Rod Land (1991, Amiga) Review

(3 / 4)

Also for: Amstrad CPC, Arcade, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Game Boy, iPad, iPhone, NES, Symbian, Windows Mobile, ZX Spectrum

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MOM HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY A MONSTER

Can you get through a game with only four directions to move and one fire button? Well, I just did, and even had a blast doing so. The platformer Rod Land, developed by Jaleco Ltd for the arcades and ported to a myriad of systems, is one of those games you simply "get" within the blink of an eye, because it works on an almost primal level.

With levels that fit one screen, one heroine (and a hero if you play co-op), a few baddies, a dozen pickups and a few platforms connected by stairs, Rod Land employs a basic setup almost as old as video games themselves. Your gamer instincts immediately tell you what to do, how to do it and what to avoid, and all you have to do is act upon that. There are no power-ups and no leveling. All you get is what you have at the beginning. The only resource you need to worry about is the number of lives. All this makes it a very accessible game, with a big-eyed anime personality of sweetness and innocence.

Rod Land puts you into the garb of a cute, pink-haired fairy girl who is on a quest to rescue her mother from the clutches of some monster. Armed with the Rod of Sheesanomo and a pair of Rainbow Shoes you have to make your way up a high tower to set her free. In your way stands an army of lesser monsters, all mostly corrupt versions of different plants or animals.

With the rod, you can ensnare and swing enemies over your head, smashing them into the ground to kill them. Use the Rainbow Shoes to create ladders up or down, although every new ladder will replace the previous. These are your only way (barring some exceptions on a few levels) of moving vertically, making Rod Land one of those rare platformers, like Lode Runner, where you cannot jump.

The Amiga version consists of 40 levels, which is even more than the arcade original. To advance a level, you need to kill all the baddies. They'll get more lethal the closer you get to the end, with ranged attacks, cloning and the ability to fly making your quest increasingly challenging. The level design usually necessitates some quick thinking and strategic shepherding before going in for the kill.

If you pick all the level's collectible flowers, all the remaining monsters turn into beetroot-like creatures for a few seconds. In this state they are not harmless, but they will stop attacking and try to escape. More importantly, killing them might grant you an extra life, if you gather all the five different letters (they spell out the word "EXTRA") that they drop upon death.

Playing Rod Land, this decision of risk versus reward will constantly gnaw at the back of your mind. Will you take the easy approach and just kill all the baddies, or take the trickier, flowers-first route for the chance of an extra life? Losing just one life makes the extra endeavour not worthwhile. On the other hand, are you content you'll reach the end with your current amount of lives?

Intermixed with the traditional level screens you get a handful of rather lacklustre boss encounters, which are the only screens where you might have wished for added gameplay mechanics. They are very easy until the final form of the four-stage end boss, which is unfair and luck-dependent to a fault on the Amiga, especially when compared to the arcade original. You get no continues, meaning you have to start over upon death. This practically requires you to collect a handful of extra lives to stand a chance at the end.

Apart from that, the Amiga adaptation, handled by Sales Curve Ltd., is so swell and polished that one can arguably claim it's the crowning achievment across the board. It even trumps the original arcade. The music sounds the most harmonious, the graphics are garish and crisp with beautiful, detailed backdrops and big sprites, and it animates very smoothly. The extra levels feel a little out of place, like a final stretch with a difficulty drop, unless you try to go for extra lives, in which case they get very hard.

In summary, there's not much to a game like Rod Land. It's as sweet as candy, and just as deplorably good and hard to put away. Its uncomplicated nature makes me want to recommend it to people who have never before touched a video game. Games are rarely this simple to pick up and learn, nor so downscaled in rules and systems, not even back in '91. Even a similar game like Bubble Bobble, released five or six years prior, had more complexity to it, with all its different power-ups.

Heck, even for edgy, experienced gamers, Rod Land should emit oddly relatable qualities. Playing it feels like a fresh start after decades of gameplay evolution. After spending dozens upon dozens of hours in different Grand Theft Auto tutorials, for instance, no game can be more liberating than this. It's like uniting around some fundamental experience. Completing it takes roughly 30 minutes, if you make it to the end. Why not give it a shot?