...I may have talked about remembering mantras and not having negative thoughts once or twice out there. Loved the video! Thank you for giving this game its due. I also adored your choice of music for the listening section. The tune that plays when you emerge from the mist and go skyward is awesome, but when you get into that later area for the first time and you hear that sinister-sounding song start up, it always gives me that fun feeling of anticipation of the last act. I'll also have to look up the names of the people you compared the portraits to. I usually call Tool Guy Bill Dauterive and the Key Guy Bill Murray.
@@SNESdrunk If only he'd looked like someone on the Buffalo Bills lol. Great review Snes, I agree with Hun that the music choice for the listening portion was perfect. You two are consistently a couple of my favorite game streamer/reviewers, love the sense of community here too and how supportive you all are of each other and other channels. Thanks for everything you do and I hope you keep doing it anyway you can.
@@SNESdrunk I was amazed to hear you mention her in this review because I literally came across Goriya just a few weeks ago looking up Milon's Secret Castle videos on RU-vid. Loved this review, glad to have this game in my NES collection.
An absolute classic, and the music is still killer. My parents bought this game for my brother and I as a "joint present" since our birthdays are two weeks apart. Very fond memories of sitting next to my older brother while he played, and I referred to Nintendo Power. I'm now 42. Thanks for the memories!
My dad would help me map out the interior first-person sections of SNES Jurassic Park when I was a kid...still never beat the game thanks to being a dumb kid. :D
This is my absolute favorite game of all time. Nothing will ever take it's place. A dark, lonely, fantasy adventure through the bizarre World Tree. Put it on, close the blinds, turn off the lights and transport your mind back to 1990... just try not to get too creeped out in mist land.
Wow, this has to be one of the best looking NES games I've ever seen. The environments have such a dense, gnarled texture to them, and those enemy designs are top notch, some of them look like lovecraft monsters. Some screens make the game look like an 8 bit demake of Scorn or Hylics. Absolutely gorgeous. I also love how this game is technically in the same series as Trails in the Sky lmao.
@@goranisacson2502Dragon Slayer is the base series that Faxanadu is connected with, which the Legend of Heroes branches off from; and in turn, the Trails series branches from LoH.
Yep, come 2 decades into the future when the "grey/gritty" nature of innumerable Xbox 360/PS3 games is seen more nostalgically, I think I know which games will continue to have more personality.
Best looking? IMO Faxanadu really shows some of the limits of the NES graphically with everything feeling like the same two shades of brown. Back in the day I played this kind of ripoff of Gauntlet (crossed with a Zelda dungeon) called Storm for the C64. It has very poor color on the C64 because it was a game that was ported to many systems and they didn't try too hard on the graphics. I enjoyed the game though, I just know it looks awful. (Sounds epic though, at least the intro music…) Anyway, Faxanadu gave me the same vibes, colorwise. But no, it's not a port, this is what Hudson actually intended it to look like. And like Storm, it plays better than it looks.
Faxanadu is a beautiful game, and I say this as someone who didn’t grow up with the anything older than the GameCube. The game takes the rpg platform formula most well known for its usage in Zelda 2 (although the formula actually existed prior to Zelda 2 in other games by Faxanadu’s developer) and perfected it! It’s such an atmospheric game, Faxanadu does a beautiful job at making its world feel lived in and natural, the parts that are meant to be scary are generally scary to me. Some other examples of unique genre NES games that I consider to be utter masterpieces are Moon Crystal (Cinematic platformer with Rush N’ Attack style knife combat), and WURM (utterly beautiful game with many genres that’s hard to define. It’s action platformer, meets shoot em up, meets rpg…?)
Fond memories of this game and glad to see it viewed highly. My parents bought me a used NES back in '94 because I was hypnotized by games and thought it would "get it out of my system" (that backfired). This was one of the games we got with it and I loved it but I was awful at it. I remember sitting and watching my mom play through it and the enjoyment I got out of that. The shared experience was great even sharing our frustration trying to figure out the mantras. My mom playing through this with my and my dad playing through Robocop on the Tandy CoCo are some pretty early shared gaming memories that stick with me 30+ years later.
Faxanadu has such a good look and feel. My mom and I sunk a ton of hours into it. The soundtrack is one of my favourites, and clearly you can see the picture I use to represent myself on here. Definitely deserves more love! Great video!
My favorite thing about this game was the world tree setting, I really think they did a good job of implementing it given a NES's resources. Especially in the third section where you're up in the "branches" area.
Back when you maybe got one game a year, my brother and I had a choice to buy this or Hydlide and we choose Hydlide... in a life full of poor choices this one haunts me the most.
Awesome. You're looking into the dragon Slayer series that I only heard so much about recently. I never got this game but I borrowed the follow-up game, Legacy of the Wizard. As for this game, I wouldn't have been so interested had it not been for captain N way back when. I'm glad I discovered this game and I'm happy that you're covering it.
Looking at this game, I love the use of colors used on the player character. They actually pulled off genuine shading, using only four colors, and without just going straight to black.
This game forces me to recall some of my fondest NES memories.. I picked it up at the swap meet for 10 bucks in 1990. My 9 year old self did not turn this game off until I finished it. Super good times!
I remember renting this as a kid. As usual I sucked at it and my brother got hard into it. I played it recently and realised how good it actually was. I'm glad you're covering the 8-bit games now, there's so many to chose from.
This is one of the games I have the most nostalgia for since its a "hidden gem". My best friend growing up owned it and we didn't know anyone else who did. He lived down the street so during the summer we'd hang out and play Nintendo every day and spent HOURS on this and barely ever got anywhere, but it was just so cool to us. Just one of my fondest childhood menories because it felt like this secret game only we knew about.
Some of the most memorable moments (and music) in gaming for me. God damn those flying boots at the fountain - I had *NO IDEA* what I was doing there as a kid.
Wow, this brings back memories. My step-brother had that game and when I was at my father's, I played the shit out of it. Hearing you say it took 3 hours to finish broke my heart...Haha...because at that age, I didnt understand English so I didnt know what I was doing and I remember spending a whole afternoon farming the gold to get the first set of weapon/shield at the first store, where clearly, this early in the game, there was no way you would have that amount of gold without farming. Good fun.
To be a kid in a third world country, Nintendo doesn't even know we exist, I walk into a games store and find this game....took it home and that day changed little old me to know, games can be larger than life, until today, this game is still the pinnacle of 8bit gaming, and maybe one of the most influential games of my young life.....I still can't accept thr fact that after so much searching , only found 2 games close to it, one was influenced by it and 1 is an image to it and still both weren't even close....the graphics, the mood , the atmosphere, it is still phenomenal, this game is a case study on how atmosphere can make a game....10/10 , easily in my top 5 if not top 3 if not my fave games on nes.
I played this game before I knew how to read, so I didn't ever make it very far. For the longest time I just knew it as "the naked guy" game (the player character starts off in a loincloth). I had to go back to it eventually because the music haunts me to this day. Great video.
Faxanadu is one of the all time overlooked greats on the NES. The art design, colours, music, setting and tone all come together to make one of the most unique experiences out there. There's just nothing else like it. The one thing that ever came close to matching it, IMO, was Dark Souls. Anyone who loves the Souls series owe it to themselves to go back and experience Faxanadu.
This was one of those criminally underrated games, back in the day. I never have beaten it, because it really is punishingly hard, but I always felt that 'charm' you mention, too.
Lol, that's some nostalgia nuke right here. I remember seeing Faxanadu in a shop once, sitting between other NES-games, and giggling about the funny name. Sadly, our parents did not have enough money for gaming consoles, and we skipped the NES entirely. But I still remember seeing Faxanadu's box sitting on that shelf and wondering what kind of game would have this kind of weird name.
Oh man. This brings back memories. I remember renting this game, back in the day where you could rent videos and video games, and played it over the weekend. Still hooked on the game, I remember I got very close to the end of the game and on Monday morning, I was 'too sick to go to school' lol. Ended up playing i that whole day and finishing it. Ahh memories....
A game I have thought of occasionally over the years since 1988 or whatever. I remember it was a real challenge beating the game as a kid. Just last week I finally fired it up again for a playthrough 35 years later! Classic and underrated game.
I've watched so many of your videos. Whether it's just to see your take on a game I love, or find out about games (like this one) that I've never heard of. Love all of it, but nothing in any other video prepared me for the mantra bit in this. I was eating and it caught me so off guard I nearly choked, and then I started laughing at myself for that happening in the first place. Still laughing a good minute or two later now trying to type out this comment. I don't know what about that got to me so deeply, but it's fricking great lmao.
Possibly my favorite NES game or at least the most memorable. I remember this from back when my only access to games was a rental, so they all had timers to me.
When I was younger I remember watching a let’s play of this game on RU-vid. It’s why I started looking at systems older than the n64 I had growing up. I can’t find the channel anymore, but iirc it was “scous scous something something”
Faxanadu will always hold a special place in my heart. I used to rent games from the local video store and the day my pet hamster died, I was pretty upset, but my parents encouraged me to play the new game I rented, and I got lost in the world of Faxanadu. Thanks for reminding me that this special little game exists out there. I should try and pick up a permanent copy.
I remember Nintendo Power giving a hint since you get 1500 Gold(s) at the start, that if you spent every last bit and went back with literally zero gold, the game thought you hadn't been given money yet and gave you another 1500 gold(s) in their Tips & Tricks section.
Back in the late 80s one of my dad's friends let him borrow this and Crystalis and they both became two of my favourite games of all time, even to this day. I still talk about this game all the time because it's strange how it's not NEARLY as well known as other contemporary titles. While everything you mention in the video is true, probably the thing that sticks out to me the most (besides the incredible music- my alarm is STILL 'Daybreak') is the odd art style. I can't think of a single game that does the art in a similar style as this, from the colour choice to the weird almost 'fuzzy' look of the world. It definitely helps to make the game feel incredibly unique. If you're going to do more NES videos and want a bizarre, cool, and CHALLENGING game I strongly recommend trying Faria; A World of Mystery and Danger. I was never able to beat this until relatively recently.
My grandma wouldnt get my Bayou Billy cause she thought it looked to violent, I picked this instead and boy am I glad I did, what a classic. Thanks Grandma!
This is a great game that I loved and beat in the late 80s. I played it again about 4 years ago from beginning to end in about 2 and half hours and enjoyed every second of it. These are great games made in an era where you don't have 1000 other things vying for your attention and all these different options that you can do simultaneously like playing this while talking to friends, watching Netflix or a movie.
This game clearly had a massive influence on Infernax, which is an incredible game that anyone with Faxanadu or Simon's Quest nostalgia would love. It's available on all major platforms, has a ton of replay value and is absolutely worth picking up at full price.
As a small kid I always borrowed this game along with other NES titles from my moms coworker's son. He was much older. He ended up passing away and he left me those games. To this day I keep them in pristine condition.
Pretty generous of you to talk about this game and not mention the Pendant bug! But yes, this is a great game and I've played it through a few times over the years. There's a serious difficulty spike around the last few areas, so it's rare that my playthroughs end in victory, but it is entertaining in any case.
I always pronounced the "x" when I player the game in the late 80's, rented it several times and made the passwords work a few times , painstakingly writing them in a notebook I had for passwords from multiple games. Good memories.
Discovered this after it released on Virtual Console. It’s got quirks that can get frustrating, but man it’s world left such an incredible impression on me like few 8bit games ever have.
Faxanadu was released in the US in August 1989. It along with the Batman soundtrack were what I spent hours with during winter break from school in 1989. Good times!
Great game! If you're reading this, I feel I should also recommend Xanadu Next. I really wish the Xanadu series was still continuing as a more dark fantasy counterpart to Falcom's other current output.
I love Faxanadu. It's been one of my favourite nes games since I was a kid. I always loved the music and art design in the game and the setting, even though I didn't really understand the setting when I was a kid. I was never able to complete it when I was young though, I got as far as the Misty area but could never get past it. it wasn't until a few years ago I actually sat down and played through the whole thing. It was just as fun now as it was then, maybe more fun because I could actually finish it.
I have never heard of this game until this video. Saw shirts for it, always thought it was another power metal band or something so I never bothered to check it out. Now I'm sitting here with my NES emulator opened up and having a blast with this game, and I'm only 7 minutes into it.
I love this game. Love it. A remake one day would be sweet. I thought the meteor changed some dwarfs either way all a good story. Thanks for the videos Duder.
Everytime I watch her video I feel a deep and old sense of failure and loss, because it's the song that plays when your guy dies. I played this so much as a child.
So many fond memories of this game! I had a sleepover with a bunch of kids in the 90's and ill never forget this older kid pronounced this game "Fax-a-na-da" like fax machine.
Had this as a kid and I remember playing it once and not liking it then a while later, I fired it up with a friend and we ended up completing it together! Good times! 😊
Faxanadu was in my collection next to Guardian Legend & Crystalis as "lesser known games" that you rarely could get other kids to get interested in or talk about back in the day, cuz it wasn't Metroid or Super Mario or Zelda or another more popular (and therefore "better") game
I thought the concept of traveling up a giant tree was pretty cool. I almost crapped myself when I went to the Dwarf tower and saw that thing with the pulsating brain attacking me. You had to jump up and attack him, the thing was so tall. If you didn't realize that at the time, that thing would keep killing you.
Loved this game as a kid. The save system sticks out as the worst part but I played thru it again during the pandemic and still enjoyed it. The soundtrack is ine of those that will get stuck in your head.
Seeing Xanadu on Basement Brothers, it's really obvious how much this game is based on the 1985 PC classic. It's a lot easier and less dickish, but the gameplay style is really similar to the PC-88 Xanadu.
I haven't started the video yet, so I'm recording my recent revisiting Faxanadu thoughts and then I'll see if they match up. I remembered this game so fondly from my childhood. Then, my cousin and I had a "retro weekend get-together" where we were gonna try to beat some games from our childhood. This game was SO much longer and SO much harder than I remembered. We ultimately gave up early. We didn't know about the broken item, so we self-nerfed ourselves with the "not actually a buff buff". I don't think we hated the gameplay, but it was wild they could stick that much content and that much challenge and length into an NES game. Not sure I want to revisit the game again, but it remains a fascinating part of NES history.
I remember starting a new game after beating this one a few times. I decided to grind for the 'Death' spell and it took me hours to do, but I did it! First boss was a breeze. Then the 2nd one gave me some trouble as the returns were rapidly diminishing.
35 years ago, in grade 8, I happened to meet a young Vietnamese kid on one of my romps around my area, while my single-mother was all unaware as she was shift working (GenX, baby!!) This kid could hardly speak a lick of English. Now that I think about it, the late 80s in my hometown (S. Ontario, Canada) a LOT of Vietnamese were coming in - ohhh, Hyu, from my school. I loved her!! Anywho, with hardly any way to communicate, except for our love of NES, this kid lent me Faxanadu. I think I finished it. I`m not sure. But now I am going to try to find it anyway I can...for nostalgia's sake!!
Its okay to have the name SNESdrunk. You can have whatever name you want. It could even be that the name is not taken literally and that the word "drunk" might just mean, you have a good time playing games.
Still one of my fav NES games. I'm glad it finally gets its own video. Completely agree on the password system though, but ehh... The music, charm and sprite art make it worthwhile even with that. We rented it a lot as kids. A good remake might be in order.
Regarding those difficult to remember password "mantras" we got stuck with in the English language version: the Japanese password "prayers" were much easier to remember! That's right. In the Japanese Famicom version of the game they are known as "prayers" (the screen for entering a password even tells you to pray), and none of those alphanumerical characters are even used! Instead the Japanese version uses Hiragana characters which consist of vowels, syllabic combinations of consonants and vowels, and exactly one standalone consonant (roughly equivalent to the English 'n'). This means any password you would receive would sound a lot like words from another language and in some cases might even result in passwords with parts of actual phrases in Japanese (imagine school kids chanting secret passwords to each other on the playground so they could share their progress in video games). Some games would also use Katakana syllables (identical to Hiragana in sound, but different in appearance and used a lot like how we would use italicized characters), so when porting these passwords over to English speaking regions developers would have to finagle in characters from outside of the alphabet to fill-in the gaps. This was actually the case for a number of retro games before they were localized to use roman characters. And this is why we English speakers would often get stuck with the short stick when it came to memorable passwords!
Ah, that makes sense and would have made the password system a lot better but I think a big part of your premise will be lost on people that only speak english, unless they are weebs/weeb-lords. Japanese is like Spanish in that phonetics are syllabic and therefore a lot more consistent than English which has no proper basis. Hiragana & katakana, as complicated as they are, could at least be pronounced whereas random letters & numbers, especially if some look nearly identical to others, would have been immensely more practical. GG.
@@Archedgar I'm a little bit confused by your response here: "Hiragana & katakana, as complicated as they are, could at least be pronounced whereas random letters & numbers, especially if some look nearly identical to others, would have been immensely more practical." Did you mean to say "impractical" here or are you suggesting that passwords that have characters that are difficult to discern from each other and have no built-in mnemonic devices are somehow more practical for being able to remember?
@@maverick_loneshark .... yes. The ability to properly recall & process information, which by extension includes inputting information, can/is facilitated by virtue of ample rubric it can fall under, thereby procuring higher justified reverence in an evaluative regard. Simply put so anyone can understand; I was agreeing with you.
@@maverick_loneshark I see what you mean. A part of my comment was left ambiguous and lends itself to confusion. My mistake. See, although I am mostly fluent in English, it is at times like this where it shows that it is not my native language............ that comment would have made perfect sense in Spanish but in English, it was a mess up on my part. You are right.
Of every NES game I've played, this one might benefit the most from a CRT, especially the fog effects. It looks OK here but on a real CRT you could mistake parts of it for a PC Engine title.
Fun fact....this game and Goonies 2 helped to define the sidescrolling action adventure genre that we* all loving refer to as FaxanaGoons *I may be the only person that calls them FaxanaGoons
Good review! I remember a neighbor kid lending this game to me when I was little. It was my first action RPG and I could not get into it. I will have to give it a fair shake now as an adult as it looks pretty good. There are also some solid patches for this game currently. There is one that removes the password system in favor of a traditional save system as well as others that make the default font cleaner and one that fixes a bug for the pendant item.
