The Legend of "Valkyrie" (1990)

Of the five games included in Namco Museum Vol. 5, this is definitely the one that is most obscure to Americans. It was the only game that never made it to American arcades, and most sources don’t even list it under that name. It certainly feels like a late 80s arcade game in that the goal isn’t really getting the high score. It does keep track of that, but collecting points isn’t really the game’s focus. This is a game that is meant to be won. I will give it points for the ambition, but it does fall apart a bit in the execution.

(I am getting Dino-Riki flashbacks, and honestly that's not really a bad thing)

It’s a game that tricks you into thinking it is a deep RPG with a compelling story, but it can’t really hide the fact that it is an arcade game whose main goal is to take your money. Most of the game is spent moving in one direction and shooting wave after wave of monsters. There are so many things to kill in this game. If you ever wanted to kill fire than this is your game. It is also full of moving platforms which are very easy to fall off of. There go more and more quarters. It all adds up to a game that I really wanted to like, but the pieces just don’t add up.

I will probably play this one some more in the future and might be able to find more to like about it. For now though I’m just not finding that much to enjoy with inching along shooting the same monsters over and over while trying to make very perilous jumps. It takes more than a sword and a shop to be an RPG. This one is going to be easy to place on my Ironclad List of Correctness, but I doubt it will stay at the bottom for too long. If anything I am glad I played it so that Metro-Cross could move away from the bottom of the list. That game is way too god to stay at the bottom for long. 

1. Pac-Mania (1987)

2. Metro-Cross (1985)

3. The Legend of “Valkyrie” (1989)

Next time: A game with a secret female protagonist set on a dangerous alien world, but not the one you’re thinking of.