Back in the day (the 90s maybe 93 94ish certainly no later than 96 98 being well out) it was a short stroll from folkestone train station down the old high street past its tattoo shops and crappy ethnic art shop that sold all sorts of crap made by african con artists (from the shittyest material they could find and knock up in 2 mins flat to rip of gormless tourists). And past the trophy shop where nutcases like me could stare in the window at all those lovely knives they used to sell. till you got to the bottom of the high street and on your left was the first arcade owned by entrepreneur and x man (well he did seem to have the power to make a lot of his arcades spontaneously combust especially when they seemed to not be doing so well) Jim Godden.
This is of course not a review of folkestone or in fact that arcade generally (so i should fucking get on with it really). nestled on the back wall of said arcade buried deep among the more popular (at their time) games machines stood the one and only saviour of poor gamers that at 10p a pop was surprisingly cheap. That machine in all its glory was Rastan Saga (which had nothing at all to do with the saga building of the same name)
A lot of kids like me at the time gravitated towards this particular machine for the same reasons. Having blown the majority of your cash in the main arcades along the sea front this arcade became the last gaming stop on the way back to the station with 50p still left in your pocket you knew you had a least five credits to extend your gaming time.
From putting your coin in you were greeted by a pretty decent orchestral score as you controlled a sword wielding barbarian (of which there were many games that you did) in a side scrolling platformer (of sorts). making your way from left to right (big fucking surprise there) it was your mission to hack your way across the levels killing as many mythical beasts as you could (the first time i knew of the mythological beast the harpy was from this game) in order to (big fcking supprise mark 2) rescue some kidnapped bitch from the evil clutches of whatever passed for evil in that game.
good and evil stereotypes were pretty basic in games back then. if the guy was a fucking ugly dude he was evil. good looking woman with huge tits was kidnapped bitch (unless she had a skimpy bikini and sword then player 2 hero). or good looking guy muscles and scar = main hero of game
of course Rastan the hero that bore the same name as the game (wow what a coincidence) was your stereotypical Conan inspired barbarian and he was of course big and tough enough to not need a big titted player 2 to keep him company Lets face it you don't want to be rescuing a princess with a big titted bitch right by your side (you would never hear the end of it)
So on Rastan would go (unresponsively) swinging his big massive chopper at all and sundry (and yes innuendo intended) across level after level of mythological creature including the harpys with their tits showing (oh yeah naked pixilated chicks in a game and only 10p) and meeting and dispatching end of level bosses that for some reason were so unforgettable i cant remember what they looked like (i think one was a big lion type thingy)
Hinting earlier about this games unresponsive controls wasn't an understatement. there seemed to be a big time frame between you pressing a button and your actions on screen registering that press. And before you assume that it might have just been the controls of that particular machine somehow gummed up (possibly due to the pixelated chick tits on offer at only 10p) I did play this game again prior to doing this write up via the illegal use of a mame emulator and arcade rom (google it lots of free shit online don't ya know) ad the lack of response was just the same.
With my rose tinted specs well and truly removed Rastan saga doesn't look half as good a game as I remember. No parallax scroling (google it) backgrounds and pretty shit character animation as well. The only good memory that remains true is the first level music which is actually pretty bloody good.
Rastan also came out on the Sega master system as well which i bought a copy of hoping that it would be as good as the arcade version (i was as disappointed as when i bought shinobi on that system as well)
For a nostalgic blast you could do worse than steal this one online. there are however better retro arcade games worth stealing.