Hero of the Golden Talisman

Hero of the Golden Talisman
Developer(s) Mr Chip Software
Publisher(s) Mastertronic
Designer(s) Shaun Southern
Platform(s) Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum
Release date(s)
Genre(s) Platform-adventure
Mode(s) Single-player

Hero of the Golden Talisman is an action-adventure platform game developed by Mr Chip Software and published by Mastertronic in 1985 for the Commodore 64, with subsequent ports to the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum. It is one of the earliest examples of the Metroidvania genre, preceding Metroid by a year.[1]

Plot

An evil wizard has cursed the protagonist's hometown; the only way to lift the curse is to find and assemble all five pieces of the broken Golden Talisman, which the wizard has hidden in his lair.

Gameplay

Hero of the Golden Talisman takes place in a vast, side-scrolling maze, spanning 512 screens. The player must navigate the labyrinthine structure of the game's world to locate the talisman pieces, one of which is hidden in each of the game's five main areas. In addition to running, jumping, and climbing, the player can shoot enemies by pressing the fire button. The player can also find useful items, which they can store in their inventory and use when the time is right. Some of these items enhance the player's abilities; for example, flags will upgrade the player's weapon. The game displays a minimap in the lower-left corner of the screen at all times, which indicates which rooms have and have not been visited yet and also alerts the player to the presence of items within a given room.

Reception

Your Commodore gave the game 6/10 for originality, 4/10 for playability, 4/10 for graphics, and 5/10 for value-for-money, saying "The game has some original ideas but they don't quite get together and the overall impression is uninspiring";[2] Zzap! was more positive, awarding it 78% and saying it was a "good arcade adventure" and praising the game's size, though one of the three reviewers did not think the gameplay had enough variety to be worth the £2.99 price tag and another reviewer complained that using diagonals to jump forward and backward was too difficult with a standard Atari joystick. The magazine also compared the hero character to the spy from Impossible Mission.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Szczepaniak, John. "Backtracking: The History of Metroidvania". GamesTM (116). Imagine Publishing. pp. 148–53.
  2. ↑ J.L. (Feb 1986). "Hero of the Golden Talisman". Your Commodore. Argus Specialist Publications (Vol. 2, No. 5): 47.
  3. ↑ C.P., J.L., J.R. "Hero of the Golden Talisman". Zzap! (9). Newsfield Publications Ltd. pp. 33–34.
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