Introduction
Today, I wanted to talk to you about a game I recently played. A humble game known as Xak: The Art of Visual Stage. It’s an Action-RPG that was originally released on the PC-88 in 1989, and developed by Micro Cabin. The game was later ported to numerous systems during the 16-bit era. Today, I wanted to record my runthrough of the Super Famicom version which was developed by Sunsoft and Tokai Engineering in 1993.
Firstly, something I wanted to discuss was the name of the game itself. The Japanese katakana reads as サーク (Saaku), which leads me to believe that the game is meant to be pronounced as “Sawk” or something closer to “Sark.” But for all three of us Westerners who’ve played this game, when we see the big letters that spell out X-a-k, we’re all going to pronounce it as “Zack,” as in the given name.
The next thing I wanted to discuss is the subtitle, “The Art of Visual Stage,” which almost sounds like the title of some kind of art book. It’s a weird and clunky title, and the sequels don’t follow any similar naming convention. However, what a lot of people believe is that “Visual Stage” likely refers to the game’s VR (Visual Representation) system.
The VR system was a programming system used in the initial versions which brought horizontal and virtual depth into the game. The devs were so proud of this particular system, that they even brought attention to it, in-depth, in the game’s manual.
Another thing I wanted to bring up was that despite being almost completely unknown in the West, this game series was decently well-received in Japan. It was seen as the breakout title that put the company of Micro Cabin on the map, and it received two sequels, two spin-offs, and numerous ports on various systems such as the NEC PC-98, Sharp X68000, MSX2, PC-Engine, Super Famicom, and mobile phones.
Translations
Just like many Japanese RPGs, Xak never saw the light of day in the West for a long time. If you wanted to play the game in English at all, you had to use the English patch of the MSX version done by Delta Soft in 2002.
In 2007 though, out of the blue, the MSX2 version got an official localization and was released on WOOMB.net, a retro gaming service for obscure Japanese PC games. Additionally, it also came with a translated manual and story guide. Though this service is now defunct, this version is not lost to time; this version can still be played as the ROM was dumped online. It can be found without too much searching and played using an MSX2 emulator.
Aside from this version, the SFC version has also received two fan translations. An incomplete version from 2011 was worked on by a user named Django. Django was also responsible for fan translations of XZR II (MSX), Ishido (FC), and Sa-Zi-Ri (MSX).
Later on, a more complete and polished version was done by Dynamic Designs, a group that has quite a long history with fan translations. The group formed from the merger of a group called Magic-Destiny and another group called Stealth Translations on September 7, 2009. The name “Dynamic Designs,” is a play on the name of the older gaming publishing company “Working Designs.” In addition to the many games DD has made in English, they also made a few Romanian translations. They’ve worked on fan translations for games such as Power of the Hired, the SFC version of Record of Lodoss War, Hyper Iria, and Galaxy Robo.
The English fan translation of Xak 1 was created using the French fan translation, developed by 4ph, as a base. This patch included translation efforts by members: Spring and Hiei. The English translation is pretty fluid and of good quality. It reads very well with little to no errors or issues. The dialogue is also laced with sprinkles of personality and charm, though I don’t know if that was added by the fan translation or if the original Japanese dialogue was just as silly.
Story
The story begins with a brief record from two hundred and fifty years ago when dark clouds shrouded the country of Wavis. A powerful demon named Badu emerged, wreaking havoc on village after village with his overwhelming might. He sought to conquer Wavis until Duel, the god of war, descended and defeated the wicked god, sealing him within an Eternal Ice Wall located far north in the Royal Sacred Precincts.
Following Badu's defeat, peace reigned for two and a half centuries. However, Badu's soul was released, seeking a new vessel. Monsters assembled and engaged in battles seemingly orchestrated by an unknown force, with the aim of reviving Badu's original body.
After he defeated Badu, Duel had fallen in love with a mortal woman and forfeited his immortal godhood to live a mortal life and start a family. Consequently, as Duel is no longer of this world, the only means to thwart Badu's resurrection is to locate Duel's descendant. The King of Wavis dispatched a messenger fairy named Roux Mirie Pixie on a mission to guide the unfortunately named warrior Dork, in preventing Badu's return.
In Japanese, his name is spelled as ドルク (Doruku), and instead of interpreting the name as Dolk or Doruk or something, they just call him “Dork.” I’m sure his school life was terrible.
However, upon reaching the village of Feares (referred to as ‘Fearless’ in the SFC fan translation), Pixie discovered that Dork had vanished without a trace. And in case of this, she was tasked with persuading Dork's 15-year-old son, Latok Kart, to undertake the journey in his stead.
Let’s Play the Game
The SFC version of this game changes quite a lot of things compared to other versions. While the original versions of the game that were available on the PC-88 and 98 featured a bump combat system very similar to Ys, the SFC version has a very standard system where you press the A button to swing your sword to attack enemies similar to Lagoon or The Legend of Zelda.
A lot of the time, you can’t just run up to enemies and slash them though. Your sword doesn’t have much range, so you need to be really close to attack an enemy. And because they don’t get knocked back much, if they take multiple hits to kill you need to back up and readjust yourself for your next attack. You almost have to adopt a more defensive approach when attacking enemies.
This game features a leveling system, and similar to Ys, you get a lot out of levels. You’ll find a lot of times that after a single level-up, enemies that once two-shot you and take forever to kill, now die in one hit and do next to no damage. Furthermore, in Xak, when you level up, it also degrades the amount of EXP you gain from defeating enemies in that particular area. Similar to something like Fire Emblem, though the degradation is a lot more drastic, an enemy will give you about 10 EXP per kill, but once you gain one or two levels, they now give as little as 1 EXP.
Additionally, this game features the same weapon system as Ys, though with its own stipulations. For one, to use certain weapons, you have to be at a certain level. For instance, if you purchase a weapon or armor that’s Rank 15, and you’re only level 14 or something, you aren’t able to equip it.
Furthermore, in addition to purchasing equipment, you can also magically enhance it by visiting the Magic Shop. Enchanting your sword gives you more attack, and enchanting your armor and shield gives you more defense. Furthermore, undead enemies and ghosts can't be damaged unless your weapon is enchanted. The price for enchanting weaponry is about half the price of the weapon itself, and, to put it bluntly, it's a bit of a hassle. Later on in the game, weapons start to be prohibitively expensive, and the financial gain from massacring monsters is very slow.
In the later parts, in order to keep up with the bosses that do extreme amounts of damage, you have to spend about 5K on the newest sword, and spend 2.5K to enchant it; get armor that costs another 5K, with an extra 2.5K to enchant that; and then get the newest shield for 4K, and spend 2K to enchant that. And that's not even mentioning the required rank. Even with all the backtracking you need to do in this game, I still found myself stopping to grind a lot.
In my run, I didn’t have the patience to sit and grind to get the fourth-tier shield, after grinding for the sword and armor. So I skipped it expecting to be able to save up and buy the fifth shield later on. And… not only did I not get a chance to go back to the last village of the game to buy the fifth shield before it was too late, but I also missed the final shield in the game, which bit me really hard in the ass in the endgame.
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, when starting the game, you’re kind of just plopped right in front of your house, in the town of Feares, with next to no instructions or anything. You walk around until you reach Elise’s house—Elise is the blonde woman on the starting splash screen btw—where she tells you that her grandfather, the Village Elder, lost his eyeglasses and asks you to find them in the church. After some searching, you find the glasses and give them back to the elder. After thanking you, he says that this Pixie person is here to speak with you.
Pixie drops the same lore that I had stated previously, and without much of a choice, Latok buckles his stuff and sets out for battle. Well, I mean, technically you do have a choice, but she just asks you again.
Anyway, I bought a sword, a shield, some armor, and I set off to the fields. In my first run, I walked around aimlessly. I wasn’t really sure where to go and just followed the beaten path. The enemies on the way were a bit tough, but with some grinding, they weren’t a huge deal. Eventually, I reached Morham Fort, but I couldn't really progress further than the first area, so I was lost.
I looked online for a walkthrough, and apparently, I missed a required area that I had to go to and a boss fight. It also turns out that this is a common thing for many blind players to miss, as I’ve seen at least two other people also miss this boss. But like, can you blame them???
You go to the left side and meet a girl named Freya Jerbain, or “Fray” for short. She passed out after she got attacked by monsters. So you rescue her and take her to her dad’s house, which is on the right path. Her father mentions that he doesn’t have the medicine to help her, so you have to take her back to the nurse in Feares. So you carry her on your back and you head into town. And to be honest, the sprite of Latok giving Fray a piggyback ride is pretty cute.
It would be nice if the villagers or something reacted to this, but that isn’t the case. After getting her back to town, you go back to the woods and you’re tasked with fighting the first boss. Whispy Woods.
Since I was a bit over-leveled, I killed the boss in two or three hits and moved on. After that, Fray’s dad drops us more lore regarding our mission, and talks about the power of Xak.
He said it! He said the thing!
Afterwards, we moved on to Fort Mohram. On the footpath to the fort, we fight some marginally stronger enemies such as Cyclops and Cum Monsters. I think the manual calls them ghosts or something, and I’m not trying to be immature, but like, c’mon, that’s cum.
💀
Joking aside, one thing I wanted to bring up in this part in particular was one of my biggest highlights in this game, that being the music. Tadahiro Nitta and Ryuji Sasai went absolutely ballistic with this game’s OST. Sasai was also the composer behind games such as Final Fantasy Legend III and Tobal No. 1 and was a big fan of hard rock, like myself.
He even states Queen was a significant influence on his music, and over time in his musical career, he shifted to more classical music. I bring this up here because “Path to the Fort,” is probably one of my favorite songs in this game, if not my absolute favorite. If you aren’t too fond of how it sounds on the Super Nintendo, I urge you to listen to the X68000 version or the MSX2 version. It’s such a shame that this banger only plays in this small portion of the game before entering the fort.
Though, to juxtapose my greatest praises of the music, I wanted to discuss my greatest criticism, that being the dungeons. To preface, dungeons tend to be my least favorite part of most RPG-styled games and they sometimes gatekeep me from playing otherwise great games. That said, the dungeons in this game feel as if they were specifically tailored to piss me off.
I’m someone who has the directional orientation of a goldfish and gets lost in dungeons very easily. That said, this first dungeon is very maze-like, with a lot of dead ends, rooms that look the same, and pointless pathways, not to mention a lot of backtracking. When I first enter the fort, I find a key on a wall, I try to take the key, but the game doesn’t let me pick it up, so I move on. Then I find a guy in another room asking me to unlock a door for him. So then, I can go all the way back to the wall and pick up the key.
On the second or third floor, there’s a douchebag asking you to bring him some soup. So, you have to traverse all the way back to the first floor to get a pot of soup and bring it to the guy—you’re not allowed to pick up the soup beforehand, by the way. The guy offers you some soup, but if you say “Yes,” he essentially tells you to fuck off and eats it all for himself right in front of your face.
As a “reward” for going through the trouble of bringing him the soup, you get absolutely nothing, and you just have to traverse further into the dungeon. Later on, you reach a door that you can’t open, and you need to open this door to be able to progress. So, you know what you have to do now? You go back to the fucking soup guy!
When you talk to him again, he gives you the Reservoir Key. Keep in mind, I had such a hard time navigating this dumb fort maze that every time I had to backtrack somewhere, I used the Teleport Spell to take me back to Feares, and made my way through the fort from the entrance since that was easier than finding out how to get from Room A to Room B.
Eventually, we head to the Reservoir and fight a Water Dragon, which is a fairly simple boss. Like Whispy Woods, this boss dies pretty quickly, though his attacks are much stronger and you can easily die if you’re not careful.
After defeating the boss, you obtain the Blue Xak Gem, and we can move on to the exit. When we leave the fort, we can head to the bridge which will take us straight to the Shrine where we can stop Badu. Or well, that would be the case, but once we reach the exit, we run into a stupid idiot named Bell-Well who tells us that since monsters were invading the fortress, he had the bridge destroyed to prevent them from infiltrating the Shrine.
But all hope is not lost, as there is another path to the Shrine if you traverse through the city of Normana and then go underground. Which isn’t a problem, I’m glad at the very least we have a nice alternative route to the Shrine.
The alternative route.
If we go back to Feares, we can check up on how Fray is doing and she seems to have made a full recovery, and she’s very thankful to us for single-handedly rescuing her and nursing her back to health.
Fray even gives us a Protection Ring, and she calls us “her hero,” which Latok seems to not be much interested in, as he tries to get the hell out of there.
This is actually the last you see of Fray in this game, which is weird to think about considering she has much more of a presence in later games, and even got her own spin-off game on the MSX2.
We then head to Normana and we get permission from its town’s Elder to traverse through the Underground Mines. The mines aren’t as maze-like as the previous dungeon, but it’s still somewhat annoying. First of all, this game continues the tradition of bats being the most annoying enemy type in every video game.
They don’t do a lot of damage, but the passageways are very narrow. And you can’t really run through enemies, they just bump you back a bit. Not to mention, this dungeon likes to spam clusters of enemies as if it were an EarthBound anti-piracy check.
Image taken from Starman.net
The bats in this dungeon do no damage if you’re sufficiently leveled enough, so they just nudge at you and block your path, while your short range with your sword makes them hard to kill.
Something else that’s a bit annoying is the big boulders that block your path. You need the Disintegrate Spell to get rid of them, but the spells themselves cost like 800 Gold each, and you don’t know how many you’re going to need in total if you’re playing blind. You’ll make it decently far, only to find out you need the Disintegrate Spell to progress, so you have to go all the way back to Normana, buy some spells, and then return to the dungeon.
If you do plan on playing this game, just keep in mind, that you’ll need about eight spells for the entire dungeon. Aside from that, and a small humorous section with a drunk pirate, this dungeon is very straightforward.
You make it to the third boss, a Fire Elemental and a Water Elemental. This boss was kinda tricky for me because all of their projectiles one-shot me, and I didn’t want to grind even more. I managed to defeat them, but then I went on to phase two, where they became the United Elemental. Which was horrible, since I didn’t know you could destroy the homing projectiles with your sword. After I figured that out though, I defeated the boss, and then… I get a credits scene…?
You get a little sequence of events that took place during the game thus far, concluded with an eyecatcher telling you that you’re moving on to Chapter 2.
In the original PC-88 and 98 versions, this is the part of the game where you’d change disks, but since this is on Super Nintendo, this sequence seems a bit redundant. This game is not long enough to justify splitting it into two chapters.
After that, you continue onto an Underground Village, where you can talk to the people, buy new equipment, and do everything else you can do in both Feares and Normana. Speaking of Feares and Normana though, at this point in the game, you’re not able to travel back to the previous areas from here.
You move onto Zelgard Tower and do your typical dungeon stuff. This dungeon is alright; there is some backtracking, but it’s not as frequent. Technically you only need to leave the tower like once—at this point, you should be desensitized to it.
The enemies here are kinda strong, but not too bad. Some of the most annoying ones are these Not!Latoks that run around and chase you.
In addition, the enemies here also consist of… oh…
The Cum Monsters class changed and promoted into Snot Monsters
On your second time entering the Tower, you run into this guy named Rune. He seems to be an adventurer like yourself, but he has no intention of helping you. In fact, he’s boasting about how he and he alone will be the one to stop Badu, and how we may as well run home.
I love his shit-eating grin.
After that, we kinda just ignore him and go back into the Tower. While this dungeon is fine, one thing I do really dislike is how the sprites are set up.
In this screenshot, most of Latok’s body is hidden behind this wall. If I have him walk one tile down, his entire body will be hidden from view. This is annoying because what happens a lot is that many enemies will be completely hidden from view and can pop in out of nowhere and just kill you. These corridors are pretty tight too and the enemies are pretty strong, so you will die because of this at least once or twice.
Something that’s not really a complaint, but just something kind of silly is how there are some chests that are trapped and will hurt you when you open them. However, there’s one particular chest in one of the top floors where if you open it, it sends you to some prison room without any escape.
If you don’t have the Teleport Spell, you either have to reload a save or you can just softlock yourself by saving your progress.
The boss of this area is a Necromancer who just spawns an army of Skeletons and Zombies. After you kill enough of them, he simply retreats. Then you can go to the Flame Fort. This is the last major dungeon of the game. In addition, you can also visit a small hideout where you can talk to a couple of NPCs. You can also witness one of the very few typos in this fan translation.
In the Flame Fort, you simply have to traverse from floor to floor. You’ll need a Flame Mantle to enter through fire doors, which you get from Rachel in the Hideout. You’ll also need a Gas Mask to enter rooms that are filled with smoke. There’s a chest that you really want to get, which has the final set of armor in the game, however, you have to be at least level 23 in order to open this particular chest.
Back in Zelgard Tower, you had to rescue a guy, named Caine, who accidentally turned himself into a ghost, and you had to turn him back to normal using the Dispel Spell. As a reward, he gives you his pet named Rabby, which is an item you keep in your inventory.
In the Flame Fort, there’s a bedroom you have to search to find the Dragon Ring under one of the beds, and this part is the only part in the game where you have to use Rabby and have him run under the bed and fetch it.
Once you’ve completed everything you had to do, you make it to the top of the tower. To progress past this part, you have to reach the level cap of 25. If you are level 25, your Blue Xak Gem starts to shine. A box you found all the way back at Mohram Fort also starts to shine. Upon opening it, you discover the Red Xak Gem within, adding it to your inventory.
You use the Dragon Ring, which spawns a Dragon, which will fly you to the Shrine in a cool shmup section.
This section kind of caught me off guard, it’s such a shift in genres. It looks pretty cool and the music in this section is phenomenal, I love it so much. However, a criticism I have with this section is that it's quite the drag...on.
The enemies in this area shoot a lot of projectiles and are hard to avoid; some even take multiple hits to kill, which kinda just means that you aren’t killing them before they hit you. They do little damage, but they still build up a lot, especially considering your health doesn’t replenish before you reach the boss. The fact that you can’t access your menu, let alone pause the game during this section, also makes this section quite stressful.
The boss is this section’s biggest sin though—a giant Fire Salamander that races across the map and fires projectiles in random directions.
The biggest issue I have with this boss is that it has an absurd amount of health: on the bottom of the screen, you can see that it has the same amount of health bars as the player. However, you do half as much damage to the Salamander as it does to you. The next issue is that its only weak point is its head. You have to have some damn good precision to hit its head while also moving and avoiding the projectiles.
Furthermore, its movements are extremely sporadic and there is no apparent pattern, it just runs around aimlessly not giving you many opportunities to even predict where it will spawn next. I’ve had an attempt where I stood in place for like twenty seconds, as the Salamander was just moving round offscreen and I had to wait for it to come back. The absolute worst part though is that whenever you die, you have to play the previous stage all over again.
And it’s not like a short simple shmup section either, it takes like two full minutes to clear the section just to get another attempt at the boss. For reference, that’s longer than the average Touhou stage. The concept of having the game shift to a shmup is so cool to me, but I’m not a fan of this execution at all, and this boss is genuinely one of my least favorite bosses I’ve ever fought in any video game. It’s overall a very low point in this otherwise decent game.
After defeating the boss, we make it to the foot of the Shrine where we find an injured Rune. He tells us that he was injured by the Salamander boss, tell me about it. He also divulges the secret of the upcoming maze and how to clear it. In addition, he gives the Great Sword, the final sword in the game, and the Green Xak Gem, the last Xak Gem in the game.
After that, you go into the Shrine, and there are a bunch of houses labeled A through G. You can only go in each door once, or else the puzzle resets, and you can’t just go into the rooms in alphabetical order. I’d recommend keeping a pen and paper next to you for this section. There is also a nice guide on Gamefaqs you can follow if you want.
To avoid major story spoilers, I’m not going to talk about a lot of the circumstances around fighting the final boss, Badu, but the fight itself isn’t too bad. Since I missed the final Shield, my defense was notably lower, so all of the Badu’s attacks cleanly killed me in one hit. However, compared to the previous Salamander boss, Badu takes a lot fewer hits to wither down, even counting his second phase. That said, as long as you can avoid the projectiles, it shouldn’t be awful.
Conclusion
After defeating Badu, you are taken to the real credits, which is the same as the first credit scene, but this time it tells you the names of the developers. You also get a cute CG featuring Latok and the Girls™, as well as some foreshadowing for the sequel game, which is almost redundant for this version since none of the sequels were ported to any Nintendo systems.
Overall, the game was solid. It had some ups and some downs. Downs that have given me a fear of salamanders. As I stated previously, this game, or at least the PC-88/98 versions received some praise, mainly in regards to its story and presentation. Famitsū magazine even described the game's story as "magnificent."
The music was seen as a high point for a lot of people who played the originals in Japan, and people were even positively receptive to the VR system which was pretty innovative at the time. And for the most part, I agree with this sentiment. The story may be simple, but it's told and presented in a charming and memorable way. Despite how I sounded, I did enjoy the characters quite a bit, and many NPCs were a straight-up joy to interact with.
One of the biggest criticisms I’ve heard from people regarding this version of the game is the fact that since it’s the only version of Xak ever ported to the SFC, there are a lot of loose ends and story aspects that are left incomplete. I’ve seen a lot of people who play this game recommend the Xak I & II on the PC Engine, though that version lacks an English translation.
There is something I find funny that I had nowhere else to mention: while I was typing this review out, literally a few days ago, the PC-88 version of this game was ported to the Nintendo Switch. It’s available to purchase from the eShop for about 880 Yen. Granted you’re able to read Japanese.
All-in-all, the SFC version of Xak: The Art of Visual Stage was an interesting journey for me. It’s a bit hard for me to actively recommend it. But if you’re a big fan of Ys-inspired Action-RPGs and don’t mind some mild backtracking and can laugh off a lot of the more frustrating parts, it’s something you can sit down and play.
In any case, thank you for reading this little review, I hope you got some new insight or at the very least had your interest piqued regarding the Xak series, Micro Cabin, or similar Action RPGs. That said, I hope to see you next time for the next review!
Image taken from the Sharp X68000 version.
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