religious "Guru", who gives you a "mantra," consisting of a jumble of numbers and letters running to the effect of "gHXZ8qr14ML33tH4XX0r". When Our Hero meets an unpleasant end at the hands of a flesh-eating maggot or whatnot, the game helpfully attempts to offer grief counseling: "Don't have negative thoughts. Remember your mantra." The problem is that even if you double-, triple- and quadruple-check your mantra, the game will sometimes decide to be an ornery little bastard and conveniently refuse to accept it. Every once in a while, the "Guru" will also decide to bestow a "title" upon you, though I'm not sure exactly how this relates to the game.
Why the game is called "Faxanadu," I actually have no idea. The name never appears anywhere in the game.
Overall: This is, in fact, not too bad of a game. It's fun when it's not being so hideously ugly that you avert your eyes out of fear of possible vision damage. If nothing else, it has atmosphere-- big, heaping, possibly sentient buckets of it. By 8-bit standards, at least. I'm surprised no one has jumped on its fanfic potential yet.
Oh, and the ending's not worth it. Just a warning in advance.
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