Posted by Devin de Gruyl on Jan 2nd, 2010
Faxanadu is a game that I’ve been curious about for quite a while, looking at it from a purely academic standpoint. For the longest time, I wondered exactly what the name referred to, as it’s neither the name of a main character nor the land in which the game takes place. I did note the title contained the word “Xanadu,” which gave me mental images of Kublai Khan and bad disco/pop ballads from the very early ‘80s. However, again, nothing in the game itself even hints at such a milieu; it’s very much your stereotypical fantasy-RPG setting, all Medieval Europe with kings, towns, priests, dungeons, castles, and all the assorted whatnot you can think of.
The true story behind the title Faxanadu points to a much more fascinating history behind the game than I would have at first guessed. In its original Japanese release, it was a Famicom port/spinoff of a very popular RPG for the MSX computer platform, Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu (“Faxanadu” = “Famicom” + “Xanadu”). This game, part of an early and long-running series of loosely-related titles, is noted for being one of the best-selling Japanese games of all time in its native market, and for being one of the first successful computer RPGs of any kind to originate from Japan (as opposed to being imported from another region, such as the Ultima games). Its developer, Falcom, would later go on to develop the Ys series, which like the Dragon Slayer games were combination RPGs and platform adventures.
In other words, Faxanadu is a rather more significant game in the firmament of the genre (right up there with Dragon Quest, widely acknowledged as the first “real” console RPG) than the typical American player may think. It was not a particularly successful NES cartridge in its day; it sold in only modest numbers (during the height of the NES era, mind you) and garnered a generally less than enthusiastic response from most contemporary reviewers.
History is all fine and dandy, of course, but the important question remains, how does it play? And the answer is “Quite well,” though it has enough little annoyances and frustrations that it prevents me from giving Faxanadu more than just a mild recommendation.
Read on…
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