If there’s any one genre that the humble NES never failed to excel at, it would probably be the 2D scrolling shooter.  With the exception of Super Mario-ish platform games, it’s probably what the system is best-known for, with games such as Gradius, Life Force, Section Z, Star Soldier, ZANAC, and Commando being very highly regarded among devotées of what are affectionately referred to as “shmups.”  Whether horizontal or vertical, whether you’re blasting alien/cyborg invaders or blowing away Nazi Russian “enemy” troops to free your comrades-in-arms, it’s a classic genre on a classic console, and one of the simplest to get into…  No complicated controller motions to memorize, no heavy backstory to absorb - just grab your controller and start firing!  Timeless fun for everyone.

The NES also had a strong showing in the “adventure” category.  Thanks in part to a pair of little-known, seldom-remembered titles called The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, there is a veritable cornucopia of NES games where you explore vast maze-like levels in search of hidden items, secret passageways, helpful hints, money with which to buy useful stuff, and/or the magic method to beating a tough Boss character standing between you and your next objective.

These are, debatably, the top two overall genres available on the classic console, representing the games that helped define it and shape it into the Geek Generation legend it is today.

So what would you get if you tried to combine the two formats into a single game?  Probably something that looks a lot like this…

The Guardian Legend (NES, 1988): This little gem of a game was put out by Compile, who for my money put forth the best shmups available on any Silver Age console.   The aforementioned ZANAC was theirs as well, along with Aleste (and its various and sundry sequels), Blazing Lazers (one of the essential shooters on the cult-favorite TurboGrafx16), GUN*NAC, Musha, and many more.  But for my money, their finest hour came here, on this unusual NES cartridge that has sadly never gotten the attention it deserved from the mainstream.

The Guardian Legend casts you in the role of Alyssa, a “guardian robot” with the ability to transform herself into a sleek space fighter. (This is one of the relatively few NES games where you actually and explicitly play as a female character; sorry, Metroid fans, but that first game did try to hide the fact Samus was a girl for as long as possible.)  Alyssa has come across a rogue planet, Naju, entering into our system - abandoned, save for its still-active automated defense systems.  Naturally, its path through the cosmos puts it right on a collision course with good old Earth, and since Bruce Willis and his multi-national crew are apparently otherwise occupied, it falls on Alyssa’s cybernetically-enhanced shoulders to infiltrate Naju, find out where it came from, and either correct its course or destroy it to ensure our happy little species lives to fight in a later cartridge.

The game opens as a straight-up shooter - one moving at approximately Warp 9.5!  The first time I saw this I was literally amazed that the NES could handle a scroll quite this fast; we’re talking speeds that would make Sonic envious here, friends.  After about a minute it slows down to a more manageable speed, but you’re so breathless from that opening sprint that it takes your eyes a bit longer to readjust to “normal space.”  This opening level is short, sweet, and relatively easy; it’s more of a way for Alyssa to get her feet wet in the game before she dives right in to the deep end of the pool (and since the first main level in the game is an underwater battle, the metaphor is more apt than usual in this case).

One thing you’ll notice right away that’s different than most NES shmups is that you don’t suffer from One-Hit Kill Syndrome.  While you do have only one life, you also have a life bar that shows you how many hits you can survive before the dreaded Game Over.  As you progress in the game, you can extend that bar to cover virtually the entire length of the screen… and trust me, as crowded as some of the levels can be, you’ll be wanting every pixel of that length before too long!  While One-Hit Kill Syndrome is hardly a deal-breaker for a game (indeed, one of the most popular NES carts of all time, Contra, suffers from precisely this ailment), it’s always nice to see game companies acknowledge that not everyone has superhuman reflexes.

After you trash the first boss (a relatively simple destroy-all-the-turrets affair), Alyssa transforms into her “human” mode - and the game transforms into a Zelda-style adventure!  You’re now in what would be considered the “hub” area of the game, an overhead-view maze of screens arranged much like one of Link’s vaunted Underworld dungeons.  Here, you’ll fight more enemies, uncover shops and secret passageways, learn hints to solve puzzles, and unlock the doors that lead to different “Corridors,” which are the term for the “shmup” stages.

To be honest, these overhead portions are the weak point of Guardian Legend, but they’re certainly innovative for this genre, and absolutely give the game its own unique identity in the sea of “me-too” NES shooters.  They are relatively slow-paced, easy to navigate, and contain many puzzles that can only be classified under the heading of “Guess what the programmers were thinking when they came up with them.”  It’s nowhere near as bad as, say, the average Sierra or Lucasarts adventure on a computer platform, but you should expect to spend not a little bit of time scratching your head, being completely lost as to where you should go or what you should do next.

That’s not to say they don’t have their own charm, of course; there is a real sense of accomplishment when you finally figure out how to get into one of the Corridors, or when you earn a symbol-key that allows you to enter a brand new area of Naju.  And for those who prefer exploration over wanton destruction, it’s certainly a refreshing change of pace from the shooting-gallery stages that make up the meat and potatoes of the game.

The Guardian Legend has one of the most underappreciated soundtracks of any NES game.  The music is very catchy, and appropriate to the mood; there’s a heroic-sounding BGM for the opening stage, a sense of urgency and confusion in the overhead areas, a rousing “transformation” theme for when Alyssa goes spaceship on you, and a plaintive, melancholy tune when Alyssa bites the cosmic dust.  If it isn’t in the top ten NES soundtracks of all time, it’s certainly not for lack of effort.

Visually, I’m still amazed at how Compile was able to coax the humble NES to produce visuals that’re almost 16-bit in their detail.  Only the relative lack of color and some heavy image breakup when things get too busy on-screen give away the game’s 8-bit origins.  There is an impressive amount of detail on your foes, particularly the Boss characters, and the different environments you fly through are all well-drawn and instantly recognizable.  Alyssa herself looks a bit generic, unfortunately, particularly in human form… except for an awesome portrait that appears when you finally beat the game (see below)!

If there’s anything not to like about the game, it’s an affliction found in many NES cartridges of the time - the passwords.  I don’t know why so many games found it necessary to feature long passwords of twenty or more characters, with a combination of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and the occasional odd symbol or two.  At least Guardian Legend bucks a trend by putting umlauts over the lowercase letters to help distinguish them, helpful for those whose handwriting isn’t the best… but that still won’t solve some of the more familiar pitfalls of password transcription (the classic “Is that a number 5 or a capital S?” syndrome).  Plus, their sheer length makes entering them a chore to begin with.  You kids today, with your memory cards and internal hard drives, you don’t know how good you have it…

However, any quibbles are minor ones, and this game is very much a hidden diamond in the rough of NES titles.  It’s possible you may have overlooked it in the bargain bin of a local indy game store or thrift shop, thinking its origins (Broderbund, noted for some of the weakest early NES cartridges, including the infamous Deadly Towers) and impressive-if-unpromising label artwork could serve as the siren-song leading you to certain doom.  If you did, however, you were truly missing out on one of the most unique and fun shmups of all time, regardless of platform.

For a company that majored in shooting games, The Guardian Legend is Compile’s doctorate thesis.  It features everything you love about shmups and combines them with a complete overhead world to explore - a combination we really haven’t seen since this game was made two decades ago!

I don’t know when, or even if, it’ll turn up on a Virtual Console-like online deal, but I can assure you that however many points it costs you, when and if it does appear, will be worth it.  For those without such capabilities, there’s always eBay, and even doing the flea-market thing would be justified to try and find this game.  It just kicks that much posterior.

If you liked that, try...

1. Retro-Active: R.O.B.
2. Retro-Active: Caltron 6-in-1
3. Retro-Active: Top 10 Retro Puzzle Games NOT Called “Tetris”
4. Retro-Active: Mega Man X
5. Retro-Active: Action 52 (Genesis)

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