Review: Astyanax Remix
Review by unknown
-spoiler alert, don’t read on if you want to be surprised when playing this hack for the 1st time-
Googie's Astyanax Remix
Most ROM-hacks are pretty much what you’d expect them to be. In Ernie & The Muppets Take It All Off, Ernie & the Muppets basically take it off. In Knife Boy, there is a boy and he has knives. But there is another breed of ROM-hack, in which the unwitting player has no idea what he/she/it is actually getting into. One could call it a Trojan ROM-hack.
Today I’m going to talk about just such a hack. Astyanax Remix is touted as the 1st ever level hack for Astyanax, but what they don’t tell you is that when those levels got warped so did the plot.
Astyanax was not really much of a game. Maybe you remember it, probably you don’t. If you do remember it that memory probably goes something like this: “I once rented this NES game when I was a kid and it had this dude with a fucked up name and he was dreaming or some shit and a little fairy bitch gave him an axe and then it was this really ugly looking Castlevania wannabe game. Holy shit there is an endless stream of skeletons and floating blobby things and they keep knocking me into pits. Damn this is frustrating. Fuck you Astyanax, you can just die!”
Yes, Astyanax may have been simultaneously one of the most difficult and one of the most ugly games for the NES. So when Googie set out to remix this game, it wouldn’t take much to improve it.
This new version of Astyanax opens with our hero having a dream about a girl calling for help, which for him is a wet dream.
Help! Help! *spurt* *spurt*
I’m not sure what kind of philia that is, but it’s probably illegal. Astyanax then goes on to give us a lecture about how he has no luck with the ladies. He then says “They try to hold me to decapitate me”. I’m left wondering what the hell that was supposed to mean. Presumably he was talking about the women, because he didn’t talk about anything else before that line. Our buddy Astyanax needs to lay off the meth, it’s making him paranoid.
One day our hero is just walking on down the road when for no apparent reason the sun explodes and he finds himself in “Remlia” with a fairy named Cutie. Cutie explains that he is now trapped and cant escape unless he rescues Princess Rosebud.
Smug Bitch
Once again an evil wizard has kidnapped a princess and a hero is needed to rescue her. This all sounds so familiar. Is this Dragon Warrior? Wizards & Warriors? Legend Of Zelda? Come on Jaleco, we already read this book and seen the movie. But anyway, confirming Astyanax’s paranoia about females, Cutie has an axe. She is too small to decapitate him with it, but she blackmails him into using it to rescue the princess, who is most likely also very manipulative.
After that intro we’re in Remlia, controlling some Burly guy wearing armor. This man bears absolutely no resemblance to the scrawny and somewhat gay looking kid in the intro, but it has to be Astyanax. Googie has changed the colors and actually there is an improvement. Now instead of being hideously ugly, its just somewhat ugly. But once again we are assaulted by an endless stream of oddly blue skeletons, floating pulsating fecal piles, and floating mock-Lovecraftian tentacled eyeballs.
See how I'm falling in a pit? Get used to that image
Also there is the occasional vomiting floor-flower. In the original Astyanax, this level was a butt-load of nearly unavoidable pits. Falling into a pit means instant death and having to start all over again at the beginning. That recipe for frustration ensured that no more than 14 people in the entire world ever made it past Remlia. Most people who played it probably felt like suing Jaleco on grounds of mental duress. So how did Googie remix this nightmare? BY MAKING IT EVEN HARDER! Now there is even less ground to stand on, and an abundance of little narrow platforms. Thanks a lot Googie, now Astyanax will never get to be decapitated by princess Rosebud. Luckily for me I know how to use the save states, and I can tell I’ll really be wearing them out on this one….
After finally making it through Remlia, land of the bottomless pits, and defeating the black knight riding a spiky chicken with a bat head, the storyline gets advanced some more. Blackhorn (the evil wizard for those of you keeping track) is dressing down some sort of skeleton for not storing Cutie in a mayonnaise jar, thus allowing her to escape. He then orders this skeleton to murder Astyanax or die himself.
Evil wizard Blackhorn
Skeletal henchman Thorndog
For some reason this actually worries the skeleton. Can you kill something which is already dead? Oh, the existential dilemmas!
Next up is Redroad and Inazumi. In Redroad we are attacked by almost the same monsters as in Remlia but with different colors.
A cockhead sprouts out of the ground
A poofy skeleton?
What is the deal with the pink skeletons? Are these actually the corpses of the famous 80’s toy MUSCLES?
Well... maybe
The vomiting floor-flower has been replaced with what appears to be giant spitting penis-caps. Redroad is also notable for the appearance of an odd video game staple… the floating slab of brick. Somehow these bricks/rocks/floors which mysteriously defy gravity have gone unquestioned. But let me ask you, when is the last time you were driving down the road in real life and saw a piece of ground hovering several feet? Googie has managed to ramp up the difficulty level by having even less ground to stand on than in the last level. I swear that guy is a sadist! The pseudo boss to this level is a green loogy which rolls across the floor and congeals itself into a humanoid form just long enough to bitch slap you.
The great loogey monster
Actually though, this thing is much easier than the rest of the level because there are no instant-death pits nearby.
In the original Astyanax, Inazumi is a reprieve from the bottomless pits and is actually considerably easier than the previous levels as a result. Googie couldn’t have that going on though and now it is one big death trap. It is a series of jumps, many of which require exact precise timing to accomplish and many of which result in instant death if missed. At least the endless horde of flying enemies are gone, now we only have to contend with pink slime men who like to dance.
He must have tired legs
After fighting the annoying bat thing it’s time to fight Medusa. We know we’re not in Kansas anymore because Medusa has boobs now. In the original Astyanax Medusa strangely had none. Perhaps she had breast-cancer.
Before
After
After dispatching the bare-chested nightmare, we get to witness Astyanax being cock-teased by Cutie.
Aint she kinda small fo you man?
How will it fit?
Whatever, you brought it up bitch...
That little bitch, manipulating Astyanax into helping her, then teasing him with her ass.
The journey continues through Ryogoku, and Rent. Ryoguku is basically a replay of Remlia and Redroad, only with tougher enemies. Actually they are the exact same enemies fought in the very first stage of the game, only green-hued. Somehow this makes them much tougher.
More of the same
The number of people who made it this far without cheating can be counted on 1 hand. Anyone who tells you they made it past this level without save states is a damn liar. You should punch them right in the mouth the moment they say something like that. Googie increased the already huge number of bottomless pits, plus actually made some jumps so that when you are about to land on a tiny platform a plant thing pops up and knocks you off the moment you touch ground, instantly killing you. The boss to this level is a minotaur who can apparently make semen rain from the skies.
Building up the ejaculate
White Rain!
The minotaur is pathetic though, this is the easiest boss so far. Once you get him in a corner and keep swinging he just sits still till he’s dead. He must be exhausted from losing so much ejaculate.