Jikuu Yuuden Debias (時空勇伝デビアス), released 11/27/1987, developed and published by Namco

This is another side-scrolling action RPG. One notable thing right from the start is that the game came with this code wheel that is supposed to help you choose the correct doors throughout the game. If you don’t have the wheel you should not try to play the game without a walkthrough because you will be wandering randomly a lot, and that wasn’t the intention of the game.

The story is the usual basic one — a spirit or god called Aaron brings the ancient hero Debias back and sends him out to save the kingdom from the enemies.

The game has gold that you can buy equipment and items with, but no experience levels. The “spirit” and “tech” amounts are both used for the final choice on the right menu, “Aaron”. By using this command you talk to Aaron and can do various things — ask for hints, find out if you missed key items, warp back to town, exchange a life segment for a healing item, and such. Some of these choices involve that code wheel I mentioned above.

You start in a town. Make sure you use the “talk” command because you can attack the townspeople; killing them subtracts Spirit. There is a day/night system, so if night falls you will have to fight off monsters until it becomes day again. The first task is to talk to the king to get the specifics of your quest and some money. After buying some basic equipment it’s off to the first area.

Your character can do three different types of attacks, plus jump, which helps against the various enemies. However, this is the second area:

I died 15-20 times trying to get through this area. Missing a jump is a death and when you get hit by those bats, most of the time you get knocked back into the pit and die. Dying halves your gold and Tech. This is where I decided that I wasn’t going to play much of the game (that and the lack of the code wheel).

I think there is some interest in this game with the Aaron system (especially if you have the code wheel), but I just didn’t want to deal with the jumping.