Those Were the Days is a weekly article in which Gamervision employees share video game-related memories. If you’ve got a story of your own to share, please do so! We love hearing from the community.

--------------------

One little misstep.  That’s all it took to turn one of my greatest gaming experiences into a veritable gaming tragedy.

The year was 1988 and I was 12 years old.  At this time, I basically hung out with the four other kids in the neighborhood since we were way too young to drive and the adjacent neighborhoods had no kids our age in them.  This particular day, I was at my best friend’s house across the street from mine.  We played a lot of NES games together back then, and would frequently spend 10-12 hours at a time immersing ourselves in Tecmo Bowl, Rampage, and, of course, Super Mario Bros.  On this day, however, our attention was turned to Rygar, a somewhat obscure little arcade port that challenged not only your reflexes, but also your dedication and patience. 

For those not familiar with Rygar, it’s an action/adventure game starring a nameless, resurrected warrior who fights his way through hordes of bizarre creatures to save the kingdom of Argos from the evil King Ligar.  He does this mainly with the help of his trusty weapon, the diskarmor; a shield on a chain with the ability to strike, then return to the warrior’s hand.  Despite the awesomeness of this weapon, Rygar proved to be an extremely difficult game.  While tenacious enemies, precise platforming sections, confusing backtracking, and wicked level-bosses hold part of the responsibility for the game’s level of challenge, it was the lack of a save or password system that made completing it such a chore.  For a game that required so much bactracking and pathfinding, the omission of any sort of save function seemed like a major oversight, but it certainly made Rygar one of those games that separated the men from the boys.

This was the day I should have become a man.

My friend and I sat, bleary-eyed from too much 8-bit glory.  We had been planted in front of that TV for at least 9 hours, surviving countless scorpions, lizard-men and poorly translated advice from giant monks who look like Sean Connery, and we were finally about to reach the final boss level.  All the necessary tools for getting to his level had been found (including the Pegasus Horn), and we had power-leveled to the point where we both felt supremely confident that we would whoop old King Ligar on our first try.  As we climbed the five floors of the Rolsa Valley, our hearts swelled with giddy excitement and anticipation of our coming showdown with the big boss.  We were so excited, we barely noticed my friend’s cousins enter the house for dinner.  We approached the final level that leads to the Sky Castle itself; home of King Ligar, and….

My friend’s cousin accidentally kicked the console’s “Reset” button.

Shock.  Horror.  Speechlessness.  Neither of us could say a word.  All that work – gone.  No save file, no password, no nothing.  Never in my life have I been so close to physically assaulting a nine-year-old girl.  Luckily, my buddy took care of her, avenging our loss, but nothing was going to bring back the insane amount of progress we’d made.  I still have fond memories of Rygar, and despite the fact that I’ll likely never ever play it again, I will always count it among my favorite classic games.

Related Articles:

Those Were the Days: An Ode to a Grinch

Those Were the Days: Wii's First Thanksgiving

Those Were the Days: Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!