Developed by Infogrames, Mystical is a game that puts the player in the shoes of a magician and claims the title of Magician Supreme. The latter will have to face different enemies and travel from the swamps of the Marches of Eternal Pestilence to the Garden of Eden. And it’s our own wizard, Turk182, who remembers it.
In the age of 4K, ray tracing and 60 (or 120) fps, it’s good to dive into our video games of yesteryear that we still love to release on the NES today. , on Master System, on Super Nintendo, PC Engine or even on a good old computer of the time. A little glimpse into the retro world (gaming), like a little video game journey into the distant past. A column moderated by Turk182 that we invite you to discover on his excellent “retroblog”.
Mystical, a game… Infogrames!
Hello old people! In 1991 my Amstrad CPC came to an end. In fact, I started drooling over the PC games my cousin brought home. Battle chess, civilization, 4D sports driving, test drives, etc. But despite all that, Lord Sugar’s computer hadn’t completely surprised me. Such was the case when the same cousin brought me Mystical, a game he had just bought while on a school trip in England.
©Turk182
©Turk182Like every Friday night, I turned up at my young cousin’s house on time to eat his mother’s bush noodles, in this case my godmother, and play video games all evening. We had put the Amstrad aside for some time to focus on the new features it received for its new PC 1512.
But that night he really wanted to show me a game he had just bought in London, it was Mystical. I confessed to him that I didn’t know him as I deliberately left out the news from my Amstrad in favor of my new Game Gear console. But when I saw the excellent screenshots on the back, I agreed with his choice.
©Turk182
©Turk182Mystical had the special feature that it could be played with two people. One player controlled the wizard and the other the golem that accompanied him on his journey. The objective was quite simple: you had to steer your character through a continuous vertical scrolling landscape while destroying or avoiding your enemies.
During your journey you had to collect flasks, scrolls and other items that would help you get rid of these waves of enemies. Picking up a vial or scroll gave you the option of using it immediately or storing it in your pockets for later use. To use these spells, nothing could be simpler: either walk over it and it was instantaneous, or if you had previously saved it, you just had to select it and press ENTER to activate it.
©Turk182
The spells were really very funny, you could turn your enemies into toads, trees, snowmen and even triple yourself. It was really great fun and divinely well done. In fact, the graphics were great and the animation was very smooth.
The game consisted of four different landscape worlds, divided into three tables in each world. At the end of one painting, a pentagram was drawn on the ground and you had to wait for it to be teleported to the next world. I remember it often happened to us that we ran out of spells and died like idiots while waiting to be teleported.
In the end, this Mystical turned out to be an excellent choice and I encourage you to give it a try if you haven’t already. We spent the evening there and forgot about the Simcity we were promised.