Rusty
Rusty is a game one could easily mistake at first glance for a lost Castlevania entry, and that's exactly what its creators were going for. The heroine is a warrior armed with a whip who fights her way through a gothic world full of vampires, undead, and demons, across levels split into short sections capped by a boss fight. The basics are classic: walking forward, careful jumps, a whip strike with a noticeable delay, and collecting secondary weapons and attack upgrades. But the game adds its own touches, including more pronounced acrobatic movement and more aggressive opponents who force the player to keep their distance and work with the weapon's reach.
The atmosphere is markedly darker and more sensual than its inspiration. The art direction leans on blood, horror motifs, and an eroticized stylization of the main character, which clearly aimed Rusty at an older segment of the Japanese computer scene's audience. The Sharp X68000 obliges with its color palette and high resolution: the backgrounds are detailed, the characters large, and the animation smooth, so the game visually holds its own next to the best console platformers of the time. The FM accompaniment leans on dramatic, almost rock-flavored tracks that keep the pace and noticeably intensify during boss fights. The heroine also isn't limited to the whip alone: collected items expand her options and change the reach and power of her attacks, turning her equipment into part of the tactics against specific opponents.
Because the X68000 never left Japan, Rusty stayed outside the mainstream, and Western players long knew of it only by hearsay, as a game that dared to do its own take on Castlevania. Today, fans seek it out precisely for that combination: familiar, honestly functioning gameplay wrapped in a package that's noticeably harsher and more distinctive in style. The difficulty is tough and the controls demand patience, but anyone who likes classic whip-driven platformers will find here one of the most interesting titles this genre ever produced outside the major studios.
Game 19 of 25 for Sharp X68000
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.
