So I guess now what I want to do is talk about how Legend originally entered my life. There was a local kid who I kind of knew in passing enough to nod at and say hi to but didn't know properly mostly because he was about 2 years older than me and back in my school days older kids didn't typically hang around with anyone younger than them. Well he had a SNES and he was looking for someone to swap games with and a mutual friend told him I had quite a lot so it might be worth asking me. Well he turned up at my house with Legend and I was impressed with it so I made him an offer. I swapped him 2 Japanese Super Famicom games and my old cheap converter so he could play them, I remember one of them being Super Formation Soccer but have no idea what the other one was. The funny thing was that after this he just kept coming around to mine and we soon became best friends for a good four years he was probably my closest friend and we did a great deal of our gaming together, because of this I cant even play Legend or heck even see the cart without remembering him.
So I am now going to start talking about the game itself and I am going to do so by talking about the graphics. Legend has some great visuals and stands up very well compared to other SNES beat 'em ups. For a start most of the stages have really nice background landscapes which have a sort of watercolour feeling to them which really helps give the game world a real feeling. , The playable character(s) and the enemies are both well animated and are just generally very detailed sprites. The only fault I can really find is that there are certain parts where old backgrounds seem to be reused but I cant fault them too much for this, also this is less of a graphical issue but if your going to go to the trouble of making two player sprites that look different even if they control the same you should give the player the choice to pick which to use instead of just automatically making the sword guy player one and only using the axe based character for player two.
OK so moving on to the sound well I think that most of the music is better than average but its not the stuff of legends forgive the pun, it works but in my opinion it could be a lot better, I guess I was spoiled recently when I played Actraiser. On top of the music you have the obvious battle sounds, basically some metallic crashing/clashing noises and some death cries. Everything works don't get me wrong but as far as I am concerned things could be better.
OK so as for controls well you have an attack button, a jump button, a magic button a special move button (when you use it you throw something but you loose some health for doing so), and the triggers block, both of them block in exactly the same way. This sounds like a lot after all that's basically 5 buttons doing different things but in practise it doesn't seem like you can do as much as you'd think. The main thing the game is really missing in my opinion is a run button or heck even just a double tap run, this game just feels like it needs this adding to it. The game does overall control pretty well though, sometimes when you turn around while attacking it seems a little slow but its never really much of a problem.
The game is not very long, you will soon find yourself on the final stage. The combat is simple but the enemies are aggressive and at times it seems like a new one runs on every second you have killed one. The enemies will try to circle you and will block and if you back off they will chase you, different enemies have different attack strategies and the game has some pretty darn cool bosses. Every single enemy in this game drops a collectible, these include money , health, urns, and keys some add health some add magic but all of them disappear super fast which can make them very hard to pick up with aggressive enemies always being on you.
OK so I have talked about all of the pros and cons of Legend and I think I might have mentioned a certain Golden Axe franchise so I guess once again I am going to end up talking about a MegaDrive game while reviewing a SNES game. Now I have already mentioned that Legend only has 2 player sprites and that they are basically pallete swaps just diffrent colours really and an axe instead of a sword where as Golden Axe gave you 3 diffrent chracters who all both looked and felt very diffrent. The thing is Legend is a perfectly decent game, good even but its just not that memorable, once your done with it your done. With something like Golden Axe though its the little things its the memories like when you realise that youve spent a whole bunch of time fighting on the back of an eagle or when you ride your first dinosaur or the bit where the villagers run past you screaming. Legend shows a lot of promise but in my opinion it just falls short, its not a bad game at all in fact its a good game its just not an unforgetable classic. I would give it 7 out of 10. I spent £10 on a loose European Cartridge of it and to me this feels just about the right kind of price, if you have a SNES and are looking for something you havent played before then this is worth a shot.
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