The Armchair Empire - Classic Games: ActRaiser


	Platform SNES Publisher Enix Developer Quintet Released 1991
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ActRaiser

ActRaiser was one of the handful of launch titles for the Super Nintendo console back in September of 1991. The story behind ActRaiser is an interesting one: Tanzra (the big bad guy, for lack of a better term) has unleashed monsters across your world, and it’s up to you, as the planet’s deity, to rid the world of the monsters and bring civilization, peace, and harmony back to the planet. One of the most interesting aspects of the game is that it had two modes of gameplay — one was action-based hack-and-slash and the other was almost Sim City-like, where players had to literally rebuild scattered settlements.

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The sim mode is not as deep as Sim City (thankfully, in my case), but it’s still a challenge to direct the people where to build and provide cover from attacking monsters via your on-screen cherubic form. As you successfully rebuild and repopulate each settlement, your action character gains hit points and can gain valuable items for use against the evil monsters that await. The sim mode also puts you to work as a deity, as you must answer certain

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prayers. One instance requires you to summon gusts of wind to activate windmills. Another situation has you send a loaf of bread to a runaway child so that he might find his way home. Certain situations require some very basic puzzle-solving, but nothing too taxing. It’s actually quite rewarding to see your newly-rebuilt settlements alive with activity, as you’ll spot growing crops, wild horses, and busy settlers.

The action mode, on the other hand, is as you would think it is. There’s no thinking to be had here, as there are plenty of monsters to dispatch and a few precarious jumps to navigate, a la Castlevania. Your on-screen persona can only take a certain amount of damage, but the enemies follow basic patterns which most experienced game players can decipher with a few tries. As you might expect, a boss character awaits at the end of each action stage, complete with its own health meter that must be depleted in order to fully remove the monster threat and save each settlement. Many of the bosses are huge and impressive-looking.

Once you completely rebuild each of the settlements and have dispatched all of the monsters, it’s time to get your revenge on Tanzra for creating so much trouble. It’s an epic battle that’s complicated by the reappearance of some old acquaintances, but those skirmishes pale in comparison to the final battle with Tanzra and the prize of freeing your planet from his evil grip once and for all. Hey, as a deity, it’s sort of your job to do this, but at least it’s fun to do in ActRaiser.

Although the visuals may not be as impressive now, some 12 years later, the backgrounds are still as colorful as ever and feature some silky-smooth parallax scrolling. The sprites for the characters and monsters are fairly large, and the Mode 7 effects that the SNES was so famous for can be seen when you descend to the planet to fight monsters in the action stages— as you literally tumble down to the planet, the surface spins wildly as you approach. It’s a cool effect, even today.

Perhaps the best feature of ActRaiser’s presentation lies in the music, which was scored by Yuzo Koshiro. If that name sounds familiar to you, it should. You’ve likely heard his compositions before in games like the Shinobi and Streets of Rage series on the Sega Genesis. The symphonic sounds in ActRaiser still sound great today. There are even arranged music soundtracks available online that are based around the original ActRaiser score. You’ll hear brass, winds, percussion, and more—just like an actual orchestra. Thanks to the Sony-created specialized sound chip in the SNES, the music sounds as clear as a bell, and it’s all great… right down to the minor homage to John Williams during the closing credits. More than a few game players will also fall in love with the “Psalm”, or “Musical Gift” melody. Once you hear it, you’ll know what I mean.

While ActRaiser was a successful mix of sim and action gameplay aspects, the sequel fared much worse. ActRaiser 2 went on to eliminate the sim sequences and really turned up the difficulty factor, which made the game one of the most difficult SNES games on record. That’s another story for another time, though. As for ActRaiser, it still makes a decent addition to your SNES collection and is still fairly common at used game shops.

- Peter J. Skerritt, Jr.

(June 22, 2003)


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