Hello everyone, a big event just happened that made next to no noise and I'd like to give it a spotlight.
Magic Castle, an unreleased PS1 Net Yaroze game was just finished and released not even two weeks ago. It was done by Japanese studio KAIGA, which was just a few people working on a prototype to pithc to publishers so they can turn it into a full-fledged PS1 game. Publishers were impressed, but then wanted to hire them to work on other projects or asked them to hire the necessary developers themselves, and they were too young to handle all the corporate pressure.
The game is mighty impressive though. This "prototype" is extremely fun and I can see why they were ambitious. I think they could have done something that is, in some ways, ahead of its time.
I played it myself, and it's worth your time. It is by far the best Net Yaroze game I've played.
Here is a presentation of the game, which is playable!
It's procedurally generated, with 20 floors to go through to fight the Evil Warlock. You have access to four classes: Knight, Archer, Fighter, and Wizard. All of them have their own specific abilities.
For example, the UI can be moved around at will. You can decide what is the best place to put for maximum comfort. I was very impressed with this feature. Not just that, but the wheel allows you to cycle through every item and gear and use/equip them without ever going into the menu proper. The quality of life features on this thing is more than actual modern games I've played recently!
There are sometimes cool monster rooms where you have to learn how to get past, like using magic scrolls. Sometimes enemies can even follow you in different rooms. You always have to be on your toes.
Another super cool thing: the music is dynamic! It changes on the fly depending on the room you're in. The music itself is very cool and atmospheric (activate sound in video)
The game also had 4-player coop! It is not yet implemented, but you can go through the tower with four people and just have fun whacking enemies together. It was supposed to support multi-tap controllers. It was in essence designed to be a local multiplayer roguelike game.
And it's still fun to this day!
Here's the VHS presentation, I think it was intended as a pitch to publishers
You can read the full interview of the people involved in this game here: http://netyaroze-europe.com/Media/Magic-Castle#Release_-_Magic_Castle_.28Kaiga.29_2020_23_Dec
The rom of the game to play is here: https://archive.org/details/magic-castle-2020-23-dec
Play it. It's playable on emulator and console and really worth your time. It's not stupid hard either. I did my first run with Knight in 1 hour and 22 minutes without a game over and I really enjoyed my time with it.
I myself made a tweet thread about some of the info there in order to get more eyes on it https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1345095997098258434
If you know retro content creator who would be interested by it, share it to them. I think it's too interesting to pass up and I was genuinely shocked it was released in obscurity. It was a miracle that I learned about it randomly too.
There are also the people involved on this game. K. Matsunami (SG_matsu), ended up working at Sega. PIROWO (PIROWO1) is still working on ames to this day. The composer, hosplug (hosplug_hosoi) is also still a game composer. To finally see the fruit of their efforts is thrilling.
Magic Castle, an unreleased PS1 Net Yaroze game was just finished and released not even two weeks ago. It was done by Japanese studio KAIGA, which was just a few people working on a prototype to pithc to publishers so they can turn it into a full-fledged PS1 game. Publishers were impressed, but then wanted to hire them to work on other projects or asked them to hire the necessary developers themselves, and they were too young to handle all the corporate pressure.
The game is mighty impressive though. This "prototype" is extremely fun and I can see why they were ambitious. I think they could have done something that is, in some ways, ahead of its time.
I played it myself, and it's worth your time. It is by far the best Net Yaroze game I've played.
Here is a presentation of the game, which is playable!
It's procedurally generated, with 20 floors to go through to fight the Evil Warlock. You have access to four classes: Knight, Archer, Fighter, and Wizard. All of them have their own specific abilities.
For example, the UI can be moved around at will. You can decide what is the best place to put for maximum comfort. I was very impressed with this feature. Not just that, but the wheel allows you to cycle through every item and gear and use/equip them without ever going into the menu proper. The quality of life features on this thing is more than actual modern games I've played recently!
There are sometimes cool monster rooms where you have to learn how to get past, like using magic scrolls. Sometimes enemies can even follow you in different rooms. You always have to be on your toes.
Another super cool thing: the music is dynamic! It changes on the fly depending on the room you're in. The music itself is very cool and atmospheric (activate sound in video)
The game also had 4-player coop! It is not yet implemented, but you can go through the tower with four people and just have fun whacking enemies together. It was supposed to support multi-tap controllers. It was in essence designed to be a local multiplayer roguelike game.
And it's still fun to this day!
Here's the VHS presentation, I think it was intended as a pitch to publishers
You can read the full interview of the people involved in this game here: http://netyaroze-europe.com/Media/Magic-Castle#Release_-_Magic_Castle_.28Kaiga.29_2020_23_Dec
The rom of the game to play is here: https://archive.org/details/magic-castle-2020-23-dec
Play it. It's playable on emulator and console and really worth your time. It's not stupid hard either. I did my first run with Knight in 1 hour and 22 minutes without a game over and I really enjoyed my time with it.
I myself made a tweet thread about some of the info there in order to get more eyes on it https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1345095997098258434
If you know retro content creator who would be interested by it, share it to them. I think it's too interesting to pass up and I was genuinely shocked it was released in obscurity. It was a miracle that I learned about it randomly too.
There are also the people involved on this game. K. Matsunami (SG_matsu), ended up working at Sega. PIROWO (PIROWO1) is still working on ames to this day. The composer, hosplug (hosplug_hosoi) is also still a game composer. To finally see the fruit of their efforts is thrilling.
