Solstice (NES) Playthrough
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- A playthrough of CSG Imagesoft's adventure game for the NES, Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos.
In their heyday, isometric puzzle-platformers were the bread-and-butter of many a British game studio in the 80s. The genre formed around the strengths and limitations of popular 8-bit microcomputers: the games typically featured single-screen, highly detailed backdrops and a laid-back pace that required little in the way of complex sprites or detailed animation. To compensate for the lack of action, gameplay typically revolved around finding key items, avoiding wandering enemies, pushing blocks, and making pixel-perfect jumps.
Given how popular these faux-3d adventures were on computers, you'd think that some of their influence would've spilled over into the console space, but that never really seemed to happen. As far as I know, Solstice was the only NES game of its kind to have been officially released in English.
What a game it is, though. Solstice was plenty ambitious for an NES puzzler, and in many ways, it surpasses the games that inspired it.
It's clear from the moment you first turn it on that Solstice means business. Tim Follin's epic title theme plays through the rolling demos with a level of bombast rarely heard from the NES's sound hardware.
The opening cutscene kicks off with Morbius, the evil bad guy, kidnapping the princess Eleanor in order to sacrifice her for some sort of ultimate evil power. You, as Shadax, head to Morbius's castle in search of the Staff of Demnos, the only weapon known to possess the power to defeat the wizard.
Unfortunately for Shadax, the staff has been broken into several pieces, and so Solstice tasks you with finding the pieces and reconstructing the staff in order to save the princess and save the world from whatever dark fate Morbius has planned.
The castle is huge - 252 rooms in total - and it's loaded with all sorts of nasty stuff that can end Shadax in a blink. It is quite similar to The Legend of Zelda in how it leaves the player to explore, to experiment, and to make sense of how the elements all come together.
As you get your bearings, made easier by the inclusion of an auto-map, the game will begin to introduce the core pieces of its gameplay. Jumping platforms, stacking blocks, and using items to reveal hidden paths will all be quite familiar to you by the time you've reached the princess, but nothing is ever entirely straightforward. The puzzles mostly focus on how to get from one side of a room to the other, and once you start exploring beyond the initial few rooms, the difficulty level ramps up considerably.
Don't be fooled into thinking that it is a short game by the length of this video, though. It took me a year or so as a kid to get through it, but the puzzles and room layouts never change, so things become much easier with a bit of familiarity. Well, except for that final set of puzzles that vertically span three rooms - even once you know what you are meant to do, it is still pretty easy to botch a jump unless you're paying very close attention to what's going on around you.
If you like games that make you think, Solstice is a top pick for the NES. The graphics are fantastic and the perspective shift adds a welcome bit of challenge. The lack of character shadows makes jumping difficult when you're first starting out, but it becomes fairly intuitive with some practice. The soundtrack is among the best on the NES - the intro themes are brilliant, and the dungeon tunes, more ambient and somber than you'd probably expect, set the tone well. And I love that high pitched squeal Shadax lets loose when he dies!
The puzzles can be devious, but you don't need a guide or a walkthrough to finish the game. A bit of persistence will see you through.
If you are looking for something that's fun and that'll keep you playing, I'd highly recommend checking out Solstice. It's an experience that will stay with you long after you've put Morbius in the ground, saved the girl, and brought the world back from the brink of oblivion.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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Everybody talks about the intro (and they're right, it's a certified Tim Follin BANGER that oozes prog rock), but we gotta take a moment to appreciate the game itself. The programmer and graphic created a 3D isometric puzzle game in a time and on a console where 3D wasn't even possible. The ingenuity that it takes to do this is outstanding
Weaker machines had isometric games before this, like the ZX Spectrum with Knight Lore, but the NES' architecture made it much more difficult to code this effect here:
While the ZXS had a bitmap display, which meant you could draw pixels to the screen directly (so if a character was meant to be partially covered by something, you just told the computer to not draw that part of the character), the NES worked using tiled graphics: The single background and the sprites are made from a limited amount of graphics loaded in memory, and were drawn on screen exactly as loaded (+ palettes, positions, etc). This means the sprites were always drawn whole, they couldn't be partially hidden, and it was either in front/behind the background.
So how did they emulate do the 'sprites partially covered by backgrounds' effect here? Typically the NES loads its graphics tables directly from the ROM, which is stationary, but a few NES games had a custom chip which gave the NES a 'fake ROM' to load its graphics from, which could be drawn to/edited, and made to do lots of things. Elite used it to make 3D graphics, Battletoads used it to make parallax and scaling, and Solstice here used it to dynamically re-draw its sprites to be cut to the appropriate shape and appear partially hidden, even though they're actually still in front of the background.
(I might be wrong in spots so anyone feel free to correct me, I'd love to learn more about this)
...now here's a theory!
I believe this could've been done in another way: In Super Mario Bros. 3 you can see Mario smoothly entering pipes, and while his body is behind the pipe, his head stays in front of whatever background there is. But how did they do it? It's a creative use of sprite layering: Sprites have layers, they can be in front/behind each other, and also in front/behind the background, but these two things are actually independent. This means you could have a sprite that's behind the background, still be in front of a sprite that's not, and that's exactly what SMB3 does. Whenever Mario is enters a pipe, a block sprite is created where he is entering, behind the background but in front of him, and so Mario appears partially hidden. You can even see that sprite when speedrunners do the Wrong Warp glitch! They could have used this technique here on Solstice, but it'd have been much more complex, and I believe it'd end up lagging and/or flickering, nowhere as smooth.
So basically a bunch of wizards made a wizard puzzle game
@@RaposaCadela another rainboweirdo
@@luis-sophus-8227 proudly
(0:08) _"Hey, this song goes hard! Wonder who comp-"_
*"Music by Timothy Follin"*
_"Yeah, that checks out."_
And on a Nes too. With some of the more 'clunky' sounds of the day Imo.
Tim follin for short
Daft Punk meets Jethro Tull
Fun fact I learned about this game: the data for the intro theme takes up more cartridge space than the game itself. It also uses all of the available sound channels.
Sounds about right, a lot of older games seem to be that way. Touhou 1's file size is like 98% music from what I remember, could be a bit off. And there's also the iconic "SEGA" in the Sonic games.
it doesn't use the DPCM IIRC
It sounds like he's using the PCM channel to spice up the percussion, on top of the noise channel.
It sounds like it uses quadruple the amount of sound channels.
Tim Follin never used the PCM channel on the NES, or sound samples in his chiptune, I believe
That intro music is so mind blowingly insane. I can’t believe the nes can do that
That intro track ain’t messing around! 🤩
Music by Timothy Fallon
it's one of the greatest video game soundtracks of all time ever, you're glad to have it in your brain till your death, just never forget it, it will last till the year 3000
Tim Follin, he was/is a magician with those older sound chips!
Happy Winter Solstice!
Very clever to say that lol. 😂
The title and in-game themes fits with months of June and December.
Solstice would later get a sequel for the SNES, called Solstice II: Equinox.
DYK: CSG Imagesoft was the original name for Sony Imagesoft, with CSG standing for CBS Sony Group, a joint venture between CBS Records and Sony based in Japan, with Sony distributing Columbia Records (and its sister labels) in Japan.
Eventually, Sony purchased CBS Records outright, and was renamed Sony Music Entertainment, while the CBS Sony Group became Sony Music Entertainment Japan.
It's worth it just for the opening music
The ending music is great, too (36:18).
@Dorian_Scott I never heard it...thanks, it very good too
My favorite NES game of all time! If you couldn't tell
Journey to Silius also has some bangers, but not a lot of tracks come close to this epicness.
Ah that wacky Tim Follin.
"Let's start with the most generic crappy fantasy intro song imaginable and then ROCK YOUR FACE OFF"
I remember playing this game… never could beat it…
Just finding out about this game. It very well may be the best looking NES game I've ever seen. I'll definetly play it.
Looking back, this game and others of its kind on other systems reminds me of Vagrant Story. And I happen to love both.
This game seems like a million times better than Last Ninja on NES
For sure, no contest.
This is the 21st of December if anyone missed it. Good job Alex.
My eldest Olson niece's birthday.
tim follin do be the best nes music maker no doubt
That opening theme goes hard!
Was this game an inspiration for _Landstalker_ on the Genesis? The similarities in gameplay and graphics are striking to me.
There are incredibly similar.
Theres equinox to on SNES
@@DrGreenThumbNZL Yeah Equinox was the sequel to Solstice
@@streeTkiDwannaBe I know
The opening music reminds me Jethtro Tull or Genesis
Yeah, you're right. Needs more flute, though.
Personal fav of mine , intro song is the nes goat
If my words don’t inspire you, then a script from a vintage 📺 commercial will: “Solstice, by (CSG) Imagesoft, at all Kay*Bee Toy Stores/Toys ‘R Us Stores/Wal-Mart Stores/K-Mart Stores/Electronics Boutique Stores!”
I wish this game get a release on the Nintendo Switch Online.
I loved the intro to this stupid game, could never get too far though, the isometric view is wonky at times.
Edit: I also love the cover showing just some yolked out wizard dude only to get this goober in game.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane
Very good soundtrack
I NEED more 8 Bit wizard prog rock for my wizard maxxing
damn 37 minutes. It took me weeks when i was young and got that game :)
I can't believe no one's talking about how the vilain is literally named Morbius
It's morbin time
You have to have a lot of patience to finish it.
Damn we need a Rom hack of this Pronto somehow?! New levels and such....
Ok that game does look kinda cool, I like the colors and the camera angles
Definitely the ancestor of light crusader and landstalker baby lol 😂 sweet
3:10 my favourite part of solstice was when the wizard said "it's solsticing time" and solsticed all over those guys. truly one of the games ever made
MORBIUS
This is on the same console that the first Super Mario Bros was on. Just let that sink in.
Super video.
Cool
people just know this game by the music
The end is kinda anticlimactic, but WE. Good game.
I misread the title and thought this was solitaire lol 😂
Hahaha, and its sequel Equifax
Get rekd Morbius
It's crazy how many nes games are decent, but with some tweaking could have been amazing. This is one of them. It's just lacking some features to be so much better.
Tim is the best!
This is a hard nes game
I beat this game on my 1st try
Holy isometric platforming over spiked pits batman!
Man, the NES mixing does not do the drop of the theme justice from the rip I heard.
Loved the intro.
Wish the game score was a longer loop so it would sound less repetitive.
Honestly... without the Game Genie & cheat codes... you'd lose your mind or develop claustrophobia from all the little damn rooms before you'd finish.
I like the part where Morbius comes in and morbs all over the princess.
you could proabbly make a MVC style fighter out of the main character, if you were creative enough.
soo.. shadax vs software creations?
36:34 morBIUS ??????!!
Oh my God, couldn’t they have had more than like 3 songs for this game? I had a headache like five minutes after it started!
Great graphics, great music, shitty gameplay
That game was RETARDED!🤦🏼♀️😅