The American releases have cover artwork provided by prolific fantasy artist Tim Hildebrant. This time Rastan is defending his lands from demons unleashed by an evil wizard named Karg, who Rastan confronts at the end of the game after he takes the form of a dragon. Interestingly, the plot is completely different. One of the first of the computer releases was for the Commodore 64 by Imagine in 1987. In other words, the graphics are slightly distorted – it’s the same as running the Master System game into a Game Gear with a Master Gear adapter.

This is not true here, with the game running in the same scale as on the Master System. For example, the Game Gear games featured zoomed in views and larger characters to look better on the smaller screen. While the Master System and Game Gear shared many titles, each was usually reprogrammed to accommodate their different resolutions. There’s also a Game Gear version, which was only released in Japan. He can also absorb more damage, but only has one life, and needs to restart from the beginning of a stage upon death, rather than at a checkpoint. Going to the opposite extreme of the arcade game, on the Master System, Rastan can effectively wade through lava if he so chooses. He just stands in them, knee-deep and gradually losing life, giving you a chance to wall jump out of many formerly terminal situations. Further, Rastan no longer dies instantly when he comes into contact with pools of water or pits of fire.

In another inspired touch, most of the game’s bosses have either been redesigned or given new abilities. The cool heart life bar has also been removed, though, and you can no longer move forward while swinging your sword simultaneously, either. The second major change is that Rastan can now jump off of walls, and unlike many other games with special abilities, the levels are actually designed to require skillful use of this new ability. There’s an additional level at the end of the game, and an extra boss, a giant dragon who takes up nearly half of the screen. Their visual design is similar, except one stage has been given an overhaul to look like ancient Greek ruins. They’re shorter, but are actually packed with more traps and pitfalls than the original game. The most immediate is that the levels have been drastically redesigned. In an inspired touch, the programmers portray this not only in level design, but also from an artistic standpoint, as the time of day (and even the weather) changes as time passes, and the number of enemies increases. Each one looks radically different from the other, and they all have very different abilities and even unique cosmetic flourishes in each of their backgrounds (the stone snakes sculpted around the columns at the end of the second level are a real standout). After negotiating them, you finally reach the level’s boss. The castles also feature more pitfalls, spikes, and other such traps to keep you occupied. Reaching the end of each outdoor area brings you to the entrance to a large castle. The second is where things get more interesting. The first involves charging through an outdoor area, slaying dozens of weaklings. Each of Rastan‘s six levels is broken into two segments. The greatest example of this is found with the boss fights and the castles the bosses reside in. Every aspect of Rastan‘s design follows this trend of providing obstacles that, while challenging, reward the player with faster progression for knowing the controls.

Extra life on rastan arcade version