Tonight We Battle for Olympus! Tomorrow, Space!

Hey, look at me, Mr. Finishes Games! It’s like a whole new leaf. A leaf that you can take to the bank and exchange for completed video games. Because that is what I have been able to do as of late. Oh yeah.

So, let’s roll back years and think about old video game commercials, shall we? There was one commercial that featured two (2!) games in it at once. This compression of advertising blew my young mind and made me feel like I needed two video games at the same time¹. Scouring the vast land of YouTube, I have sadly been unable to find this old commercial.

But!

My memory fails me at times yet I do remember the two games it advertised. The Guardian Legend and The Battle of Olympus. Both published in the US by Brøderbund, better known for their publishing of edutainment software and their funny slash-o, my young mind just figured the games were made by them. I mean, who reads the small print, anyway? Fact is, two entirely different groups of people were behind them, Compile for The Guardian Legend and The Battle of Olympus was by Infinity. Infinity seems to have worked on the Populous games and a slew of 1999 released PC games, which, let’s assume are not pornography.

I digress.

So these two games were featured in one commercial and they looked awesome. Why? Well they both look like they took features of the first tow Legend of Zelda games and went crazy as hell with them. Aliens and spaceships meet Zelda 1 in The Guardian Legend and Zelda 2 goes to Ancient Greece in The Battle for Olympus. With my love for the Zelda games, I had to have these games!

I never did though.

And that’s okay. I hold no resentment or hatred towards my parents for never buying me these games. I had plenty of others anyway! But I always wanted to play them. And now I’ve finally gotten a chance to. I’m working on The Guardian Legend as of this writing, so I’ll focus on The Battle of Olympus for now.

So, yeah. Zelda 2 meets Ancient Greece. That’s just awesome, and you know it. I mean, the tales of Greek gods were probably the most awesome in elementary school literature class. At least, I enjoyed the hell out of them. They painted a world that felt so different from the other tales about roller skates with keys² and babysitters freaking out after children get bloody lips from wrestling with stuffed turtles³. They featured bad ass adventures with morals. And now, I got a chance to play that in video game form. Radical!

So what did I learn about Greek history and culture thanks to The Battle of Olympus?

• Prometheus can teach you to shoot fire out of a stick.
• Circe makes salamander skin shields.
• Dolphins and Pegasi will let you ride them if you have the appropriate instrument.
• Hermes likes giving his shoes to people.
• Ares is an asshole and will take Hermes’s shoes from you if you don’t have enough olives to buy a bracelet.
• The gods really like selling things for olives.
• Seriously, you never have enough goddamned olives.
• You cannot hear the word of the gods⁴ if the gods want you to buy something from them via olives.
• Bats are jerks.

All in all valuable lessons to be learned.

The game plays wonderfully and the music is also blissful. My only main issue is how much of a mess the latter dungeons are in terms of being evil, evil mazes. That said, the game isn’t impossible as much as it is occasionally frustrating. But the side scrolling adventure gameplay is a real treat and the Ancient Greece background gives it a flavor that, while of course not entirely historically accurate, isn’t found all that often in video games⁵. If you’re a fan of Zelda II and never got the chance to give this game a shot, I heartily recommend it. Having finished it myself, I now want to find more of these side scrolling adventure games to spend my time with.

But first, The Guardian Legend!

1. Little did I know years later I would be told by my wife that I look ridiculous trying to play two video games at the same time! [↩]
2. I distinctly remember my teacher having to explain that roller skates used to have keys. And this was the late 80s, mind you! [↩]
3. I nearly vomited after reading this story in class and learned that day I have a weakness towards blood. Yay! [↩]
4. Your password [↩]
5. Yes, I’m are of God of War. But really, what else is there? [↩]