The Battle of Olympus

System(s): Nintendo, Game Boy

Genre: Action-Adventure

Developer: Infinity

Publisher: Imagineer/Broderbund

Release Dates:
Japan - 31st March 1988
North America - December 1988
Europe - 26th September 1991






I always wanted to own The Battle of Olympus when I was young. I remember seeing a walkthrough in Total!, a UK games magazine, and loving the fact it was based on Greek mythology. More importantly though, it looked very similar in style to another game I had thoroughly enjoyed, Zelda II: Adventure of Link. Even the colour scheme of the character and the way he moved his weapon seemed to be very similar. Of course, I didn't know it yet from those screen shots, but Olympus actually draws quite a considerable amount of it's mechanics from Zelda II (also the weapon is a club, not a sword - I did NOT see that coming.)

This is nothing new; games have been taking inspiration from their contemporaries forever. The Zelda series has no shortage of games dancing to it's venerated tune - Nuetopia, Oceanhorn, StarTropics. What is surprising though is that Zelda II is often treated like some kind of weird unwanted twin confined to the attic to live on a bucket of fish heads once a week. The classic formula hadn't been defined yet and the second instalment represented such a change in style that it still sticks out more than 30 years later.

What if I told you though, that this is actually a good thing? Yes, as a result of this inspiration Olympus lacks a bit of originality, but this gameplay style is perfectly suited to the overall theme. It just makes sense. You really feel like you are taking part in your own odyssey. Olympus is based somewhat loosely on the tale of Orpheus rescuing Eurydice from Tartarus, the Greek underworld. Unlike that tale though, this version has a happy ending rather than a tragic one. Your goal is to gain the assistance of the Greek pantheon of gods to obtain relics needed to rescue your beloved from Hades who has kidnapped her.

This premise sets up an epic journey during which you will need to speak to locals in each area for clues regarding quests, items and monsters to defeat. You can then gain magical items such as a fire staff from Prometheus or a magical lyre and winged sandals which will assist you during the fights against creatures of Greek legend. Lamia, Cyclops, Hydra - these bosses are what you might expect yet the method of beating them requires a great deal of skill and patience. In fact, the entire game will require patience. Maybe a bit too much in some cases.

There are some pretty frustrating moments in Olympus that will leave you scowling and rubbing your temple repeatedly. No, not a Greek temple. The one on the side of your head. Hit detection is very inconsistent, made all the more difficult by the sometimes unpredictable movements enemies make. Even fairly early on, jumping over pits while dodging bats with terrible hit detection in Argolis will get old quickly. The worst part however, has to be the forest in Peloponnese. Trying to navigate this maze is difficult enough, but I often got caught in an endless cycle of accidentally leaving to a new path while trying to manoeuvre past enemies.


Another issue crops up when you use the sandals by accident when jumping, which will send you up to the ceiling. Use the jump button at the wrong time and you'll likely end up dropping back down by mistake, sending you into a pit to your death. Enemies can take some time to drop items too, which make finding health and olives difficult. What olives, I hear you say? Yes they look like little red gems but apparently they are olives. There are three portions of the game where you are supposed to hand over some of these for items but this becomes an incessant grind. What exacerbates this is the game's obnoxiously long password system.

For all it's faults, however, Olympus is still a decent game. The setting is interesting and the addition of the map is neat. Too often in open world games on 8 bit consoles developers had to resort to giving you a map along with the manual. Olympus has enough distinct locations and is just linear enough that this is thankfully not required. Besides the forest you won't get lost too often. Citizens are much less cryptic and generally more helpful too. Graphically Olympus looks great, very clean, nice backgrounds and while the map screen has little practical use it looks great for a NES game. The music is very catchy too. So much so that the theme from Arcadia creeps into my head whenever I think of the game, even when I haven't played in a while. One odd thing though is that the music playing when you visit each of the gods is Bach's Tocata & Fugue in D Minor which is the old Universal films' Dracula theme. I can only assume the developers were not aware of this, being from Japan, but I was half expecting a vampire to greet me rather than Zeus.

All things considered, I think the biggest weakness of Olympus is also it's biggest strength - the obvious inspiration from Zelda II allows people to view the style of gameplay through a lens not corrupted by notions of what a Zelda game ought to be and take it on its own merits. This also means people will potentially be compelled to write Olympus off as a mere clone when, some wonky hit detection and a couple gameplay moments aside, Olympus has more than enough to recommend it - and if there's a real Greek tragedy here then its that. If you find the Ancient Greek mythological setting interesting and enjoy side scrolling Action RPG gameplay its certainly worth a look.

Summary

+ Some catchy music
+ Engaging Ancient Greek setting with distinctive locations
+ Animates smoothly and looks great, especially the map
+ Challenging but rewarding action and interesting bosses
+ Puzzles are not too cryptic

- So similar to Zelda II it's uncanny
- Gameplay has some control and hit detection issues
- Some grinding sections are needless and boring

Overall Score

7/10