The Guardian Legend
The Guardian Legend is a video game that consists of 1 release
The Guardian Legend is an action-adventure/top down shooter released for the NES in 1989. It has been called a combination of Zelda and 1942.
Title screen which shows Naju
Overview
The Guardian Legend was released in January of 1989 (NA) by Broderbund and developed by Compile. It is actually a sequel to an MSX game called Guardic released in Japan only.
Plot
You play as a female "Guardian" sent to intercept a huge space station called Naju on a collision course for Earth. Your job is to travel along the surface of the station opening and defeating bosses in several labyrinths. Once all these have been disabled, Naju is destroyed and thus Earth will be saved.
Gameplay
The gameplay is a mixture of open area action-adventure and top down vertical shooter. The surface of Naju is basically an overworld with minibosses placed throughout.
The overworld gameplay was very similar to The Legend of Zelda, with a top-down perspective and the map sectioned off into a grid, with each section of the grid being one screen in the game. To travel from one area to another, you would have to walk to the border of the screen, to the top for example, to shift to the area north of where you originally were. Unlike Zelda, however, the game's combat was almost exclusively focused on shooting.
There are several labyrinths which require a key and then a simple puzzle to enter. These labyrinths played similarly to the overworld, where the character is in a humanoid form, walking on the surface.
The Corridors, like the labyrinths, required a key and/or some puzzle solving, but once you entered the corridor, the character would transform into it's "space ship" form and the stage would play like a vertical scrolling shooter.
You acquire "chips" which improve your basic weapon and collect other secondary weapons that functioned for both the action-adventure and vertical shooting sections of the game. The secondary weapons range from new various kinds of blasters, to grenades, and even a couple of takes on the lightsaber.
This combination of multiple genres was fairly revolutionary for the time with Blaster Master being another game noted for this type of combination. The Guardian Legend's gameplay may be summarized as a child of The Legend of Zelda and 1942.
Sound
North American boxart
The music for the game was composed by Miyamo Shant who also composed music for Zanac. The game has over 20 original musical tracks, which set the mood for each level . Some are more upbeat, some mysterious and slower. If you are into the NES cover music scene, songs from The Guardian Legend are worth checking out.
Links
The Guardian Legend - NSF File
The Guardian Legend Shrine
Wikipedia article
General Information
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| Game Name | The Guardian Legend |
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| Themes |
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| Original US Release |
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| Original US Release | April 1989 know the real date? |
| Aliases | Guardic Gaiden |
Related Games
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We don't have any info about The Guardian Legend's franchise games.
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