Faxanadu

"I've been on a long journey. I came back to my home town to find it is almost deserted. The gate is closed, people are gone, and the walls are crumbling. I wonder what happened."

Faxanadu can be considered a side-story of Xanadu, which is the second installment of Falcom's long-running RPG series, Dragon Slayer. The title Faxanadu is a portmanteau formed from the names Famicom and Xanadu.



This game is a side scrolling adventure platfomer. It has many types of weapons, armor and magic that are obtained as the game progresses. Also, like many games of its genre it has an experience based level up. However its approach is very unusual. First you must accumulate enough experience and then visit a priest in order to receive your new title (level up). Also this title allows you to obtain a greater amount of money if you die or start over, rather than make you stronger (which is still very useful).

The world is very vast, but not overwhelming. It all flows in a very natural manner; you basically explore sections of this world in order to advance, and backtracking is limited to the actual section being explored (unlike say, Metroid and mostly its hacks). There are many towns whose inhabitants are willing to offer clues, services, items, etc.

Its gameplay is somewhat stiff. First of all, like the first Castlevanias, you can't control the hero in the middle of the air (save when he's flying). Also like the first Megamans you cant duck, so at first some enemies can't be killed by means of a weapon attack. Also its limited color palette might turn some people down.

Personally I don't see these as limitations. I found the gameplay very satisfactory. I really enjoyed all these locations and all the elements related to this unnamed hero's quest. Also to me, its graphics and sound were crafted with great care so that the NES limitations were less notable. The end result being a very involving game with a design that has more in common with games of the 16 bit and 32 bit era, offering a very well crafted storyline and a very beautiful scenery with interesting characters that perfectly match the mood and setting.

Still as usual the most reliable opinion is no doubt your own. So if you like Zelda (specially Zelda 2 which came out after this game), Metroid, Action-RPG's or any related type of games you should give it a try.

Also, while I won't host any roms or links to them, the following link has a vnes emulation of this game (so you may play on your browser). So give this beautiful game a try:

Play Faxanadu online at nintendo8.com

While there are no sequels, if you just can't get enough of this beautiful piece of art. You might want to check out other Action RPG's such as the Zelda series or Crystalis. As for the Dragonslayer series, I can say legacy of the wizard has very little in common with this game. But maybe the original Xanadu game might be more in line with this gem (I honestly haven't played them yet, but will edit this once I do).

Aditional links

The following links have more information about this game:

• RPGClassics
• Hardcore Gaming 101
• romhacking.net: "Uncensored version patch". The Japanese version had some religious imagery that was left out of the US release. I honestly thought that maybe elves had their own religious beliefs or something. In any case, if you want to experience this game as it was designed you may want to apply this patch.