Virtual Hydlide

“Virtual Hydlide is a Perfect 3-D Reproduction of the Original.”

“Combination of Real Images and Computer Graphics to Create Realistic Worlds.”
Fantastical, virtual art by @morkitten.

History has a funny way of reflecting on innovators. If you look back on popular canon, it’s never the folk “who tried and failed” who get their due: It’s the dudes who step in afterward, who can capitalize on the groundwork laid. You don’t hear too much about Antonio Meucci’s ‘talking telegraph,’ but Alexander Graham Bell’s derivative telephone has gone on to be credited as a game-changer for communication. Galileo effectively stole his idea for the telescope from Johann Lippershey’s ‘kijker,’ whose misfortune was not being able to secure a patent for his original optical instrument. And there but for the grace of God goes Hydlide; which couldn’t precisely nail its attempt at a still-theoretical “action RPG” on the first go, and has suffered obscurity in the shadow of The Legend of Zelda in the 35 years since.

… Well, that’s only a somewhat accurate framing around Hydlide‘s legacy, actually. For one, there’s the fact that Hydlide was actually quite successful right out the gate in Japan — selling a million copies across its personal computer formats, before managing a subsequent second million with an enhanced Family Computer remake. Then there’s the fact that it had an enduring enough of a legacy to warrant two sequel installments; before reimagining their franchise-starter not just once, but twice more on more modern platforms for good measure. The fact of the matter is, the Hydlide series would be cited as an influence for many of the Japanese ARPGs to follow in its footsteps — that it helped establish the very foundation of the flourishing subgenre. So, really, that whole bit about Hydlide being forgotten or overlooked by history? Turns out that only really applies outside of its native Japan, where few of us Westerners turn out to have much in the way of real insight into its storied legacy. Blame James, I suppose.

With all that in mind, there’s the matter of one of those aforementioned “reimaginings” that perhaps warrants a second look. Looking toward the future of graphics and level-generation technology – and perhaps seeking to once again present their franchise as the flagbearer for the action RPG genre – T&E Soft set forth to summon Virtual Hydlide for the Sega Saturn. And again, we’ve all been told to believe its derision should be unanimous — that it is a virtual adventure without merit, worthy only of mockery in the modern canon. Which leaves me to determine: Is Virtual Hydlide’s expedition into a digitized Fairyland truly detestable? Or is it perhaps a hero’s journey after all, worthy of our collective reconsideration? And thus begins my own odyssey; to explore Hydlide’s historical context, join the brave knight Jim on his randomly-generated quest, and to return with newfound enlightenment.

“Enough said, here we go.”

“STAND ABSOLUTELY STILL!”

Publisher / developer T&E Soft was established in 1982 in Japan, by brothers Yokoyama Toshiro and Yokoyama Eiji (the first letters of their given names originally accounting for the titular “T&E”). As one of the early software houses created to cash in on the Japanese home computer boom, their first wave of games would release for NEC’s PC-6001 line — one of the earliest in NEC’s larger fleet of consumer-grade computers.** Primitive hardware begot similarly primitive software, as part of their first wave of games: Largely derivative arcade-style works such as LED Zone and Tower Panic, or the likes of Trick Boy serving as a digital pinball table. For their time, of course, these games were likely happily received; providing fun enough amusements fit for the 80s household, and proving to early hardware adopters that their machines packed at least some amount of power beneath their hoods.

Tokihiro Naito (right) stands beside his rival Yoshio Kiya (left), before crossing swords and settling their blood feud.
(“Revived PC 8801 Legend.” ASCII. March 29, 2006. Print.)

All that being said: The PC-6001 did launch more or less concurrently with NEC’s first model of PC-8801 — a secondary line with more business-oriented users in mind, boasting comparatively stronger specs to fit. Ultimately, the PC-88 would exceed the PC-60 in sales and find itself favored by consumers at large, with its appeal expanding beyond just the productivity and management-minded. And though it would not be much longer before the PC-98 line would be launched as well [in 1982], it was the PC-88 that quickly established itself as NEC’s primary focus for the home consumer market, for a number of years to follow. The reasons for all these multiple different lines running simultaneously – by the way – have to do with different divisions within NEC intended to focus on different markets, and all producing their own machines to match their designated consumers. But I digress: The key point is, T&E Soft soon realized that focusing on the 6001 line would not be a viable long-term strategy, and thereby resolved to expand their offerings to the 8801. But more powerful computers would similarly call for more sophisticated games — more complex and impressive than their then-current fare. The company was gonna need some more capable hands on deck, and fast.

Enter Tokihiro Naito. In his first year of high school, he spent a month taking daily trips to a department store in order to program his first game, Samurai, on a display model for a Sharp MZ-80K.^[1] Not too long after, he and his family invested in a PC-8001, and his hobby soon gave way to a hustle as a hobbyist-grade developer. During this period, he dabbled in every given genre: Action, shooters, and even tabletop games with programmed computer opponents. His work on Jumping Frog (also known as ‘Frog the Lively’) featured in a 1983 issue of I/O Magazine, before his 1984 creation Ultraman Jr. ranked 6th place in a software contest held by the prolific ASCII Corporation. That placement was enough to net him a fancy plaque and 500,000円 in prize monies… which he quickly burnt through on purchasing further peripherals for his beloved PC-8001. Needless to say, Naito had a knack and a passion for computer game development, and soon sought to ply his trade on a more formal stage. With some samples of his source code in hand and his accolades on record, he soon found himself in the offices of T&E Soft, and just as quickly found himself being offered a job opportunity.

And so Tokihiro was put to work seemingly immediately. Over the course of his first three months on the team, he would develop his first game for the company: 1984’s Cosmo Mutar, as slated for the PC-8801. Though it would not be T&E’s debut software for the platform (that distinction going to one 3D Golf Simulation in 1983), it did serve as Naito’s introduction to programming for the PC-88, and acts as sort of preview for his games to come. It bears some mechanical resemblance to 1982’s Blue Print by Jaleco; with both centering around the gathering of parts on-foot to build a fantastical contraption, before proceeding to a bonus stage where you get to put said machine to good use. And while Cosmo Mutar may in fact be one of the most frustrating games I’ve played in quite some time – thanks to some particularly picky bits of precision – I can still appreciate some of what Tokihiro was trying for here: Inspiration from the arcades, combining two different genres of game together (albeit as separate modes in this instance), requiring a more defensive style of play while on-foot, and enemy routines which force you to consider for their most likely paths; all concepts which he would further iterate on while developing his next piece of software. It would take just another three months to bring Hydlide to fruition, come November 1984.

For all the times I’ve had to harken back to Namco’s Tower of Druaga on this website,*** Hydlide is the game which probably owes it the single greatest debt of gratitude in inspiring / influencing its design. Specifically, Naito cites Hydlide as being “roughly inspired by” both Druaga and Bullet-Proof Software’s The Black Onyx. (“I liked action games, but I also liked role-playing games, so I tried to mix them together.”^[1b]) That being said; Druaga is clearly the more significant source of mechanical inspiration here, where Black Onyx’s impact amounts to the small handful of RPG systems layered on top. Where other prototypical Japanese video games largely took away from Tower of Druaga the basic concepts of hidden items and secret objectives, Hydlide’s entire gameplay practically serves as a spiritual successor — the logical next step of that school of design as applied to a larger, more open world. Instead of sixty successive floors of a single hostile tower, Hydlide presides over the expanse of a fantasy kingdom known as ‘Fairyland,’ serving as a hub for accessing multiple different labyrinthian dungeons.

Top-down perspective pairs with “bump attack” style combat; where attacking requires you to continuously walk into enemies, and where different directional approaches dictate whether or not you too will take damage in the process. In effect, attacking enemies from behind is your most effective course of action, where attacking head-on will usually result in yourself taking rapid damage. Further, Hydlide employs ‘Attack’ and ‘Defend’ stances where either your sword or shield are respectively prioritized — much as in Druaga. Also similar is the importance placed on gathering an inventory of relics and power-ups hidden across the game, necessary for both survival and completion. Progression sometimes requires figuring out obscure solutions to undisclosed puzzles, with absolutely nothing in the way of indication or hints. Still, the resulting game is a measure more fair than Druaga — where the answers to its riddles are never quite so vague, and where save / load functionality can save you precious time. Unfortunately, this potential time-saving is somewhat offset by one of Hydlide’s lesser-appreciated design elements: Tedious grinding.

Hydlide seems to lack an understanding of how or why experience points were implemented in RPGs in the first place — treating each level-up as a necessary quest to be completed, rather than a natural by-product of progression or as a means of easing difficulty. The first thing you are effectively required to do when starting the game is to spend roughly 10 minutes chasing around slime monsters in order to get up to level three, or otherwise be susceptible to one-hit kills by the next step up in basic enemies. But also bear in mind that you’ll need to take constant breaks during this grind process, wherein you’ll need to stand completely still in order to slowly regenerate the small handful of health points you’re allotted — lest you accidentally approach so much as a kobold from a forward-facing angle, and get killed by a single blow should you have anything less than full HP. Repeat this process across the entire game; where every key item discovered or small dungeon cleared must typically be followed by another interval of grinding and meditation, and where you’ll still feel as squishy by endgame as the slimes you started by slaughtering.

“The magic spell that sealed the power of Boralis, the most vicious demon in the
kingdom, was broken.”
Hydlide Japanese PC-8801 cover art.

Now, it’s certainly easy enough with the benefit of 37 years hindsight for us to determine that this may not have been the most effective approach Tokihiro could have taken. But hey, he was only going and establishing an entirely new sub-genre here, with close to nothing in the way of real precedent. Moving past the handful of more questionable design decisions, Hydlide honestly remains pretty well playable and accessible: Its ambitions are reasonable, the scope of its quest and world are well-measured, and it is owed an impressive credit for nearly single-handedly establishing many of the action RPG genre conventions we still hold to this very day; not to mention, being the first to coin the phrase “Active Role Playing Game,” from which the eventual classification was derived. Granted, I’m certainly neglecting a fair bit of nuance with regards to other proto-ARPGs that had also been in near-parallel development — the likes of Dragon Slayer and Courageous Perseus and so forth. Perseus in particular had even given Tokihiro a brief cause for concern, where he had an initial impression Hydlide would’ve had to compare / compete directly against it in the market. (“Later, I saw the actual game, and was relieved to discover that it went in a completely different direction from Hydlide.”^[1c]) Ultimately though, it was T&E’s Hydlide who would rise above its rivals, and play the most pivotal role in popularizing the burgeoning sub-genre.

In typical fashion for Japanese PC developers at the time – though still a somewhat new enterprise for T&E Soft – Hydlide would be converted for / re-released across multiple different home computer formats of the era. While Tokihiro himself had handled a port to the PC-6001 (in what apparently he and I both consider to be the better version of the game); conversions to the likes of the Fujitsu FM-7, Microsoft MSX, and Sharp X1 were licensed out to outside contractors. Combining all their total sales, Hydlide would manage to become a million-selling piece of computer software, and prove T&E’s first major market success. For the accomplishment of putting the company on the map and effectively guaranteeing their futures, Tokihiro would receive a lofty bonus… of 3,000,000円 (roughly the equivalent of $15,000 at the time).^[1d] I wonder if he spent it all on further upgrading his personal PC-8001? In any case, Naito’s creative vision clearly had a mass appeal, and he’d soon be given the time and resources to further expand on them. Nearly a year later – come October 1985 – Hydlide II: Shine of Darkness would attempt to shine that much brighter than its predecessor.

Shine of Darkness takes some bold guesses at the direction that ARPGs would be proceeding, and manages to nail at least a handful. It introduces more in the way of RPG features; including slotted equipment, magic-casting, town-based merchants, hint-providing NPCs, minigames for training stats, and even a morality-tracking ‘FORTH’ meter (meant to reference Star Wars’ “Force,” by testimony of Naito)^[1e] that penalizes you for killing benevolent characters. But for all its steps forward, it takes an equal measure backward: The game further revels in its mandatory grinding to a now torturous degree, begins to hide necessary items as invisible / hallways behind illusory walls, and ultimately proves its morality system to be more of a clunky hindrance than it is forward-thinking. Worse yet is one of the single most pointless and tedious mechanics I may have ever seen in an RPG; where-in enemies will frequently impart on you a ‘Black Crystal’ item on killing them, which prevents your health from being able to recover while held. In effect, you’ll have to keep an eye open for when you’re forced to automatically pick one up, and immediately go into your inventory in order to drop it and move on (until a point in the progression where it’s secretly necessary to be holding onto one).

For better or for worse, Hydlide II certainly delivers in its role as a continuation of the game concept Tokihiro had pioneered a year prior. Where T&E could’ve likely gotten away with a more straightforward, less ambitious sequel – simply providing a bigger map and new objectives to pair with mostly unchanged gameplay – Naito had determined to push the RPG elements further, and to give players at least a margin more flexibility in how they might choose to approach their quest. Clearly, he was not the sort of developer to rest on his laurels: If Hydlide was destined for franchise status, he was gonna make sure that each successive entry served the purpose of pushing the genre forward. But before he got to work on Hydlide 3 (which was decided should abruptly switch from numeral to arabic numerals), he would take a brief “breather” of sorts to work on a pair of other games for T&E: Contributing first to one of the entries in the company’s ambitious DAIVA series,**** before starting on an RTS/RPG concept that would ultimately get the axe.^[1f] Only with those two projects filed away did Tokihiro return to furthering the Fairyland saga. But while Tokihiro had kept himself busy, other developers were already stepping up to steer the action RPG genre in his stead.

In the interest of time and staying [mostly] on subject here, I’m gonna have to knock out a lot of notable and interesting games in relatively short order here, so please to excuse my brevity. First off, a nod to Arsys Software’s WiBArM on the PC-88, which is credited as the first ARPG to feature 3D polygonal graphics. It’s got sci-fi theming with a transforming robot protagonist, multiple different perspectives for navigation and combat, and a generally slick presentation. Then you’ve got Falcom’s aforementioned Dragon Slayer franchise which kept on keeping on, with its 1985 follow-up Xanadu. This successor rids itself much of the clumsiness and inventory micro-management seen in the original entry (which felt at times like an entirely over-complicated take on the 2600’s Adventure), and winds up being far more accessible for it; all while simultaneously adding a multitude of different mechanical layers and functionalities for players to keep track of. It actually pulls pretty far ahead of Hydlide at this point, and beats it to the punch on many of the innovations Tokihiro had been plotting for his sequels. Naturally, I also have to mention the first installment in the Ys franchise here: Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished. Also brought to us by Falcom, Ys serves as a more streamlined ARPG than the likes of Dragon Slayer — emphasizing fast-paced combat, less time invested in the way of grinding, and a more consistent narrative presence.

But there’s one franchise-starter in 1986 which looms large above the rest — which takes the torch from Hydlide, and proceeds to run nearly non-stop with it for close to the next four decades to come. I am of course talking about Nintendo’s own The Legend of Zelda, which first released for the Famicom Disk System on February 21st. It’s at this point that Nintendo not only redefines the action RPG practically from the ground up, but also goes ahead and shifts the balance of the entire video game industry away from home computers and back to dedicated console hardware. Obviously, that latter credit doesn’t go entirely to Zelda – with far larger moves by Nintendo in the mid-80s already poising them for greatness – but hot damn if Link’s first adventure in Hyrule didn’t make a statement: Simplified mechanics and more immediately gratifying progression were the keys to the major market, and the larger RPG genre no longer belonged exclusively to the home computer enthusiasts. I don’t think I need to count the ways in which Legend of Zelda stands in stark contrast to Hydlide, or how they are similar in just as many aspects. If you’d still like to tally them for yourself though, you can always pop in the cartridge for Hydlide Special into your Famicom!

“He bravely made his way into the wilderness in full armour to fight the monsters…”
Hydlide Special North American ad flyer.

Released in Japan just a month after Zelda (on March 18th), this “enhanced” revision of the original Hydlide could not serve as a finer illustration of how quickly obsolescent that first wave of ARPGs had become. For what it’s worth, I really don’t consider the first Hydlide (in any of its versions / variations) to be all that bad: I’d even argue the original holds up better than its own sequels, and that the first home console release getting back to those roots was probably the wisest move T&E Soft could’ve made! While remaining a largely faithful recreation of the original (disregarding the altered / enhanced graphics), the conversion team at Toshiba EMI did elect to make a small handful of changes; including the back-porting of magic abilities from Shine of Darkness, and some associated tweaks to how you progress toward the final act of the game. But of course, these minimal changes do little to rub the appreciable rust off the 15 month-old design — where that seemingly short length of time may as well amount to an entire console cycle’s worth of innovation and iteration. About the only saving grace for Hydlide Special is the fact it was released for the base unit of Famicom, while Legend of Zelda served as a launch title for an additional peripheral consumers would’ve had to additionally purchase. This is what allowed Hydlide Special to rack up another million sales for T&E, while the market was briefly splintered. Of course, by the time Hydlide finally made its North American / NES debut in 1989, that audience had already had a cartridge-based version of Zelda to be wowed by for the past two years. Hence, why Hydlide has never been paid much respect or attention in the West.

By the time Hydlide 3: The Space Memories released across the home computer formats – with its PC-88 version arriving first on November 22nd, 1987 – it may have already been too late for the franchise.***** That’s not to say that Hydlide 3 was a sales dud (though it reportedly fell well short of the million sales mark), or that it doesn’t try its hand at testing a slew of new / unique mechanics. Most notably, Space Memories leans heavily into “realistic” factors affecting your survival; including item encumbrance, having to carry rations to stave off hunger, and being made to sleep or otherwise lose your ability to inflict damage [due to tiredness]. It also boasts more in the way of flexible character builds, more elaborate towns and cities, and different ways to invest your hard-earned experience points. All that being said; it also makes for a now nightmarish grind game, with a frustrating knack for forcing you to frequently retreat from your activities / exploration as the in-game clock never stops ticking. Add to that a combat pace that has barely hastened since the original release (despite moving on from the dated bump attack style), more cryptic means of progression, and a convoluted lore that absolutely fails to connect; and you can’t help but start to get the takeaway that Hydlide 3 is actively reveling in wasting your precious time. While there were / are certainly players who may well prefer the complexity here to the comparatively simpler likes of Zelda, their tastes were quickly being overridden by a rapidly-growing casual market.

Despite the diminishing returns, T&E Soft did apparently ask Tokihiro to develop something like a ‘Hydlide 4,’ but by this point Naito was firmly against it: He had envisioned the series as a trilogy, seen it through to completion, and burnt himself out in the process of doing so. According to testimony by co-worker Yasuo Yoshikawa, “Naito-kun couldn’t come up with another Hydlide, and I think when they asked him to create another sequel, he was suffering under a lot of stress.”^[1g] It was also Yasuo who would step up at around this point to pitch his own concept for a new ARPG, and who would eventually rope Tokihiro into helping contribute to it. This idea would be developed into a new series by the name of Rune Worth — consisting of three entries across the PC-98, MSX, and Sharp X68000. But despite an emphasis on accessibility, and having some of its own novel ideas about how to further push the genre forward; it failed to approach the same levels of popularity as T&E’s previous record-setting property, or to effectively compete in the market. At this point, T&E realized they had to learn to let go of action RPGs, and to re-focus on some other genre.

With this goal in mind, the company would finally land on their true passion as a publisher / developer: Golfing. It turns out that 3D Golf Simulation game in ‘83 spoke to company founder Yokoyama Toshiro’s undying love of the sport, which would go on to infect his brother Eiji (as well as Tokihiro himself, if not the entire company). Their October 1989 release of Harukanaru Augusta had further developed on that simulation foundation, and soon spawned a whole range of fresh virtual courses emerging from T&E over the course of the 90s; including Pebble Beach Golf Links, Waialae Country Club, Wicked 18, and the simply-titled Golf on Virtual Boy. By this point, the company was more or less all-in on developing club-and-ball games, with only a small handful of exceptions / side projects. These would include a final stab at the RPG market with Sword World, some shooters (most notably the Laydock series), and localizing a number of Western releases for the Japanese market (including the likes of The Lost Vikings and Microcosm, as well as future “Hall of Famers” Shadow: War of Succession and Rise of the Robots).

At this point, Tokihiro was more or less relegated to localization duty, as well as a broader ‘Development Director’ role. He had yet to develop an appreciation for golf, apparently could not keep up with learning more complex programming for the new generations of PC and console hardware, and began to feel listless as he was no longer heading his own original game ideas. This stagnation seemed to occupy roughly the first five years of the new decade, and shows up as a noticeable lull period in his portfolio. If he had wanted to, he could’ve likely continued on in this fashion — fully conceding to complacency, and adhering to the salaryman traditions of submitting to the company line and taking his lumps. But as you should know by now: Tokihiro Naito could not help but want to create and innovate. Though he might not be able to keep up with the latest technologies, he could still use his role as a director (and additionally as an ‘Executive Producer’) in order to dictate and delegate his vision to a team dedicated to realizing it. By putting forth a proposal that would leverage one of T&E’s existing golf game engines – specifically, 1994’s Pebble Beach Golf Links – Tokihiro got the go-ahead to try and reinvent Hydlide one more time.

See, that’s the trick of how the project most likely got approved right there: The golf games T&E were putting out by the mid-90s all revolved around more or less the same central program principles, for rendering their 3D courses and presenting golfers and objects around the environments as digitized sprites. By this point, T&E had a pretty streamlined production pipeline working out for them; where they were able to consistently release similarly-playing games across the PC-98, the Super Famicom and Mega Drive, as well as the 3DO and Sega Saturn. If Tokihiro could pitch a way for their well-familiarized golf game foundation to drive an action RPG, it was likely the company would back his play… Or perhaps the word had come down from Sega themselves; who wanted to secure an ARPG to release within the first few months of their latest console’s launch, saw what 3D graphics T&E were capable of as they were developing Pebble Beach Golf Links, and asked if the company could reprise the Hydlide franchise one last time — to release a new installment as a Saturn exclusive, banking on its historic name recognition. The exact circumstances remain unclear here, as do most other circumstances of the game’s development.

The game first previewed in the November 1994 issue of Micom BASIC magazine, where it was provisionally titled as ‘Neo Hydlide.’^[2] By this point, the digitized sprites for the player character had already been captured, and other tentative graphical assets were ready for assembly in mock-up screenshots. Guessing from the fact that a separate screenshot shared in US Game Players magazine recycled mostly the same assets (showcasing mock-up forests within the overworld),^[3] it’s likely that development at this point wasn’t really all that far along. There’s also the fact that a caption refers to the game as a “first person adventure,” despite the fact that our hero is clearly seen with his back to the camera. The next look at the game the West would get came with Computer and Video Games’ January 1995 issue, where it was now tentatively (or otherwise incorrectly) titled as ‘Virtua Hydelide.’^[4] This temporary name re-appeared again in a March 1995 issue of Sega Pro as part of a larger preview feature,^[5] before the name was evidently finalized as Virtual Hydlide in time for Sega Saturn Magazine’s own March issue^[6] and for the game’s April 28th release date in Japan. North America, naturally, would have to wait a little longer to get their hands on it — ‘til September of that same year.

There is the matter of one more additional wrinkle with regards to the release: In Japan, it was Sega themselves who would take up publishing the game, and handling all the duties that came with doing so. Sensible enough, seeing the trouble they had gone through to secure Virtual Hydlide as an exclusive for their console. Their role as publisher would extend to European releases of the game as well, which they took the further step of localizing internally. But then there’s the matter of the North American release, where the job now suddenly fell on Atlus to publish the game. Certainly a curious change, especially considering that Sega had already handled the English localization. So, what gives here? I sought out an explanation, but couldn’t find any. Which leaves me only with my own guess: I think it might’ve had something to do with the mail-order strategy guide Atlus was authorized to produce and provide for the game in North America? It seems like Sega weren’t in the business of selling strategy guides or opening “hint lines” for their first-party published games in the region, and as such would let third-party publishers step up to take the cases of some more “complex” games off their hands —  so that they could additionally sell their accompanying guides, and make whatever profits they may. Again, total speculation on my part. But hey: It almost sounds like it makes sense, right?

** The PC-6001 was in fact preceded by the PC-8001 line, two years earlier in 1979. But from what I can gather: This earlier line wasn’t necessarily cut out for games software, given far more rudimentary graphics / character support. A small handful of games programs did release for the original 8001 revision (simple applications along the lines of Sokoban), but NEC would more consciously market their soon-to-release 6001 / 8801 lines as being more games-capable.

*** At some point, I may well just wind up writing an article about the damned Druaga game. For as incredibly influential as it was on Japanese video games to follow – for as revered as it may be in its native country – it’s still one of the single-most esoteric video games ever created, and well worth going into our usual level of nitpicky detail about. At the very least, I might eventually write some sort of history of its development / list of innovations it brought to the table. Of course, all of that would still ultimately require me to have to re-play Tower of Druaga, so don’t expect any of this any time soon.

**** DAIVA is something of a fascinating diversion in the T&E Soft catalogue. Over the course of 1987, the company released seven separate ‘Story’ installments comprising one overarching narrative — all as individually released titles, each for different platforms. While each version centers its perspective around a different character, they each retain / re-create more or less the same core gameplay: Fleet and resource management on an interplanetary node system, turn-based strategy for engaging in ship combat, and side-scrolling shooting where you directly control your ‘Hero’ character. Tokihiro Naito would contribute specifically to the first entry, DAIVA Story 1: Flames of Vlitra for the PC-8801.

***** Hydlide 3 eventually made its way to the Famicom in 1989 as ‘Hydlide 3: Visitors from Darkness,’ and to the Mega Drive / Genesis in 1989 / 1990 (respectively) now re-christened as ‘Super Hydlide.’

“You May Either Choose to Fight or Escape.”

“Don’t mistake recklessness for courage.”
Virtual Hydlide North American cover.

Welcome to Fairyland (or ‘Dream World’ in the English localization). It is an idyllic and luscious land “surrounded by a warm glow,” and populated by peace-loving Fairies. Powering this paradise is a force known as the Crystal Energy, which is protected by the fair and virtuous Princess Iina. But where there is light, there must also be shadow: Varalys, the Prince of Darkness, schemes in secrecy to disrupt the peace. One day – without warning – total darkness envelops all of Fairyland, and Varalys’ forces storm the kingdom in an effort to assassinate Iina and vanquish the light of the Crystal Energy. In a desperate move, the so-called Elder Fairy sacrifices their life in order to cast a transformation spell on the Princess; splitting her very spirit into three separate fairies, so they might scatter across the land and hide from the forces of darkness. Only one man can rise to the challenge of rescuing the Princess, repelling the dark armies, and ultimately defeating Varalys: Jim, hallowed be thy name. As a hero “born to the sword,” it falls on him to save the kingdom, and on you as a player to point his blade toward the direction of the evil-doers.

In case you didn’t already pick up on it, Virtual Hydlide is a retelling of the events of the original game. In fact – according to a statement made in the English manual – Virtual Hydlide should serve as no less than “a perfect 3-D reproduction of the original.” Take a minute to measure the weight of that statement, and to build whatever terrifying expectation you may in your head. Now, let go of that expectation completely, and take relief in hearing that T&E’s odd boast could not be any further from the mark: While Virtual Hydlide might mirror the basic narrative and some of the progression beats of its predecessor, it otherwise chooses to distance itself from such a rigid structure. As a matter of fact, the first you’ll do after launching the game is to shake the very foundation of Fairyland — to generate a ‘new world,’ by either choosing to input a code (a seed which the game will use as reference when filling out the map), or allowing the game to decide at random. This would be an idea proposed by Tokihiro himself, who took inspiration from roguelike titles he had been enjoying (such as 1993’s Torneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon).^[1h]** While Virtual Hydlide is not itself a roguelike, this will not be the last of the inspirations it draws from them.

To elaborate on the randomized elements: The game first rearranges the locations of all the pre-established points of interest on the overworld, as well as shaping their surrounding terrain. The dungeons you’ll be visiting are also susceptible to randomized layouts; where the floor plans, branching paths, set-dressing, and the treasures contained within are all subject to drastic differences between generated worlds. What will remain the same within across playthroughs are the number of floors comprising each tileset, the bosses [and their arenas], and the guarantee that you will find the items essential to progressing the game somewhere within their designated dungeons. In effect, Virtual Hydlide is still a very much linear adventure, requiring completion of the same objectives in the same order every time. So really, what this means is that the consequential differences between playthroughs effectively boil down to having to learn new map layouts, and whether or not you’ll get lucky with regards to which non-key inventory items might appear [and when]. More on that aspect later.

The next big thing we’ll have to address here is the game’s presentation. But where to begin? Well, let’s first consider the fact that Virtual Hydlide runs on a repurposed golf game engine, and figure out what that means for the game itself. What it gets us are texture-mapped 3D-rendered environments, with the options for elevated terrain and oblique angles you might not have seen that often yet circa 1995. These feats are owed to the fact that T&E’s 3D golf games necessitated the ability for players to tee off from any given coordinate on a course, as the ball is liable to land anywhere within said course after being hit. Their games also allow you to rotate your orientation around the ball, so that you can look ahead toward whichever given direction you choose to drive it. Oh, and it also behooves a developer to show you what your golfer looks like / indicate how much power you’re putting behind your swings; so T&E determined that the most impressive-looking (and most simple) way to render characters was with digitized sprites. With these basic requirements in mind – and considering how precious little else there is to account for in a golf title (in terms of surrounding actors / objects) – much of a given game’s code was designed for running these essential tasks as quickly and in as optimized a fashion as is possible.

If this bare minimum was all Virtual Hydlide had to handle, it might be able to do the job well enough. Unfortunately, Virtual Hydlide is an action RPG, which means there’s only about a hundred more objects to account for on-screen at any given moment. Rather than further taxing the 3D rendering and potentially slowing the game to a possibly unplayable extent; the majority of scenery objects and characters are all rendered as 2D sprites, and made to scale with your distance to and from them. What this implementation often fails to account for is the direction you are facing, to where most sprites are simply forward-facing at all times — foliage, decorations, landmarks, and other miscellaneous props all turning in place as you do. The effect may be genuinely disorienting to some, especially given the sheer number of objects liable to appear on-screen in any given frame. At the very least, enemy sprites generally tend to be rendered from multiple different angles, so that you’re able to rotate around them and effectively flank them as needed. Granted, this would all be pretty standard fare for players already familiar with the likes of Doom and what have you. The difference is, id Software were clearly a little bit more conscientious of how their sprite display worked, and rarely dared to populate the viewport with hundreds of simultaneous sprite objects all at once.***

It feels as if T&E simply tried to incorporate as many different decorations as they could within each given tileset – likely in the interest of detailed, “realistic” environments – but ignored considerations for the density of objects on-screen. In effect, the game often struggles to scale and re-draw them all on a frame-to-frame basis, or to update the screen at a rate conducive to fluid gameplay. To put it bluntly: The framerate sucks — managing somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 frames per second at the best of times, and as low as 5 FPS at its worst. As the game chugs along, it elects to skip / drop frames rather than slow gameplay down, which at least means that the tempo is more or less consistent throughout. But poor performance absolutely detracts from your abilities to move and react to enemies and hazards, or to effectively rotate to face a specifically intended direction. What’s a shame is that the 3D aspects of the graphics are actually decently impressive for their time, as is the level of detail that went into the 2D sprites! But it’s all obscured by so much in the way of jagged scaling and cluttered spaces, and made to perform at framerate so pained, that many players will simply be unable to tolerate.

There’s one last point to make about the graphics: Our beloved hero Jim is completely stiff, and I’m not just talking about his lack of discernible personality. What I mean to say is – by the very nature of his being a digitized actor – he only has so many sprites that can be used to convey his presence, and most of them make him out to move like a particularly inflexible robot. Everything from his standing stance to the way he runs just comes across as rigid and unnatural, and serves to disconnect you from any sense of really inhabiting him. But where this sprite-based approach really begins to lack is in equipping different armors and armaments — where Jim’s actor was not photographed actually wearing these platemails or wielding the individual weapons and shields. Where it comes to what’s in his hands, you’ll find the same stances and animations used across his entire mix-and-match arsenal. If you should choose not to carry a shield, for example; Jim’s emptied off-hand will look as if it’s flailing in the air as he wallops his foes with his right. And when it comes to different armor, these layers are simply drawn on top of Jim’s base model, where they seem to fit rather unnaturally.

Now, about that arsenal of yours: The different offensive and defensive options on offer do carry different statistical impacts. The three different armors protect for different values, the four available shields can deflect varying types of attacks, and the eleven different weapons each deal different degrees of damage [as well as carrying some other unique special attacks / restorative properties]. But ultimately, you’ll find yourself working toward acquiring the same intended gear in time for the endgame, as there are objectively superior pieces in each given category. Come the final gauntlet, you should hope to have the Sword of Light, a suit of Fairy Armor, and a Fairy Shield to pair. Theoretically, you should easily be able to acquire all three over the natural course of a given playthrough. In actual effect… well, you literally can’t beat some of the final bosses without the Sword of Light, so that’s proper mandatory. But there’s the possibility you might miss collecting the armor from its designated dungeon, and reach a point of no return where you can’t go back for it. And then there’s the apparently “rare” chance that the shield might not appear at all — being replaced instead by a chest containing 100,000 gold. Naturally, over the course of my multiple playthroughs, I won the lottery and wound up losing out on the Fairy Shield more times than not! And boy howdy, does that ever make the final bosses a pain in the ass.

In addition to your equipment options, you’ll also find a range of consumables and accessories; including healing remedies, stat-enhancing accessories, and scrolls of various effect. The catch is, you won’t know the specifics of what any of these items are when you first pick them up — until you use a Scroll of Judgment to identify them, or otherwise gamble on using them with their effect unknown. You’re generally advised not to risk the latter: In randomly drinking potions or rubbing on herbs, you run the risk of poisoning [and likely killing] yourself. Unknown rings [as well as weapons and armors] run the risk of carrying curses, which requires a Scroll of Purge (or using a Master Sword’s effect) before you can unequip them for some other item. Furthermore, randomly reading scrolls can screw you over should you land on something like the Scroll of Fool, which will reduce the level / effectiveness of all your gear. This aspect of item identification is another concept owed to Rogue and its ilk, and one which does add appreciated elements of risk-reward and discovery to the formula here. Not only that, but scrolls which serve to reveal aspects of your in-game map can significantly alter how you engage with the exploration elements. Expanding on the inventory concept in general is certainly one of Virtual Hydlide’s most major improvements on the original game formula; where every object you could obtain was more or less necessary for progression, and used in an entirely passive manner.

In the spirit of not all items being created equal (and in carrying over an aspect of Hydlide 3), there are the additional elements of carry weight and encumbrance to consider, where each item and piece of equipment has its own assigned weight value. Not only can you only carry a limited number of items within your inventory [before tripping your carrying capacity], but you can also only equip so much weighted equipment at the same time — where heavier armor and weapon options may require you to ditch filling out one of your other equipment slots entirely. This is never a trade-off worth making, and as such makes the likes of the Plate Armor, Warhammer, and Battle Axe entirely impractical. But of course, there’s the off-chance that you may just be stuck with such slim pickings for much of the bulk of the game, if your generated world isn’t gracious enough to grant you some of the more viable inventory. Your ability to progress and survive the early game really is contingent on an element of luck, and whether the game decides to feed you table scraps or a full-course dinner.

Now, you might be asking at this point: “Is it possible to grind and level up enough to offset poor equipment?” The answer to that question is “No.” For you see, there is no grinding in Virtual Hydlide; as there’s no experience meter to be filled, or number of enemies you are required to kill before being able to tackle tougher foes. To this departure from the franchise norm, you can thank Tokihiro’s work on the Rune Worth series as mentioned earlier. As part of Yasuo and Tokihiro’s vision to produce “the complete opposite of Hydlide in a sense,”^[1i] one of their major shake-ups was to redefine how players should increase their strength over the course of the game. And so, rather than being contingent on killing scores of enemies and accruing experience, level-ups came with reaching milestones in the progression — collecting certain items as part of the intended throughline, or which were rewarded for exploration. In this sense, it represented a similar sort of feedback loop to Legend of Zelda, where the gratification is paired simultaneously with your sense for accomplishments. And I’ve gotta say: This concept, as it is re-purposed for Virtual Hydlide, totally works for me! It saves you precious time, makes combat feel less like an obligation, and provides a greater sense of accomplishment for completing goals. I like to think that Tokihiro was more than happy to eschew the traditional levelling system by this point as well, realizing what hell he had ultimately wrought with it.

It’s a good thing too that combat against standard enemies is no longer a necessary aspect of the game, because it’s honestly not all that great. And – you know – when we’re talking about an action RPG here, you’d probably think that combat would be an essential part of the gameplay, right? But it’s really not — not outside of the boss battles, anyhow. First off, let’s cherish the fact that we’re well past the bump attack combat at this stage, where angle of approach and damage races were the be-all end-all. Having actual combat mechanics to master – as basic as they may be – means that you can theoretically deal with any variety of enemy at any stage in the game if you’re adept enough. Of course, the way the game is structured doesn’t necessarily allow for those sorts of scenarios in the first place, but let’s go ahead and put that fact aside for now. The key point here is that combat is more or less functional, but highly repetitive in its limited approaches. Perhaps realizing that fact themselves, Tokihiro and his team seem content not to place an emphasis on participating in it, and allowing players to run past most enemies — even within Hydlide’s trademark cramped corridors. For those fool enough to engage with every last enemy in their path, their only tangible rewards are more points on the ‘Score’ tally, which is actually not entirely useless as you might presume. Put a pin in that for now as well.

In the instances where you are forced to engage with the combat, here’s what you need to know: Holding the ‘A’ button brings up your shield to deflect attacks, pressing ‘B’ outputs a heavy blow, and ‘C’ serves as your lighter / quicker striking option. If you find yourself without a shield (or simply an ineffective shield), you can strafe with ‘L’ and ‘R’ and / or hold ‘Y’ to sprint. In an ideal situation though, you should actually be able to keep a decent amount of distance between yourself and your enemies. Despite the game lacking anything in the way of dedicated projectile weapons – and a half-baked ‘Throw’ function proving almost completely useless as a means of attack (🔊) – several of the swords hold the ability to launch forward-homing projectiles, by pressing B and C simultaneously. This becomes near-essential in dealing with the lion’s share of bosses across the game; as they have a shared habit of only making themselves briefly vulnerable, and only when you’re not in close proximity to them. Some may ostensibly be thwarted by quickly dashing to them and taking some swipes, but this is an altogether inefficient and unsafe method for dealing with them.

See, this is where you have to cross your fingers as you generate your new world, and quietly pray that you stumble on the Dark Sword at some point before facing the game’s second boss: A three-headed dragon who spends 95% of their time on the other side of a pool of lava hurling fireballs at you, and only intermittently approaching you to allow you to inflict close-range damage if that’s all you’ve got on hand. In this way, a fight that only takes roughly three or four tedious minutes with Dark Sword projectile-spamming can stretch out for tens of minutes without it, should you be so unlucky. See, this is part of what I was alluding to earlier when I mentioned that certain “non-key inventory items” can make a consequential difference, depending on whether they appear in your playthrough or not. Not having early access to the Dark Sword (before getting hands on the guaranteed Flame Sword or Sword of Light) can significantly drag out the early goings of the game, as the combat is clearly designed around engaging enemies at a range. Why, in that case, did T&E choose not to include dedicated projectile weapons as an option — to perhaps carry over some of the slings and bows from Hydlide 3, or allow for ranged spell casting? The world may never know.

Virtual Hydlide feels clearly constrained by tradition in its role as a remake, while also simultaneously seeming desperate to want to break from archaic mould. In attempting some sort of balancing act, the team sometimes lands on half-measures (like what we see in the projectile attack example), and manage to please absolutely no one in the process. Admittedly, they do land on at least a couple of effective compromises along the way. For a positive example: While still retaining the classic “stand to recharge health” mechanic, Virtual Hydlide also provides you with consumable healing items in case you need a more immediate fix, thereby appeasing both purists and new-school players. In my mind, this represents what would’ve been the ideal design approach — keeping all the legacy mechanics intact, while also providing newer ARPG innovations as optional alternatives / contrast. And while that’s clearly what Tokihiro and team were attempting to do to some extent, it’s just that they rarely manage to strike the right trade-offs.

One more aspect which I reckon strikes a fair balance is the exploration — the navigating of the overworld and dungeons, and the filling out of your automaps. First of all, let me just say that the inclusion of consultable maps in the first place is a great improvement in itself, and an absolutely necessary one at that — considering the expanded size of the overworld, the random generation, and the labyrinths that the dungeons weave. Secondly: You can totally opt out of the part where you have to fill in the unexplored space on said maps; either by selecting the Easy difficulty (where all maps will automatically be filled out), or by casting a Scroll of Oracle to reveal the full expanse of whichever zone you are currently in. You might also be lucky enough to find a Scroll of Detect along the way, which further reveals the locations of dungeon treasure chests for you on the map. But for what it’s worth, I actually enjoy the process of fully charting the game world! There’s a satisfaction to picking a direction on the overworld and running forward until you stumble on a point of interest, or to figuring out the ideal paths through the mazes through a process of elimination. And for the truly nostalgic / masochistic out there: Beating the game on Hard difficulty will unlock a further Pro mode, which further disables map functionality entirely. You know, just in case you like getting constantly lost!

Yes, the increasing difficulty levels do seem to relish in gradually stripping away every quality-of-life feature Virtual Hydlide sees fit to add. Why, playing on Hard / Pro even disables what is arguably one of the most significant departures from the original game: The ‘Points Trade Crystal.’ When it’s enabled on the two easier difficulties, it can be discovered in the overworld, and accessed to purchase from a catalogue of items using your accumulated Score (which is gained by killing enemies and whenever you collect gold). But here’s the catch: On Normal difficulty, the store only stocks items which you have already picked up and discovered throughout the course of your playthrough. So between the collection of utterly useless weapons, armors, and shields you’ve already picked up and thrown away; what you won’t find are the sort of common items you’ve been so unlucky as to miss out on — the sorts of goods you’ll be wanting to have access to the most! It’s good for stocking up on potions and more helpful scrolls, but utterly useless in the event that you don’t get to land on any due to the random item distribution. In all my playthroughs on Normal (and on Hard, for that matter), I don’t think I ever once found a Scroll of Detect in the wild, and it was a source of frustration not being able to just buy them instead. It’s entirely possible that they might not even exist outside of Easy difficulty!

Speaking of precious rarities: I should also mention an item known as the Stone of Fighter, which serves to increase the base damage of your equipped weapon when consumed. A handy enough little feature, which effectively replaces the ‘Sword of the Brave’ you might find in the original game (which adds a passive bonus to your attack if you should go out of your way to find it). If you’re lucky enough to find at least one stone in your adventure, that of course means that you can buy it again and again from the Trade Crystal, and level up a given weapon several times over. Similarly, you can possibly discover a Ring of Protection, which either boosts your defense while equipped or which can be consumed in order to apply a smaller, stackable bonus to given armor. Solid little helpers in concept. In execution: I again have never once seen these items appear on any difficulty above Easy. And of course, that also means I can never even buy them from the Trade Crystal as an alternative. You have to wonder what is even the point of an in-game vendor that can only re-sell you stuff you’ve already picked up and thrown away?

The oddly-designed item shop isn’t the only new feature I’d have to describe as being half-baked. For one, I find that the item weight system winds up being a pretty much pointless addition, as you quickly find that none of the common equipment is really worth holding onto / weighing yourself down with in the first place. It’s not as if you can sell them at the Trade Crystal for extra Score, so there’s really no need to lug along any gear beyond what you already have equipped. You may decide to hold onto a Magic Sword and Master Sword for their additional utilities in curing poisoning and curses (respectively), but these ailments don’t really remain an active threat in the latter end of the game, and are just as easily cured anyway by far lighter antidotes and scrolls. On that note, I reckon the new addition of status ailments are also kind of underdeveloped, insofar as they’re not really all that major or frequent a hazard? None except the particularly pesky ‘Horrified’ effect, which takes away your control / steers you swiftly toward death unless you have a Tranquilizer handy.

If there are some new game concepts that aren’t half-baked, you may find that they’re outright broken instead. In a particularly baffling example, there are two instances in the game where posted signs seem to warn you about supposed weight limits — while crossing a rickety bridge on the overworld, and riding a minecart in the Sealed Dungeon. Where the bridge warns you to a more general state of disrepair, a sign in the Sealed Dungeon specifically states that its tramcar can only “carry up to 5kg.” Naturally – regardless of how much more encumbrance you may subject Jim to – there is no actual apparent risk of either of these inventions collapsing under your weight. This reads to me like a fair enough idea that was implemented and later dropped at some point during development, but which was disabled without remembering to remove the associated signposts? Either that, or the implementation is meant to work, but doesn’t due to some sort of programming error. Either way, it raises some questions as to how hastily the game may have been rushed to completion toward the end, and/or how late into development major changes were being made to some of the mechanics?

On the subject of changes: It’s probably worth recapping the sequence of events that will play out over a given playthrough — the beats you’ll be expected to hit, and how they all build to the game’s final encounter. Because for as closely as Virtual Hydlide may ostensibly serve to mirror the classic game’s feel and progression; it is clearly observed to be a warped, funhouse style of mirror specifically. It’s in following Virtual Hydlide’s newly-paved path that you see what original aspects Tokihiro saw fit to preserve and celebrate, and which he seems to regret having ever included. For starters: Where Hydlide classic began with a prolonged grind period, Virtual Hydlide sees fit to immediately send you to the Graveyard — a location you’re not intended to visit until roughly the mid-point in the original game. It’s here where you’ll now find the relocated Crucifix necessary for killing the first boss, one of the three magic jewels you’ll need to collect before the end of the game, as well as some scattered pieces of random equipment and inventory. Clearly, the intention here is to immediately set players up with a grab bag of gear, and send them off promptly into the first dungeon — the Vampire’s Mansion, where you’ll strike down the home-owning ghoul where he stands.

Virtual Hydlide makes its Drac’s digs far more elaborate, and requires the additional step of having to check a series of rooms in search of five orbs you’ll have to activate to unlock the boss’ door. When you do, he’ll graciously introduce himself by speaking in a slowed-down and reversed voice sample from one of T&E’s golf games, before going on the offensive. A crucifix in hand and spamming melee attacks are typically all you need to lock the baddy in place and score an easy win. Comparable enough to quickly ganking him from behind in the original game, I suppose? The vampire leaves behind a lantern in his wake,**** and allows you to navigate an otherwise pitch-black Trial Dungeon — replacing two of the cave mazes you could enter in the original versions of the game. Instead of finding the classic ‘Magic Pot,’ you’ll instead find the Spectacles of Truth serving a similar purpose; and where you might expect the Sword of the Brave within (you’ll still probably stumble on any number of randomly-selected weapons in chests), you’ll instead grab a Dragon Shield needed to repel some specific enemy attacks later down the line.

Wearing those spectacles will reveal the hidden entrance to the Ruins, as well as illuminating the further illusory walls within. The only trade-off to keeping them equipped is a pesky red tint over the screen, but you’ll have to suffer it for as long as it takes to navigate the labyrinthian wreck. Also new to this “improved” version of the ruins are deadly spike traps, which have a nasty habit of stopping Jim in his tracks. But if you can brave the crimson maze, you should come out the other end with your Fairy Armor, Master Sword, and – most importantly – the Flame Amulet. You’ll need that Flame Amulet for withstanding the heat in the upcoming Volcanic Cave, serving as a major iteration in theming over “Generic Brick Maze #4” from the original game. Genuinely, the whole design of this area is aesthetically impressive, and takes advantage of the engine’s ability to shape oblique terrain. This hip hotspot is where you’ll find the armored knight type enemies who once existed to protect the optional ‘Shield of Justice,’ and who now stand in the way of your discovering the necessary second jewel and Flame Sword among the cave’s treasures.

It’s also at the end of this fiery dungeon that you’ll face the aforementioned three-headed dragon (hope you have that Dark Sword on hand!), and grab the new Flute of Zaldus as your reward. You’ll need this so-called ‘Tool’ to gain access to the Sealed Dungeon, and also to come to a pair of realizations: First off, you’ll likely notice at this point that the game never tells you what key items you’re picking up beyond describing them as a generic ‘Tool,’ until you go to your inventory and ascertain what it is you’ve actually obtained. Just a weird little design quirk / oversight, that one. But what’s more disappointing is the fact that each dungeon and key item effectively serves to otherwise preclude access to the next in sequence — to make you approach them all in a prescribed order, and leave you no room for deciding where you might prefer to go next. And this revelation right here is perhaps my single biggest criticism of the game, truth be told! I hate to have to say “more on that later” for a third time in this article, but I promise we’ll get back to it right after I finish going through the rest of the game’s steps here.

So, onto the Sealed Dungeon: Here’s where the game tosses some of its most tedious randomly-generated interconnected tunnels at you, as well as fearsome Mimic enemies imitating treasure chests and casting the lethal Horrified status effect on you. You’ll have to explore each and every chiseled shaft across the mine’s four connected levels, in order to seek out the Fairy Shield that should theoretically be promised to spawn within. At least you get to take a couple fun tramcar rides! Failing to find the shield, know now that you inhabit a cursed world-gen, and mope your way on over to the Evil Mage serving as the mine’s foreman. Where his gimmick in classic Hydlide required you to get hit with five of his fireballs before being able to deal damage to him, and where Hydlide Special had you using the ‘Wave’ magic to penetrate through two independently-acting visages of him in order to score a killing blow; his Virtual Hydlide iteration is just kind of a tedious nuisance. You have to stand far enough away from him at all times in order to bait him into landing on the ground (from his otherwise perpetual / invincible hovering state), and to hit him with projectile attacks before he fires one off at you.

Endure this tedious trial epic battle, and be rewarded by acquiring one of the three fairies as well as the Tears of Earth — the necessary key for accessing the penultimate dungeon. It’s also at this point where it behooves you to scour the overworld in search of a second fairy, if you haven’t found them already: You’ll need to come upon a particularly gridlike formation of trees, where a fairy hides within one of a possible sixteen. The other fifteen contain deadly wasps, which will quickly descend upon you and sting you to death if you should bump into one of their designated conifers instead. There’s apparently some sort of audio cue you’re supposed to be able to hear as you near the correct tree, but surprise surprise: This is another perk you’ll miss out entirely on in difficulties above Easy, as the game doesn’t provide you with the Fairy Crest item (which appears your starting inventory on Easy) needed to trigger the audio cue. In any case, just make sure you find the damned pixie before seeking out a stone tablet near a lake on the map, where you’ll use the Tear to summon the Lost Castle from beneath the depths.

The Lost Castle effectively replaces a section of the original game wherein you’d navigate the waterways running through Fairyland, and be made to kill some sea serpents on your way to the Evil Mage’s isle. But seeing as you’ve already slain the wizard by this point, this new dungeon really does sort of stand as a new and unique entity — a novel diversion from the traditional script. Not only that, but it features by far the most distinctive and unusual interiors in the game. First, a multi-floor web of floating crystal platforms, connected by a series of teleporters. The goal in this first section of the castle is to make your way toward an elevator in the center, which takes you to a further contrasting and confounding segment: A stone labyrinth with hall of mirrors-esque passages, where you’ll have to traverse across constantly-moving floating blocks in order to reach different connected sectors. It’s honestly kind of incredible that the team went ahead with this concept, considering the fact it barely functions, and additionally tanks the framerate to the point of being unparsable. Something tells me it probably wasn’t easy for the developers to get this set piece up and running, though the end result hardly seems worth the trouble.

You’ll have to seek out the final jewel and the Sword of Light in this part of the dungeon, which you’ll find mandatory for defeating the final series of bosses to follow. You’ll first get to test it against the game’s singular sea serpent enemy, inhabiting a pool in the castle’s final room. If you have all three gems and all three fairies in pocket at this point in time, you’ll be whisked away to the Fortress of Varalys in a sphere of light (🔊), just as the castle begins to crumble around you.***** The fortress is an oddly-decorated place, with pulsating walls and hallways built across voids in space and time. But hey, it’s what Varalys calls home. Thus begins a brief miniboss gauntlet for you to challenge before squaring off against the big bad himself: A returning Vampire (who again requires reequipping the crucifix), followed by the Evil Mage’s twin brother — both slightly bolstered for your rematches. For whatever it’s worth, this little bosh rush effectively replaces a whole different sequence of events toward the end of the original game; which would involve you infiltrating the fortress to drain the waterways in order to depower a dragon guarding Varalys, as well as allowing you to pick up an ‘Immortal Medicine’ that allows you to recover once from death / which is needed in order to withstand Varalys’ counter-attacks. I guess Tokihiro didn’t really think much of that original throughline, and decided to simplify things considerably.

With those comparatively smaller baddies once again dispatched, you are cleared to challenge Varalys himself. And much like every other boss fight before it, it’s best won by launching projectiles from a safe distance, and blocking the boss’ own projectiles with an effective shield. In lieu of anything short of the Fairy Shield specifically, enjoy having to actually try and actively dodge every deadly spitfire attack, or otherwise hope you stocked up on plenty of healing items beforehand. Should you and Jim manage to prevail against evil, you’ll then be treated to a brief little pantomime FMV cutscene; wherein Varalys and his fortress are obliterated, the Princess is restored, and you’re whisked back once again to the idyllic plains of Fairyland. And that’s pretty much your whole lot! Cue credits rolling over stock photos of various forests and foliage, a “Congratulations” titlecard toward the end, and a return to the main menu should you like to challenge a newly generated world — for as little as that may actually meaningfully change.

For all Tokihiro may have seen fit to change and update as to be “contemporary” and for as novel an idea as random generation sounds on paper, what Virtual Hydlide fails to offer is a sense of freedom for players — to tackle the set of necessary objectives in whichever order they personally determine to. And while that’s certainly not a strictly necessary component for a solid RPG, I’d argue that it would’ve suited Virtual Hydlide more so than the ultimate decision to railroad players along its singular inflexible path. With its randomly generated map, move away from level-gated combat encounters, and constant tossing of various different weapons and armors at players; the game really does feel like it was originally built with the intention for adventurers to visit the dungeons in whichever order they pleased. But with the Tool items serving as keys to each of these successive stages, that possibility is completely and thoroughly prevented. And it’s a damned shame too, because having that degree of freedom would’ve made for a far more interesting and exciting game! More than anything else, this marks Virtual Hydlide’s most wasted bit of potential in my mind.

A damned shame, I say again. Because for what it’s worth? I actually still enjoy Virtual Hydlide! It’s completely uneven, granted, but entertaining nonetheless to me. If you can look past the dire framerate situation (as many players of the era were uniquely programmed to do), there’s an interesting world to be explored within; with uniquely-stylized dungeons and a vast array of enemies to populate them, and randomized aspects to be noted and appreciated across replays. I appreciate that the difficulty is never too unfair; with its mostly skippable combat encounters, abundance of healing options, and handy continue functionality allowing you to pick up at the beginnings of dungeons should you die within. If you can approach the game as a sort of guided tour through a twisting and transforming fantasy land, I really do think there’s a fair bit to learn from it and to admire throughout it. Sure, it can sometimes feel a bit empty or sparse – not helped by its rather weak sound library and lack of ambient audio samples – but it still feels like a world worth digitally inhabiting for the course of a typically two to three hour playthrough. And after that, to check it out again with a new randomization seed, and to see what fancy new feng shui ol’ Nosferatu is trying out in his digs.

On the other hand: I just as surely understand how folk could play Virtual Hydlide and get nothing out of it. For those raised on more modern ARPGs, Virtual Hydlide must read as pure regression, and feel clunkier than straitjacket charades. The fact that the game presents its own combat as completely skippable – doing little to even attempt to make it compelling – is probably enough to lose most players straight away. Add to that what must feel like completely meandering exploration and navigation – when compared to the likes of a Dark Souls or Diablo what have you – and there hardly seem like any hooks left with the chance to sink into them. And that’s pretty fair, honestly! At the same time, Virtual Hydlide also seems to get a bit further away from what even fans of original Hydlide may have wanted out of it: Losing out on the simpler combat, the hand-constructed world, and even the comforts of the classic grind. Topping it off with so many new layers of equipment and consumables and random chance could feel something like a betrayal, to those who appreciated the more uncomplicated qualities of the classic game.

So, if the game isn’t for either the modern or classic ARPG audience, who exactly is it for anyway? And I guess the answer comes down to… well, folk like me, I reckon! Players who can appreciate a game for its ambition while excusing actual execution — who can overlook some of the more barely-functional and outright busted elements of a game, while applauding what the developers were attempting to aim for. For me, that means going along for the ride on the “hero’s journey”: Traveling the unmapped terrain, seeking out the necessary treasures, braving the hostile dungeons, and challenging the head villains in charge. And with the rewards and level-ups gained for overcoming each trial, I could totally buy into the sense of growth and progression — the sense that Jim had begun the game as a hapless wimp with just a wooden club to his name, and had become the fairies’ chosen knight by the end. Call me simple or sappy, but I’m a sucker for the feeling of “adventure” in games, and Virtual Hydlide manages the feat well enough for me.

But don’t just take my word for it. Seriously, I mean that: My personal taste in games really shouldn’t count for much, all things considered. But you may be more willing to listen to friend of the site Sardoose — one half of our best pals, the Retro Pals! I’ve known Danny for a while now to be a fellow fan of Virtual Hydlide, and to go so far as to dabble in speedrunning the admittedly sluggish Saturn adventure. Naturally, I had to reach out to them for their take on what draws him to Virtual Hydlide, and why folk like us are so willing to stand up for this goofy game:

“There’s a lot I love about Virtual Hydlide, but the random world option is what makes it an especially interesting game. The variance in item placement, enemy encounters and dungeon layouts means that you’re never sure if you can expect a run of good luck or crushing disappointment. It has a similar appeal to randomizers for games like A Link to the Past – even after becoming familiar with the game’s basic structure across multiple playthroughs, you’ll still encounter unique situations that require creative solutions. Have you called Virtual Hydlide a roguelike in the article yet? If not, I’m doing it now.” ~ Sardoose

For as susceptible as we may well be to Virtual Hydlide’s odd charms, that doesn’t mean I don’t see some of the clear routes for improvement for it. With just a bit of tweaking to the design – and something like a sweeping optimization overhaul – I’d argue that Virtual Hydlide could have very well carved out a more respectable niche for itself in the annals of action RPGs! Of course, the first thing I’d have to point to again is making the game properly open world; where all the dungeons should be accessible from the very beginning, and able to be tackled in any order a player pleases. Sure, you could design for an “intended” progression, where there’s a preferable sequence for having the best shot at conquering each successive dungeon — sort of like the Mega Man principle of going into each stage with the most effective weapon on-hand for beating the robot masters. All it would take are some minor tweaks: You could change the crucifix to buff your damage against the Vampire (rather than making it an outright requirement to be holding), alter the Fire Amulet’s flame resistance to not make it an absolute necessity, or allow players to stumble around with more limited light in the Trial Dungeon if they should initially skip grabbing a lantern. In these ways, players can choose to go into whichever dungeons they stumble across first on the map — knowing their disadvantage, but challenging themselves to try and clear them nonetheless.

Next on the list of changes would have to be a combat overhaul. Not to add bump attacks and grinding back to the mix, mind you: Just to make alterations in the interests of making standard enemy encounters more dynamic, and to spice up the boss battles some. To that end, I’d have to suggest more meaningful distinctions between different styles of weapon; where the clubs, axes, and blades could all attack at different speeds / ranges of radius, and stagger enemies for different lengths of time. At the same time, I’d actually go ahead and remove the projectile functionality from the magic swords (save for maybe the Sword of Light, as a surprise treat toward the end), and instead relegate ranged attacks to newly-dedicated bows and arrows. Doing so would mean having to redesign the boss attack patterns to allow melee attacks to serve a more viable option for efficiently downing them, which T&E honestly should’ve done from the start anyhow. And while we’re at it making combat more satisfying? Why not go ahead and allow for mobs (regular enemies) to potentially drop items? There’s a quick way to incentivize engaging with combat, while still not making it strictly necessary if you’ve already had decent luck gearing up.

To rapid-fire off a series of other modifications that could’ve potentially benefitted the game: Allowing for the automap to work as a transparent screen overlay, rather than a slow-loading / game-pausing fullscreen visual. Quicker inventory navigation by way of condensing multiple-held consumables into single list items, and/or otherwise allowing you to sort and parse items by category. Allowing players to instantly teleport back to the overworld after defeating a dungeon boss,  thereby eliminating the the need to use ‘Fairy Tears’ or to have to kill yourself for an effective escape. Less clumsy repositioning in trying to pick up / interact with items. A quick turn button to save you having to more slowly rotate the 180° (or to potentially overshoot by spinning too quickly, should you hold down the sprint button while turning). More biodiversity and points of interest on the overworld, where there’d be that much more value to be gleaned from its exploration. And last but not least: Not rendering Jim as the game’s sole digitized actor, and instead drawing him from digital scratch in the same fashion as the game’s other cast of characters — possibly facilitating a wider range of movement and equipment-contingent appearances. Phew! Reckon all that would probably be good enough, wouldn’t it?

Having rattled off all those recommended changes, I feel compelled to reiterate that I’m still a fan of Virtual Hydlide as is. I reckon there’s just something about it, isn’t there? Something that speaks not just to my love of adventure, but also to my interest in games history — in seeing how franchises and particular genres evolve and iterate over time. To play Virtual Hydlide is to experience a novel reinterpretation of the action RPG genre; through the lens of not just the property that started it all, but that of the man himself who had originally envisioned it a decade earlier. To see what Tokihiro Naito now thought of the format he had innovated and what he “would’ve done differently” around then is a rare bit of perspective, where the comparing and contrasting becomes a sort of game in itself. And to know that he made it work on the back of a damned golf game engine makes it all that much more fascinating to sift through. By all accounts, it shouldn’t have worked at all. But then again, neither should have the original Hydlide: A game produced by a man still learning the ropes on a new computer at a new job – crunched out over the course of three months – made to establish an entirely new genre of game. Virtual Hydlide might not be the “perfect 3-D reproduction” it claims to be, but hell if it doesn’t share that same distinct spirit.

** ‘Fushigi no Dungeon’ (better known as ‘Mystery Dungeon’ in the West) began as a spin-off from the venerable Dragon Quest franchise; originally made to follow the adventures of Dragon Quest IV’s merchant character Torneko, as he navigates randomly-generated dungeons in search of rare treasures. Later in his career, Tokihiro would go on to direct his own installment in this series: 2010’s Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren 4 Plus for the PlayStation Portable.

*** A further point: Many of the scenery and item sprites artist Adrian Carmack would illustrate would be designed to be perceived from any given angle. In other words, he kept props largely relegated to cylindrical stuff like lamps, pillars, torches and barrels — stuff that lacks any real sense of “front” or “back.” It’s also why most of the pick-ups and power-ups are similarly spherical in shape.

**** For whatever reason, there are actually two different lanterns that have the chance to appear inside the treasure chest depending on your luck: Either the 0.5 kg ‘Magic Lamp,’ or the 0.8 kg ‘Super Magic Lamp.’ Aside from their weight difference, it’s not known exactly what (if anything) makes these two lamps tangibly different from one another. Maybe one produces light across a slightly expanded radius, or otherwise shines brighter? Who’s to say? In either case, you’re unlikely to notice the difference for yourself.

***** If you’ve happened to miss a gem or fairy before this point; you’ll instead be taken back to the overworld after slaying the serpent, and made to remember where you left that last collectible. More likely than not, it’ll probably be the forest fairy you neglected to rescue. In any case: On collecting whatever that missing item may be, you’ll at that point be taken to the Fortress of Varalys for the game’s final stretch.

“Everyone Thought This Paradise Would Go on Forever.”

“Gamers alike will appreciate the
realism of this title!”
Virtual Hydlide North American back of box.

Where Hydlide Special‘s reception in the East versus the West had previously been worlds apart, consensus seemed more or less reached with regards to the Saturn reimagining. This is to say, critics and players worldwide were all pretty well whelmed by it — recognizing its novelties and innovations, but forced to measure them against a decidedly clumsy execution. After Japan’s Sega Saturn Magazine awarded the game a score of 7.33 out of 10, they began to accept user feedback as part of their ‘Reader Race’ feature — where Virtual Hydlide first debuted on their charts with an average score of 8.2962 (as rated by consumers who would’ve purchased it within the first month of its release).^[7] Despite this initially higher numerical score, highlighted comments demonstrated a sense of disappointment in the disc, and forecast the gradual decline of this score over the next several months. Complaints primarily centered around the “slightly jerky” / “difficult” movement control, and the fact it could be completed in roughly two hours time. With regards to the short time to finish, one commenter would additionally gloat that “You shouldn’t underestimate us fans of the MSX version.” By the same time next year, the average user rating would’ve settled at around a score of 7.2^[8] — where it would more or less hold until the very end of the rankings.

American and European magazines receiving their review copies later in the year would generally agree on many of the same points of criticism. Tom Guise on behalf of the UK’s Sega Magazine would rate the game as a 66 out of 100; bemoaning the lack of contemporary RPG features (such as “battle screens” and character interaction), deriding the graphics as a “Jerk-o-rama,” and commenting “I don’t know who’s responsible for this game, but let’s just hope they’re not let loose on the Saturn again.”^[9] The coincidentally similarly-named Tommy Glide for GamePro in the US would confess that “Hydlide is easy enough for non-RPGers to enjoy, and it kind of grows on you,” before awardarding it a score of 3.25 out of 5.^[10] They also go as far as to attempt to provide some specific directions – with regards to “locating the dark sword” in the Graveyard and finding a “hidden door on the south wall” in the Ruins – indicating a lack of recognition for the fact that the game is randomly-generated. You wonder if that would’ve been worth a couple extra decimal points? Lastly, I’ll leave y’all with a translated snippet from Germany’s CD Player, who awarded Virtual Hydlide one of the lowest ratings it’d face (3 out of 10): “Due to the horrifically slow 3D routines, even fanatical monster fighters should avoid this technically embarrassing real-time debacle.”^[11]

While I can’t provide much in the way of sales data for Virtual Hydlide’s international releases, we can probably pretty safely assume it wasn’t what you’d call a “system mover” for the Saturn. At the same time, Sega and T&E Soft probably knew as well even before making the decision to localize it — knowing full well how little name value the franchise had outside Japan, and guessing that the North American market wasn’t gonna be particularly drawn to it. Virtual Hydlide was practically guaranteed to do its best numbers in its native Japan. And wouldn’t you know it, but Sega Saturn Magazine just so happened to keep track of and publicly disclose those sales? The first issue to indicate said data was their July 1995 issue, where Virtual Hydlide would debut on their ‘Sega Saturn Soft Sales’ chart at number two for the month putting up 1,830 “points” (an abstraction meant to somewhat obfuscate and protect the precise sales numbers) on the board.^[12] But to be clear, this was a very distant 2nd place — where the Saturn release of Daytona USA still reigned supreme with a walloping 7,332 points. By August, Virtual Hydlide would have fallen to a further 5th place scoring 1,030 points,^[13] and off the charts completely by the following month. All in all, it’s estimated that Virtual Hydlide moved something in the neighborhood of 110K copies within Japan, likely making a meager profit.

The middling sales and reception pretty much put an end to any further ambitions T&E Soft may have had for Hydlide after that… assuming they even had any at all. If I had to guess, the company probably weren’t so keen on having to revisit Hydlide in the first place — that they would’ve been perfectly content to just keep on putting out golf games without interference. And aside from a couple other contributions to the Virtual Boy, comprising Red Alarm and 3-D Tetris?** That’s pretty much what they promptly got back to doing after Virtual Hydlide’s release. Perhaps if the game had somehow performed beyond their wildest expectations, they may have felt obligated to at least try at a follow-up? But the read I get is that they were glad to put it behind them once again, and to re-focus on golfing as their full-time genre. And by this point, Tokihiro had well and truly had enough: He would exit the company in 1996 – the year following Virtual Hydlide’s release – in order to pursue the creation of his own independent studio.

“I wanted to make games again. My job had become just handling work by other people, such as with The Lost Vikings. Instead of creating things on my own, I was being told what to work on. At E.O. Imagination I created a Strategy-RPG, and also Dragon Money, a board game, both for the PlayStation. The object [of Dragon Money] is to try to make as many friends as possible. I’m a little embarrassed, because it’s not a very good game.” ~ Tokihiro Naito^[1j]

The sum of E.O. Imagination’s output was unfortunately fairly limited, as that quotation may allude to. The “Strategy-RPG” mentioned would be Asuncia: Majou no Jubaku, which I found to be fairly clunky to navigate and mostly lacking in terms of combat options. Dragon Money lacking an English translation is as such completely unparseable to me, but honestly seems to be a fairly inoffensive little party game? At the very least, Tokihiro was getting to throw ideas against the wall and see where they might land — able to develop the games he personally wanted to make, for better or for worse. It was this experimental spirit that lead to his company toying with the PC Engine ‘Develo Box,’ which I believe we’ve mentioned before very briefly on this site. To recap just as briefly: It was a peripheral for interfacing with the PC Engine via computer standards of the times, meant to facilitate the likes of homebrew and indie development. The hardware’s manufacturer Tokuma Shoten approached E.O. with a request to produce a sample program using the toolkit, which would result in an apparently Space Invaders-esque demo by the name E.O. Dragon Adventure — distributed as a type-in program printed in PC Engine Fan magazine.

After further developing an additional sprite-editing utility for the Develo Box platform, the company briefly played around with a similar sort of consumer-grade development kit launched in 1998 for the Sega Saturn: The fittingly-titled ‘Game Basic for Sega Saturn.’ Here, they would turn out another shooter game sample titled Lightning Gunner — similarly meant to demonstrate some of the basic functionality of the utility. All this work on sample programs for hobbyist developers probably got Tokihiro nostalgic for his own bedroom [or department store] coding days, as well as possibly giving him an idea: To take some of the lessons he had learned in game development on the lecture circuit, and to help teach Japan’s next generation of games creators the tricks of the trade. It began with an invitation to lead a 10-day course at the ‘HAL College of Technology & Design’ in Nagoya, where he taught on topics related to founding a game company and approaches to design.^[1k] Some time after the course concluded (where it was met with praise from students and faculty), E.O. Imagination ultimately closed down, and Tokihiro found himself invited back to the school with an offer to become a full-time professor. He’d spend the next several years teaching the basics of programming, as well as taking on further roles including a position as a counselor.

To show there was no ill will between them, T&E Soft actually did go ahead and extend a sort of olive branch to Tokihiro during this time — to ask for his input and blessing on a final 15th anniversary send-off for the ARPG franchise he had birthed. On April 23rd of 1999, T&E would release a Windows 95/98 version of Hydlide, simply titled as such. Included with a straightforward conversion of the original PC-88 release is a new ‘Arrange’ version; which adds additional title cards and epilogue (🔊) to further flesh out the story, new high resolution graphics across the entire game (which can be switched on the fly for the original PC-88 graphics with the press of a button, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary style), as well as a newly composed soundtrack to pair. In this way, the game eschews any of the additions and changes made in the likes of the Family Computer and Saturn reimaginings, and simply presents Hydlide as long-time fans remembered it. The only real major shake-up is the addition of a new ‘Overdrive!!’ stance that Jim can take [as an addition to the traditional Attack and Defend], which effectively acts as an impromptu “easy mode” toggle — where your attack damage is substantially multiplied and EXP can be gained in record time. A fun feature for those looking to skip the gruelling grind and so forth.

The other selling point for the collection is the inclusion of a ‘Hydlide Museum’ feature — a navigable set of simple HTML pages containing a wealth of historic Hydlide insight. Virtual exhibits include histories for the original computers that the original game released for (including comparison screenshots to pair), snippets of articles written about the game in computer game magazines, a collection of fan-submitted “Memories of Hydlide,” and reflections on the series from the then-current T&E Soft staff. While that last section might not have been able to include Tokihiro among their ranks, T&E were sure to make up for this by including no less than a full-length interview with Naito – conducted by games writer Akira Yamashita – as its own standalone segment. Within, Naito goes into some of the history of the original game’s development, as well as commenting on some of the features of the remaster. There aren’t any particularly ground-breaking details or revelations worth noting, but it’s at least nice to see that T&E and Tokihiro were still on good enough terms to make this all happen — that T&E for their part made sure to put respect on Naito’s name. Again, Hydlide had only gone and secured the futures for their whole company, and Tokihiro was the man who had made it all happen.

T&E would later release a second compilation disc for Windows updated to contain the entire original trilogy, now titled Hydlide 1-2-3. In addition to the content of the previous release, it further added the PC-88 versions of Hydlide 2 and 3, as well as a newly-arranged version of The Space Memories. It all makes for a fine tribute to the classic series, to be sure. But as T&E Soft would demonstrate over the course of their next several years of operation, “legacy” wasn’t really all that major a concern of theirs — where the company itself would morph so drastically as to almost completely obfuscate their decades-long history. First came an insider trading scandal occurring in the early 2000s, involving an advertising agency that had affiliated with T&E Soft and Disney Interactive with regards to their co-development of the PlayStation 2 title Disney Golf. Evidently, the president of the ad agency in question (Toshiyuki Ishiko of Maerchen-Japan) had bought a number of shares in T&E some months prior to the announcement of the game – which his company had been contracted to promote said announcement for – and sold them shortly thereafter for a cool four million yen profit.^[14] Though T&E themselves were not the ones at fault or otherwise legally liable here (if anything, they had suffered damages in the process), it certainly didn’t help them to have their company’s name tied up in all of it.

Perhaps this was one of the contributing factors to the company rebranding as ‘D Wonderland’ in May 2002 – where the ‘D’ was initially meant to stand for no less than “Disney” itself – further cementing a working relationship between the two companies. It’s assumed that D Wonderland worked in some uncredited capacity as a support studio to Disney Interactive during this period, or handled some other largely undocumented aspect of their Japanese interests. In either case, the working relationship would be short-lived: The partnership dissolved just short of three year’s time, with little for D Wonderland to [publicly] show for their efforts on the other end. And it’s at this point that the plot starts to get lost. By measure of a ‘Corporate History’ page on the Daikokuya Global Holding website: D Wonderland acquired a company known as ‘Daikokuya Holdings,’ while also moving forward with rebranding under their name. At this point, they seemed to invest in a number of different business interests – including pawn shops and system solutions – to what seems like little in the way of success. Between getting delisted from the stock market, liquidating several of their enterprises along the way, and relocating their company headquarters several times over; they don’t seem to strike me as a particularly stable enterprise.

On the other hand, the original T&E Soft branding at least got put to some further use; where original founder Yokoyama Toshiro had left D Wonderland to establish a new studio ‘Digital Golf’ in 2003, and retained the rights to the T&E label. As you might expect, they promptly got back to the golf game grind, releasing True Swing Golf for the Nintendo DS in 2005. Aaand that’s about where I lose track of their trail as well. See, there’s no evidence that Digital Golf actually put out any other games beyond True Swing Golf, save for a stripped-down DSiWare re-release for it in 2010 (now titled ‘True Swing Golf Express’). No games database has information listed for Digital Golf as a developer, and barely any of the folk credited in True Swing Golf have further industry credits to their name, let alone any one project that would’ve brought any number of them back together. All I can gather is that Konami acquired Digital Golf in March of 2011 (according to a Crunchbase profile), and promptly proceeded to do seemingly nothing with them — having never released any sort of golf game between then and now. And considering the current state of Konami, we can pretty safely presume that the Digital Golf branding will probably never be put to use again.

But wait, there’s more! The T&E Soft branding didn’t die with Digital Golf! Instead, Digital Golf had at some point split off into yet another company in 2008, calling itself ‘T&E Soft Co.’ Naturally, they would also proceed to have absolutely zero games to show for their efforts, because every company to have ties / claims to the T&E trademark seems to be goddamn cursed. There’s a claim that Tokihiro Naito rejoined Yokoyama and company at some point in 2008, to contribute to whatever games they were ostensibly cooking up at the time. But of course – for Tokihiro’s part in all this – his game development resume is left as blank between E.O. Imagination’s 200X (?) closure and 2010, when he started dipping his toes back into director / producer roles for other companies. Eventually, a company who had acquired all their shares / effectively owned T&E Soft (one ‘Games Arena Co.’) would also acquire the development studios Chunsoft and Spike, before merging them in 2012 to form what is now known as Spike Chunsoft. Apparently, T&E Soft was also absorbed into this fold at a point in 2013, where they proceeded to do nothing with any of the legacy properties that T&E held credit for. The latest news surrounding the T&E trademark came when D4 Enterprise acquired the intellectual property rights to T&E’s past games catalogue, where they have proceeded to – get this – actually do the bare minimum with them, by putting much of their games up for sale on their Project EGG service. Here’s hoping I never have to type the phrase “T&E Soft” ever again!

But enough about T&E Soft (well, shit, so much for that): At this point, you’re probably more interested to hear what Tokihiro Naito’s up to? Well, he wound up working for ‘M2’ for a spell, directing some of their port work and remakes in their ‘3D Classics’ line. I can’t quite tell you if he’s involved much in the industry right this moment, though he is at least fairly active on Twitter. As part of his presence on the bird site, he attempted a sort of public interest check in October 2014 for what he described as a “new ARPG for the 3DS”; encouraging users to retweet his announcement, and promising to “submit the proposal to the boss [of M2]” if it reached 3,000 engagements in a week’s time.^[15] Unfortunately – and after an awkward follow-up where Tokihiro had to clarify that only Japanese retweets were being considered – this “#Marketresearch” stunt only managed roughly 1,500 retweets — well short of his target. Between this cool response and his inability to get any of his other original game concepts greenlit internally within M2, he would eventually wind up leaving that company as well. It’s unfortunate that studios seem to keep burdening him with tiresome management roles, where the dude clearly has a want and passion to revisit the creative aspect of game development once more. For whatever it’s worth, I’d certainly be willing to give a new ARPG by Naito a shot, to see what the hell he’d scheme up for it.

A point I figure is worth covering at least briefly here is how Hydlide’s perceptions outside of Japan have been shaped by popular video personalities. I’d argue that the franchise was pretty widely forgotten and/or unknown to folk in English-speaking territories between Virtual Hydlide’s 1995 release and 2011 — until James Rolfe would dedicate an episode to the NES release in his Angry Video Game Nerd series. The major takeaways viewers likely gleaned from this initial review were that the gameplay on offer was fairly archaic, and that the music took cues from the Indiana Jones film franchise. He’d later revisit the franchise to cover Super Hydlide and Virtual Hydlide in a 2018 twofer episode, providing more in the way of his trademark nitpicking and loudly-shouted complaints. But for what it’s worth, these videos are still eminently more watchable than a series of videos produced by sickening sex pest and serial adulterer Jared “ProJared” Knabenbauer; who similarly covered the likes of Hydlide, Super Hydlide, and Virtual Hydlide on his YouTube channel, over the course of a year-long period between 2012 and 2013. For whatever his predictable complaints and generic reviewer shtick are worth, his videos did help bring about that much more public consciousness in the West around the series. Now, here’s seriously hoping I never have to mention his accursed name ever again on this wholesome website.

I also couldn’t wrap up this article without mentioning a fangame tribute to Virtual Hydlide, which took the 3D perspective concept in a properly unique direction. Developed by a Japanese creator who refers to themselves only as ‘30円’; their 2013 release of ‘Virtual Hydlide I’ combines the behind-the-back active combat style of gameplay demonstrated in the Saturn title, and pairs it with sprites ripped from / inspired by the aesthetic of the MSX1 version of the original Hydlide. What that effectively leaves you with is a novel remake of the classic Hydlide, where the 3D movement and active combat offer you a whole new outlook, as well as allowing you to skillfully survive some previously fatal encounters (had you have been underleveled); thereby reducing some of the need for grinding, and the potential to approach your goals in a more freeform order. Honestly, it’s all more fun than you might expect, and serves as a neat little middle ground between Tokihiro’s classic concept for Hydlide and his later more contemporary take. You can download the fangame from this page as it’s archived on the Wayback Machine, following the service closure of GeoCities Japan.

And with that, I’ve just about exhausted all I have to say about the history of Virtual Hydlide, as well as the larger series it’s part of. Here at the end of this whole endeavor, I’ve certainly found myself with a better understanding of and greater appreciation for Tokihiro Naito’s highly innovative franchise. I’ll have to be honest here, and admit that I went into writing about Virtual Hydlide already having played it in the past / knowing that I already liked it. But in observing the game through critical lenses (as well as playing it on higher difficulty levels for the first time), I was surprised by just how well it held up under my more deliberate scrutiny. Not only that, but playing through the original trilogy as well really did help shine a light on how Tokihiro’s ideas evolved over time, and which aspects he deemed as vital to the further evolution of the action RPG concept. It leaves me picturing what the modern day gaming landscape might look like had The Legend of Zelda not become the face of the genre — if Naito had continued to captain the ship, and to create yet more unique games within the ARPG template. While it’s impossible to predict what sorts of wild ideas he’d have come up with, there’s one thing I can say for certain: He’d have kept on whipping Yoshio Kiya’s ass. Yeah, that’s right: I’ve taken my side in the infamous “Hydlide vs. Dragon Slayer” rivalry, and it’s Team Jim all the way for me baby!

** I have not forgotten about my promise to eventually cover 3-D Tetris in a standalone article here on the site — after originally mentioning it in our Virtual Boy console review. Man, I can still remember the genuine headache it gave me to play it…

Acknowledgements

Welp! Here we are again after having written another way overlong, long overdue article on a game largely undocumented outside of Japan! And again, I have a few sources I want to credit here — who served as valuable resources in writing the article, but which weren’t able to be utilized as citable sources / references in traditional formatting.

My first shout-out goes to @Lindberg1999 on Twitter — a self-proclaimed “Japanese Hydlide fan,” and moreover something of a Tokihiro Naito historian. They caught me getting some details mixed up with regards to Tokihiro’s pre-T&E history, and quickly set about setting me straight on the subject. They even went as far as to furnish me with scans from two of the computer magazines that had covered his works in this period, and were downright courteous in doing so. I always welcome corrections and any context that y’all out there are willing to provide to me, and was happy to have had someone smarten me up before the article had even gone live. とても有難い！

A further Twitter credit goes to friend of the site @DervlX — perhaps known to our German readers out there as the proprietor of AltF4Games on Twitch and YouTube. I accidentally called on them at 1 o’clock in the morning [CET], asking about the publisher behind the German-language CD Player magazine I pulled a quote from (See source [11]). For whatever reason, they actually stayed up late to humor me and my stupid questions, and I’m thankful to them for it! Sehr geschätzt!​

Finally, here are some additional links to some webpages that came in handy; for providing further context on particular entries in the Hydlide series, disclosing some of the details of T&E’s company history, and otherwise helping inform me while writing this article. Credit where credit is due, so on and so forth.

• Land of Obscusion: Hydlide (Windows 95/98): Ride that Hydra All Night-O!
• RPGC Shrines: Hydlide Shrine
• (FR) Django MSX: ‘Rune Worth’ Guide (Archive)

[1] b c d e f g h i j k Szczepaniak, John. The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Volume 2. SMG Szczepaniak, 2014. Print.
[2] Yamashita, Akira.「セガサタ-ンに『バーチャファイター2』の移植決定!セガvsソニーの行方は?」 (“‘Virtua Fighter 2’ will be ported to Sega Saturn! How about Sega vs. Sony?”) Micom BASIC, Issue 120. November, 1994. Print. ”(Scan available)
[3] Game Players, Issue 69. Imagine Publishing. March 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[4] “Connected: Cockles & Mussels Hydelide-O.” Computer & Video Games, Issue 158. EMAP. January 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[5] “Preview: Virtua Hydlide Exclusive!” Sega Pro, Issue 42. Paragon Publishing. March 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[6] “Sega Saturn Soft Review.” Sega Saturn Magazine, Issue 3. Soft Bank. March 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[7] “Sega Saturn Reader Race Vol. 6.” Sega Saturn Magazine, Issue 7. Soft Bank. July, 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[8] “Sega Saturn Reader Race Vol. 24.” Sega Saturn Magazine, Issue 25. Soft Bank. July, 1996. Print. (Scan available)
[9] Guise, Tom. “Review: Virtual Hydlide.” Sega Magazine, Issue 22. EMAP. October, 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[10] Glide, Tommy. “Role-Player’s Realm: Virtual Hydlide.” GamePro, Issue 77. IDG Communications. October, 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[11] “Spiele-Test: Virtual Hydlide.” CD Player, Issue 1/96. DMV-Verlag. January, 1996. Print. (Scan available)
[12] “Shop Data Next Level.” Sega Saturn Magazine, Issue 7. Soft Bank. July, 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[13] “Shop Data Next Level.” Sega Saturn Magazine, Issue 8. Soft Bank. August, 1995. Print. (Scan available)
[14] “Insider trading complaint filed over Disney software deal.” Japan Computer Industry Scan. April 1, 2002. Print.
[15] Cavazos, Marc. “Hydlide Creator Needs Your Tweets To Make New 3DS RPG.” Hardcore Gamer. October 1, 2014. Web.