NES Longplay [662] The Guardian Legend
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Played by: Reinc
One day, a planet-sized capsule called Naju, infested with evil alien life forms, is sent towards Earth. The Earth's Guardian Miria, a System D.P. cyborg, is sent to infiltrate Naju and find a way to destroy it. Five hostile tribes of alien life forms are vying for control of territories within Naju. The Guardian will have to defeat them all and to find messages left by one or more unidentified predecessor(s) who unsuccessfully attempted to destroy planet Naju before the Guardian arrived in order to complete her mission and to escape afterwards.
The Guardian Legend, known in Japan as Guardic Gaiden, is a 1988 hybrid action-adventure/shoot'em up video game developed by Compile for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the sequel to the 1986 MSX game Guardic, and was published and released in Japan by Irem in 1988, in North America by Broderbund in 1989, and in Europe by Nintendo in 1990. In the game, the player controls a lone protagonist, the gynoid guardian of Earth, a highly sophisticated aerobot transformer, who is on a quest to destroy a large alien-infested world named Naju before it reaches the planet Earth. The player must go through eleven certain corridors scattered throughout Naju in order to win the game. The player explores Naju in a non-linear fashion and can acquire different weapons and upgrades during the course of the game.
Gameplay varies depending on the player's location within Naju. The player controls the Guardian in humanoid form when exploring the surface of Naju (the Labyrinth) and in spaceship form when investigating Naju's interior (the Dungeon). The Guardian has a life meter that decreases after sustaining damage from enemies; it can be replenished by collecting various items. The player can use a primary rapid-fire weapon with unlimited ammunition as well as various powerful secondary weapons that consume power chips with each use. Power chips are also used as currency to purchase upgrades for the Guardian in a handful of shops throughout Naju. Found within the Labyrinth or obtained after defeating a boss, these upgrades include primary weapon improvements, upgrades to firepower and shield, new or upgraded secondary weapons, and round, brightly colored creatures called Landers/Randas/Randars/Renders. Blue and Red Landers, recurring characters in many Compile games, increase the player's maximum life and power chip capacities, respectively. The Guardian also receives upgrades to her maximum health and speed each time she accumulates a certain amount of points. Blue Landers play multiple roles in The Guardian Legend. Some of them are not items but non-player characters that dispense advice to the player or exchange upgrades for power chips; others provide a password that allows the player to resume the game at a later time with their progress retained. These Blue Landers also serve as checkpoints; players can restart their game in their designated rooms after being defeated provided the system has not been turned off.
You might notice some inconsistency in my score, chips, life meter, as well as sound and video due to bad editing. I had to replay and rerecord a lot of parts of this longplay a lot of times because of desynchronisations in the emulator movie and other issues to the point that I stopped caring about pretty details when piecing the whole mess together. Nothing is skipped, so that's good.
All corridors explored, all weapons fully upgraded. After completing the game in story mode, I use the TGL password to play the arcade mode, and then take a quick look into the unmapped randomized part of Naju, which is a result of the game trying to fill empty space in it. In most locations, I try to destroy as many enemies as possible to show different ways to handle them, although I do not claim that my playthrough is optimal in any way. -
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