Landstalker review - Sega Megadrive

Megadrive moaners are always saying the best games on the machine are groovy and playable but often too shallow. Silence, fools! Landstalker is lavish, action-packed, taxing and extremely deep. In just about every department: graphics, playability, game plot and size. Landstalker defers to nothing else. The programmers have produced a really solid-looking isometric 3D world, with amazing stone and wood textures. There's a vast variety of locations and landscapes, each with its own excellent soundtrack. But Landstalker is made a classic by the involved plot that surrounds your adventuring. The story adds another dimension to exploring the vast dungeon areas, making it as much a brain game as an action adventure. The more you play, the more you realise this is by far the best adventure game on the Megadrive.

Landstalker doesn't make for any ground-breaking achievements but is something very different for the Megadrive. At times I find that the odd perspective employed is confusing - platforms that appear in one location may lie in another. Pitfalls often prove lethal as Nigel's journey progresses so this becomes a bit irritating. Other than that the game is a marvel. Not only is it visually magnificent but the interaction between characters is always entertaining with a great line in humour supplying light relief on occasion. Every location in the vast adventure is richly depicted with as much care applied to the background images as the main players. Consequently the eyes are always entertained by places and characters visited many times before in the course of the exploration. Sega also provide an outstanding musical score, yet again, with a consistently good mix of soothing madrigals and rousing marches. Landstalker is guaranteed classic status in no time at all.

There are some moments in your life that just stick with you.

Not just important stuff like last day at school, the birth of your child, who you were thinking of when you had your first wan…. (I'll leave that one for now).

I'm talking about random stuff that sticks in your brain for no reason at all.

You know the kind of thing: You can't remember your wife's middle name but you can remember the number of the bus in Speed.

One of the moments from my life that sticks with me was riding in the back of my parents' car, looking through my new copy of Mean Machines Sega. I can't remember most of the mag, I can't remember the weather or what was on the radio, but I do remember turning the page and seeing the review of Landstalker staring up at me.

I fell in love with this game instantly.

I hadn't even read the review or seen the score, I just knew deep down inside that this game was something special. My holy grail! I don't know what it was; maybe it was the colours, maybe it was the cute design of the characters, maybe it was just the page layout. What ever it was, I was sat mouth open, dribbling onto the page.

I'd just started work when I bought this game, and I really hated my job. I used to ride my moped (yes I know, not cool, just read the rest of the article) up the road, around the corner, down the next road, park up where I could see when my parents had driven off to work and then I'd go back home. I then spent most of the day in my room playing Landstalker. Six hours later I would eat my sandwiches, go to the shed to get my hands dirty (I worked in a sheet metal factory) get back on my mope... my motorized bike and perform the reverse journey around the block so that my mum could see me coming home. Result!!

Unfortunately for me, I got too involved in the game one day, lost track of time and…. You guessed it, mummy came home. Major Bollocking!

This prompted me to my next place of refuge, my friend's house. His mum was easy going and always used to let him skive off of school, so when I turned up to hang out in his room playing Landstalker while he was at work, she didn't bat an eyelid and even made me cups of tea (really!).

So there you have it, I eventually went to work on a regular basis and still haven't completed Landstalker, though I am still trying, and in case you were wondering I was thinking about Cathy Dennis when I…you know…in the shower ;o)

Now..what is my wife's middle name? Susan?…Diane?….Jane?…

MOB