Aztec Adventure (Master System)

Aztec Adventure, known originally as Nazca ’88 in Japan, isn’t too concerned with which Pre-Columbian culture its areas are meant to represent so much as the general idea of an adventure for treasure in Central America. While such influences are light and broad, what makes this action game a bit more interesting is its hero, Niño, isn’t the only one braving the labyrinth seeking the legendary Paradise. The bird man Papi, cat man Pupe, and dog man Poh are present to foil you… but throw some money their way, and they’ll happily fight by your side and even attack those other adventurers. Their mercenary nature makes them one of the most interesting tools you can use to help clear the mazes on the way to Paradise, but you’ll quickly learn this 2D action game can’t be conquered by bribing your way to a personal army.

Aztec Adventure takes place across 11 levels where you can freely walk around anywhere on screen, and whether you find yourself in desert, marshland, or ruins, the layout of the level usually asks you to work your way through enemies on the way to specific boss demons you need to defeat in that level. The game does repeat all but one level theme but still shifts up the layout of the areas when they’re revisited so it’s not too repetitive, and while you walk fairly slowly, the stages remain fairly navigable since they rarely have side areas of note or importance to get lost in. You can only unlock a stage’s exit door once you’ve beat every boss monster within, some stages featuring multiple instances of the same foe or a bit of a better mix, and you’ll definitely have multiple encounters with the same ones many times across the adventure. When it first comes time for you to fight such a foe though, you’ll realize something: Niño’s sword is pretty decent for taking out regular foes, but his slow walking and short swing leave him very open to incoming attacks.

Most of the basic baddies aren’t too aggressive. The little yellow creatures with big eyeballs that drop the cash you can use for some recruitment are barely a danger at all. Masked men who throw spears do it in a certain way where you can easily bait it out or stand in a spot they can’t hit you. Some creatures may fly or leap about in less predictable patterns or fire a shot now and again, but sometimes you can just leave the room they’re in rather than needing to deal with them. That’s not to say you’ll go untouched, but you also have a health bar that normally can handle most any normal hit the regular rabble can dish out. Bosses on the other hand are much flightier, faster, or have wide reaching attacks, and having to get in so close with your sword can lead to you sustaining heavy damage and not dealing much before they’ve moved out of position or knocked you away.

There are weapons beyond Niño’s sword you can use though. While the yellow Kanegos are killed for cash, others will drop special weapons. Niño can get his own throwing spears and iron balls to throw at foes including an iron ball variant that launches one in four directions at once, but some levels also have special attack tools that can be a good counter to certain situations. The Tornado shot spits out a little whirlwind that is great for handling a certain boss monster who tries to hide behind a rotating circle of baddies you can’t harm otherwise and Dynamite is as destructive as you’d expect, but you can also find tools with other practical uses like some boots that make it so you can cross rivers without taking damage or Fireballs that also ignite plants blocking your path on top of harming foes. However, these do have limited ammunition and more importantly, most monsters are only weak to one weapon type beyond your sword, so beyond niche cases like the Tornado making a boss easier, they’re mostly just a brief way to harm something from afar before your reserves are depleted quickly. Bosses and enemies recover if you leave the screen, this good for getting money from Kanegos and other item pick-ups, but the items also cap out at eight and that’s not enough to win difficult fights.

You might think then this is where Papi, Pupe, and Poh will be the heroes who save the day. Sadly, they rub up against the game’s most consistent problem, and that’s repeated issues with determining when a hit might register or not. Once you’ve bribed them to fight along side you, you have mild control over them, the group moving loosely in a cluster and lunging forward when you press attack. At times though, all a mercenary needs to deal damage is to be rubbing their face against a foe, but the outcome of this feels unreliable. Sometimes your ally wins, other times they poof because apparently they were the one taking the damage. Lining up your sword swings is already rough with its short range, but trying to position your partners well can often lead to them just getting wiped out. At the same time, extra bodies can be a boon in a boss encounter so they can absorb attacks or distract your foe temporarily, and even though they’ll also use weapons like spears or iron balls for no extra cost when you do, the lack of clarity in hit detection can sometimes make you wonder if that attack that passed through a boss failed because they’re impervious to that weapon or it just wasn’t properly aligned with whatever strange metric the game uses for determining a hit.

There are wishing wells that look like little puddles in most stages where you can toss some cash in to get a full heal, their use limited and they can’t even be activated if you currently have a mercenary with you, but you can at least cook up a strategy to retreat to one after a boss and it makes clearing the game more feasible considering how often it can feel like you’re missing what look like solid attacks. Luckily, there is one element that makes taking on the boss targets in each stage less of a game of luck. Many of the bosses have clear and fairly consistent tricks for taking them down should you discover them. For example, the Monster Flower can be cleared without injury once you figure out the right places to be to avoid its shots while you can eventually figure out how the Rock Lion jumps to get it moving in a way that favors you most of the time. The moving Ranbaike idol can be a bit tougher than the others since it spawns little warriors to defend it who have no trick to exploit, and it’s still fairly likely you’ll lose the consistency needed in executing certain movement patterns that can lead to moments of frustration even in the fights you had figured out. This crucial fights are the moments where you need the action to work properly to succeed, so just because the little battles and bits of exploration on the way aren’t as egregious due to their lower demands, Aztec Adventure can’t help but make you start to resent the fundamentals of its design.

THE VERDICT: Figuring out the tricks to take down the boss demons of Aztec Adventure can be exciting, but that’s often because you’re finally able to escape this otherwise simple action game’s issues with hit detection. When it’s hard to tell why you’re missing, it becomes less rewarding to recruit the other character to fight for you and losing to boss monsters becomes more irritating. While exploring the small labyrinthine levels can otherwise include an interesting mix of trying to stock up resources or find wishing wells while tangling with basic baddies, that’s only because Aztec Adventure is the kind of bad game where things crumble when under the stress of what should be the moments that truly challenge your abilities.

And so, I give Aztec Adventure for Sega Master System…

A BAD rating. Even when you’re facing regular baddies, you will still have issues telling if you’ll hit or not, and the three allies you can recruit are also going to face the bumping issues. At the same time, you can often handle the little moments you take damage, mercenaries can be recruited fairly easily by going back a few screens if you even want to, and you can sometimes use those found weapons or wishing wells to manage the difficulty of the regular level navigation. That could have been the rough but tolerable base if the boss fights were better, but when most of them require you to uncover something that invalidates their threat, it feels less like a tense battle and more about trying your luck until you notice a trend or specific spot that lets you finally turn the tables. Having those little exploits doesn’t make the problems with lining up regular attacks any better, but Aztec Adventure might just be a victim of the time it was created in. It’s become better understood that leniency in attacking is better than strictness when it comes to a 2D game like this where you have a full range of movement, meaning if it looks like your sword hit or even if it’s on the edge of your range, it’s better to let the player land the hit to avoid making their attacks feel ineffective. It would be nicer to be able to swing further ahead with a longer weapon, but if the game at least leaned in your favor when it came to determining if a close swing counts or not, then it would be much easier to manage battles. Niño could definitely use some fleeter footwork too, and a boss demon like the Ranbaike could better afford to be an involved and unpredictable fight if you were better fit to keep up with it.

The jaunty music and colorful world might put you in the mood for what looks like a leisurely labyrinth adventure, but Aztec Adventure is certainly no paradise thanks to its rough combat that the game leans on too often by filling levels with multiple boss demons to face. Suggestions like boss demons being tamer due to their frequency feel like they would just keep missing the point that the problem mostly boils down to the fact Niño and his mercenary companions struggle on this adventure mostly because their own attacks come up often literally short, so rather than trying to figure out if this adventure to find Paradise could have been better designed elsewhere, we’ll stick with the obvious assessment that Niño and the gang should have simply brought longer blades if they hoped to better handle this quest for gold and glory.