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sarahssowertty
@sarahssowertty

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Vs. The Advanture of Valkyrie: The Legend of the Key of Time (Namco, 1986)

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The title used here is the official translation, this game's original title is Valkyrie no Bouken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu. While the game is untranslated, there's very little text and a full strategy guide is included (with maps) to help you beat the game. At the press of a button, you can bring up a Password Memo screen that allows you to record 16 passwords for later use. A Preference Setting allow you to display a two-second warning before enemies appear on-screen and also display a timer to show when 896 seconds (just barely under 15 minutes) are up, signalling the appearance of an unkillable enemy that also closes off inns and shops until your inevitable defeat- get to an inn and grab a password before it appears!

The evil Zouna has taken over the fair kingdom of Marvel Land, plunging the land into darkness! Only one warrior can stand up to this injustice- the warrior maiden, Valkyrie. From a top-down perspective similar (but not identical!) to the adventures of a certain young man in Hyrule, she must travel across Marvel Land, defeating Zouma's minions and finding items along the way to help her progress, as well as earn experience to learn new magical spells to aid her quest. She can also do some shopping for supplies with the money earned in combat or take a breather at the inn to heal and level herself up after a good night's rest. Lead on, adventurer, Valkyrie's quest awaits!

This is a pretty interesting rerelease for a few reasons, not least of which being this has never been dumped for use in MAME, making it an Arcade Archives exclusive for the time being. To be honest, I thought someone had made a mistake listing Vs. System games online and figured it didn't really exist, but I guess this rerelease shut me up! Can you blame me though? A top-down action RPG, in an arcade cabinet? Surely not, but Namco will make it work somehow. Other than a few changes outlined in the Hamster stream for the game (3:34:00) which amount to the 15 minute 'time limit' mentioned above and being able to use certain potions 8 times instead of 4, the entire game is basically in-tact, a full exploration RPG in an arcade cabinet, even letting you pause to switch items!

I can't really comment too much on the game itself as it's not my area (although the fact that some items needed to progress are just in invisible spots on the overworld seems very cruel). One thing I will say, I kinda respect the fact that rather than put a hard timer on, Namco just said, "OK, this enemy will eventually show up to make you get off the cabinet and also stop you from getting your password". It's a very blunt solution to the problem. Fortunately, if you're curious about this game yourself, the manual provides a full strategy guide complete with enemy and monster listings, maps of every area and even a step-by-step guide on what to do to beat the game. It's very helpful and makes me want to spend a bit more time with it, although it's a good thing you can display the amount of time you have before the time limit enemy shows up- losing all your progress because you didn't get to the inn within the limit is rough!

In any case, another undumped Vs. System game, nice! This list on Undmped Wiki has a few other interesting Namco Vs. System games- The Tower of Babel / Mytsery Tower, The Quest of Ki, Family Tennis... Hopefully Hamster can work something out and get these games reissued too, maybe some of those mysterious Sunsoft Vs. System games... At least get to Vs. The Quest of Ki before Vs. Sky Kud, please!!


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in reply to @sarahssowertty's post:

The Namco VS stuff is really rare as they were only made for Namco's directly managed arcades. They couldn't be found anywhere else & were never offered for sale

I'd only played a tiny bit of this game at the end of the 90s on the PS1 & was contemplating giving it a miss but I'm glad I didn't. Just working through the basics moved it from 'interesting oddity' to 'why tf haven't I played a load more of this, it's amazing'

3 for 3 in 'ohfive doubts Namco VS System game will be all that & is immediately proven to be extremely wrong'. Guess I'm fully a convert now though

Oh, that makes a lot of sense for why the Namco ones are so rare and such odd choices. And yeah, I missed a lot of these Namco Famicom games too, so trying out this and Star Luster properly via ACA has been really interesting! I need to go back to that PS1 remake~

VnB is one of those games that I hold close just because it's interesting; it's another one of those that I have a very brief disassembly on and did some work figuring out some internals years and years ago (like, 15+ years)

The 15 minute "get off the cabinet, asshole" monster feels like a really nasty addition, but at the same time, par for the course for how this game works

The bit about "cruel" design -- yes, this is very much another one of Namco's "impossible-to-figure-out secrets everywhere" games. Invisible items on the overworld is probably one of the less cruel things this game does (not that it is less cruel, just that the game has more, worse tricks)

Yeah, it seems like a pretty interesting game for sure, thanks for sharing! I would've thought they'd go for something like a timer you pay credits for that you can always see on-screen or something, but the approach they take is pretty funny at least :V