“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

At some point when I was hanging out with Dave at his place of employment, Gamer Time, someone traded in a game for the NES that I had never heard of, Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos. Having grown up with the system, it always fascinates me to find games that I completely missed as a kid.

The cover art, posted as the header for this review, gave us a good laugh. It also had the box and manual intact, which pushed my decision to buy the game over the top.

In Solstice, you play as the wizard, Shadax. You are trying to rescue Princess Eleanor from the evil wizard, Morbius, who is hiding in the fortress of Kastlerock. You must search the maze that is Kastlerock for the six pieces of the Staff of Demnos in order to defeat Morbius. It may sound like I’m just making up goofy names off the top of my head, but I’m not.

The crux of the game is a puzzle platformer. It takes place from an isometric view, making the d-pad more accurate if you are holding the NES controller at a 45 degree angle. This takes some getting used to and lead to a lot of accidental deaths for me.

Shadax is armed only with a magical map and a variety of different potions. While his magic map keeps track of what rooms you’ve been in and your percentage of Kastlerock explored, it does not allow you to scroll through it freely. You can only ever see a small piece of it at a time. The only way to really track your progress through the maze is by drawing your own map as you go. If you are trying to finish Solstice without using a guide, then bust out the old graph-paper. Also, you are a crazy person.

There are four potions in your inventory. Blue potions make you invulnerable, purple ones destroys all enemies on the screen, yellow ones freezes time, and green ones reveals hidden objects. You start with two doses of each and can only hold up to four of each at a time. You really don’t end up needing them that often, though. However, they are your only “attacks”, as Shadax is some kind of crazy pacifist wizard and doesn’t believe in casting fireballs at the giant ogre about to smash his head in.

Other than his potions, the only moves Shadax can do are picking up objects and jumping. Each screen is self contained and picked up objects disappear once you move to a new screen. The coolest trick is the drop jump, in which you can pick up a box as you are jumping off of it, then drop it again to give yourself another platform to jump from. It is not only interesting, it is absolutely necessary to solve some of the game’s puzzles.

It is easy to get stuck in this game. There are a few things that you have to do in a particular order to progress. First of all, you start only able to jump one square of the grid high. If you don’t find the Magic Elfin Boots (best name ever) that give you the extra square height of jumping right away, it is very easy to get permanently stuck and have to start over.

There are four keys and six pieces to the staff of Demnos hidden throughout the game. There are also a couple of plungers that set off bombs. All of these open up hidden doors or add extra boxes that are necessary to progress. Even after reading the game’s manual cover to cover, I had to go to a FAQ to find this out.

Why did I pick this game?

As mentioned above, I picked Solstice completely based on the box art. I had no prior experience with this one.

How does it hold up with time?

I really enjoyed the concept of Solstice. A puzzle/platformer involving an elaborate maze has a lot of appeal to my old school roots. Had I found it back in the day, it may be one that I look back on with fond memories. As it stands, there are a lot of problems. The lack of shadows make judging your jumps anywhere from difficult to nearly impossible depending on the room. Some puzzles require a level of precision that the game can’t quite pull off. It leads to a lot of unnecessary frustration.

It is really easy to get lost or stuck. A lot of trial and error is involved and the final puzzle took me forever due to a puzzle that involves split second timing. If you plan on playing through Solstice, don’t feel bad about needing to use a FAQ. It is pretty much impossible without either a FAQ or by making your own super detailed, hand-drawn maps (ah, memories).

Having a limited number of lives and continues is completely unnecessary for this game. The puzzles are hard enough without needing to add this extra layer of frustration. Fortunately, you can look up a 99 lives code. I highly recommend using it. Starting from scratch after having just spent a couple hours working your way through the maze will make you want to throw your cartridge out the window.

I would love to see someone do a modern take on this concept. The per room puzzles that lead to bigger, over-arcing puzzles is easily the best part of Solstice.

Tags: Friday Old Games, isometric, Kastlerock, Magic Elfin Boots, Morbius, NES, Puzzle Platformer, Shadax, Solstice, Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.