Arcade Archives The Legend of Kage

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 (Local Alternating), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

The Legend of Kage is an Action-Platformer released in 1986 in arcades and ported to Nintendo Entertainment System and Commodore 64 in 1987. This modern release sees the game coming to PlayStation 4 in 2015 and Nintendo Switch in 2019.

The Legend of Kage has players taking the role of the titular ninja, Kage, who aims to rescue a kidnapped princess from a horde of enemy ninjas, attacking enemies with a sword and shuriken.

While there’s some enjoyment to be had mowing down enemies, this game is plagued with problems. Your jumps are absurdly high and you have zero control over them after jumping. Movement on the ground is slippery and awkward. Enemies spawn randomly at an absurd rate. And this game’s goal structure is arbitrary and poorly-conveyed to the player – sometimes you have to get to a certain point on the stage, and sometimes you have to fight enemies until taking out a few key enemies. Apart from a stage with a blinking arrow, none of this is conveyed to the player.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes two different “Sound Versions” reflecting different releases, the Sound: MSM5232 Version, and the Sound: YM2203 Version. In addition, there are various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

Overall, The Legend of Kage has some positive elements, but they are greatly overwhelmed by poor gameplay mechanics and just overall poor game design. I do not recommend revisiting this so-called “legend”.

tl;dr – The Legend of Kage is an Action-Platformer where players take the role of a ninja trying to save a princess. Unfortunately, this game has poor controls, overall game design issues, and just doesn’t hold up by modern standards. Skip it.

Grade: D+

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