Rusty
Rusty is an action platformer that openly borrows the structure and mood of gothic vampire-hunter adventures and transplants them onto Japanese computers. The main heroine is a girl who sets out against demonic forces, progressing through a series of self-contained levels ending in a boss fight. The core is a long-reaching melee attack, supplemented by secondary weapons picked up in the environment — and, as in the genre's models, it mostly comes down to precise attack timing, jump control, and not getting knocked off a ledge.
Levels are designed to alternate fast sections with cautious progress: among platforms, ladders, and repeatedly respawning enemies, the player learns the route by heart. Bosses have readable patterns and can usually only be beaten after several attempts, once you understand the rhythm of their attacks. On the PC-98, the game went for a dark, saturated palette, large character sprites, and plenty of background detail, making it visually one of the most striking action games on the platform — remarkable in itself, since the PC-98 wasn't built for smooth scrolling. The music is suitably dramatic and fits the gothic tone stylistically, the atmosphere occasionally slides toward the choral, and the game contains scenes intended for an adult audience.
At the time, Rusty found its audience mainly among players who missed a proper console-style action game on computers, and over the years it earned a reputation as a cult title, mentioned as one of the few genuinely successful platformers on the PC-98. Today it's short, hard, and to the point — it can be finished in one longer sitting and delivers exactly what it promises: good old-fashioned action without delay. Anyone looking on the PC-98 for something other than sprawling RPGs and text adventures will find here one of the few games that can be played on reflexes alone. The precision required is high, and without repeated attempts the final levels can't be cleared, but the satisfaction is all the greater when the route finally comes together the way it should.
Game 22 of 28 for NEC PC-98
The same title elsewhere (1)
Rusty was released for both the Sharp X68000 and the NEC PC-98, two Japanese computers with quite different priorities at the time. The X68000 was built with games and arcade conversions in mind, packing more capable graphics hardware with a richer color palette and smoother scrolling, which makes the gothic setting and the heroine's animation feel more fluid. The PC-98, by contrast, was primarily a business machine adapted for gaming only later, so its version generally had to work with a more limited palette and simpler sound. Anyone wanting Rusty at its most visually impressive should reach for the X68000.
