
	Platform Sega Genesis Genre Action RPG Developer / Publisher Taito ETA 1992
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Cadash

Despite Zelda being front and center among action RPGs, especially during the late 80s and early 90s, a few low-key titles managed to snag themselves 15 minutes of fame. One such game was Taito’s Cadash. First making it’s way to arcades, the game started to get ports to the console systems, most notably the Sega Genesis.

This was one of the first titles that served as an exclamation point to my dislike for arcade to home ports during that time. I remember originally seeing the game in the arcades, and being blow away by it. The graphics and sound were amazing, and there were four very different characters to choose from. However, when I popped the Genesis version of the game in my system, and fired it up, I was overwhelmed with disappointment. Where had all the visual pizzazz gone? More importantly, why couldn’t I play as a ninja, or priestess anymore? It was about this time that I began to give up on arcade ports (something that wouldn’t change until the release of the Dreamcast).

Nonetheless, I did manage to salvage a reasonably good time, even if it was a little short-lived. While the roster of characters was cut in half, players could still choose between a brawny warrior, and a wizard frail in stature, though

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well-endowed in magic. They were as different as night and day in how they were played, though it was certainly a lot easier playing as the warrior, as the wizard really couldn’t take much of a beating.

Even if it was a bit of a tough go with the wizard, Cadash suffered from making it way too easy to circumvent any challenge the game may try to throw at its players. The problem was that enemies rewarded experience when killed, with much of these

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monsters killed in one or two hits. On top of this, if players wanted to rack up the experience points, all they had to do was move back and forth on the screen by an inch or so, and enemies would constantly re-spawn. With this, it was very easy to fly through the levels, and mop the floor with monsters.

While under normal circumstances this may have been problematic, since it made the game a cakewalk, it actually worked out for me quite well at the time. The game was a rental, so I only had a few days to spend with my on-screen heroes. As such, I had to make the most of it in a very short time. However, even if someone wanted to make a challenge of Cadash, and not milk the experience points, it would not take very long to blast through the title. It only has about a half dozen levels to get through, making for a very abbreviated experience.

Really, what the game boiled down to, was hacking the hell out of legions of monsters on a side-scrolling plane. The patterns they took were far from complicated, making it easy to adapt to a situation. When things got interesting was on the odd chance enemies swarmed a player, and when it came time for a boss fight. Going up against the master of a dungeon still had some fairly straightforward patterns that players could pick up on, but they hit a whole lot harder, making for a much less forgiving battle.

If you were looking for a story, though, forget about it. Players were charged with the task of saving a princess, the status quo for the time. Luckily, Taito did help flesh things out a bit by having some brief tales meshed with the overall story that popped up when players visit a new area, but it didn’t entirely hide the lacking nature of the whole “save the princess” thing.

Nonetheless, Cadash on the Genesis made for a nice diversion when it first came out. Most people, when checking out the game, myself included, were a little disappointed about how it compared to its arcade counterpart. Despite this, it was a good way to whittle away a weekend…so long as there was a place nearby that rented Sega Genesis games. Having to buy the game and find out how short-lived the fun was would have been awful.

Mr. Nash

(March 13, 2005)


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