ActRaiser

The player, being in the role of a god-like Master, in a world filled with monsters, is engaged in the development of human civilization, while the game process takes place in two different modes: strategic and arcade. The first mode is a classic god simulator , a map of an uninhabited area is displayed on the screen, and from the first two people it is necessary to grow a large, prosperous city. The Master himself is out of sight, navigation on the map and management of what is happening are done through an assistant angel - he flies freely everywhere, fights with appearing monsters, indicates the places where construction should begin, etc. For the city to develop in the right directions, for various miracles are applied to the elevation of territories: the caused thunderstorm clears the earth from bushes and stones, the directed rays of the sun drain the swamps, the called rain irrigates the desert, etc.

The main obstacle to the development of civilization are numerous flying monsters that endlessly appear from the lairs placed on the map. They attack the angel, damaging his health, constantly interfere with construction, so they must be destroyed periodically. As the city grows, people can get to the lairs and seal them - then the appearance of monsters from there ceases. After sealing all the lairs, civilization begins to develop much faster, houses become more spacious, and some additional opportunities appear. With a certain population, the Master raises the level, while the number of life points and the number of SP points required to create miracles increase. Once the city reaches a large size and becomes self-sufficient, you can move to a neighboring region to build the next settlement. In total, six such regions need to be equipped.

Sometimes the monsters living in the region are so powerful that it requires the direct intervention of the Master - God dwells in a stone statue of a warrior and goes to destroy the villains personally. The strategic part in this case is replaced by a slasher platformer with a side view, the player in the allotted time with the help of a sword and magic must clear the way to the end of the level and defeat the boss waiting there. As a rule, arcade inserts occur twice during the development of the region: before construction and closer to the end. In the last level, the player alternately fights with all previously defeated opponents and only after that enters the fray with the final boss.

The protagonist of the story is the god-like Master, it is on his behalf that all the events occurring in the game are described. From the manual attached to the cartridge, it follows that once the Master was forced to confront the evil demon Tanzra and his six lieutenants, he was eventually defeated and retreated to the heavenly palace, where he fell into a deep sleep because of the wounds received. Meanwhile, the tyrannical Tanzra divided the land into six regions and put six of his minions to rule them - evil began to spread among mankind, monsters settled on the whole earth. Hundreds of years later, the Master finally woke up, but already without the former mighty power, since the faith among the people had come to naught. Now he, along with an assistant angel, will have to recreate civilization from scratch.

Creating prosperous cities with loyal followers, the Master gradually restores lost strength, defeats the six lieutenants and the demon Tanzra himself. In the end, after the disappearance of evil, the protagonist once again looks around all the inhabited territories, and it turns out that none of the people worships him anymore - in their world there are no more problems and reasons to disturb the creator, respectively, too. On that, the Master and his assistant angel return to rest in heaven until their help is again needed.

The original Japanese version is full of references to Christianity , however, due to the tough policies of the publisher Nintendo of America in the American version, many religious concepts were either removed or replaced with neutral ones. For example, the protagonist in the original is called God , and his main opponent is Satan ^[3] . In addition to editing the script, some changes in terms of graphics and sound were also made in western localization, the logo became more stylized, the letter “R” was capitalized in the name. In addition, in the strategic mode of the western versions, time flows much faster, and it takes much less time to complete the construction. The American version of the game is significantly simpler than the Japanese one, however, after complete passage, the player is given the opportunity to play again with increased complexity. The European version allows you to choose the necessary complexity from the very beginning: heavy, normal and unique light here.

Along with the release for the home console, porting to the Nintendo Super System arcade platform took place. The strategic mode was completely cut out of this version, only the levels with horizontal scrolling remained, and some minor corrections were made: the scoring system was slightly changed and the complexity was slightly increased, for example, hitting spikes instead of losing lives leads to instant death of the character. In 2004, Macrospace released the ActRaiser version for mobile phones in the European market, it contains only the first three arcade levels and is significantly inferior to the original in the graphic sense ^{[4] [5]} . Also in 2007, the game appeared in the Virtual Console service , where it can be emulated on the Wii console . The publication was copyrighted by Square Enix ^{[6] [7] [8]} .

World sales of the game amounted to 620 thousand copies, including 400 thousand were sold in Japan, 180 in North America and 40 in Europe ^[9] . In 1993, the GameSpot portal included ActRaiser in its list of the greatest games of all time ^[10] , and the editors of Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine named the musical accompaniment the best in the last twelve months ^[11] . Nintendo Power Magazine ranked it 150th on the list of the best ever published games for Nintendo consoles ^[12] .

Over the years, the Armchair Empire columnist praised the graphics that were bright and colorful for those times, especially noting the developers use the seventh video mode of the console, with which the world map is scaled when God descends to earth to visit locations ^[13] . In a review of the publication Eurogamer, the game is named one of the strangest things for home consoles, but the mixture of genres was successful and thanks to its complex plot it deserves a high rating ^[14] . The author of the IGN review finds interesting the very idea that God can come down to earth to help people, destroying demons and monsters on his way ^[15] . In 2007, ScrewAttack authors placed ActRaiser on the first line of the list of the most popular games in the past, which over time completely lost their popularity ^[16] . They also put her in tenth place on the list of the best games for SNES ^[17] .

A special praise was given to the soundtrack of authorship by Yuzo Kosiro , critics noted that such an incredible sound quality was achieved only six months after the release of the console - the game in a sense set the bar for subsequent developers. Two separate albums with music from the game came out in Japan, an original soundtrack with all the melodies ^[18] and a disc with separate melodies in the orchestral symphonic arrangements called Symphonic Suite from Actraiser ^[19] . Selected compositions were performed at some live performances, for example, in the series of concerts of Play! A Video Game Symphony and Symphonische Spielemusikkonzerte in Leipzig ^[20] .

• ActRaiser (Japanese) - page on Square Enix official website