If you're a long-time follower of the site then you'll already be aware of the work of Tyler Esposito, the brains behind the excellent iRetroGamer.com YouTube channel.
A seasoned gamer with a love of both Nintendo and Sega, Esposito is in the unique position of having many of his childhood gaming habits recorded for posterity. His late father - a budding filmmaker - captured many events in his son's gaming life on videotape, including opening his NES and becoming a Sega fanatic.
The latest archive video shows Esposito in the middle of his Nintendo period, with the the (then) four-year-old gamer kneeling proudly beside his huge tower of NES games. It then shows him wrestling with Jaleco's action platformer Astyanax, a game whose name alone presents a challenge to younger players.
The fresh-faced Esposito - coached by his father - manages to overcome many of the pitfalls presented to him, but one boss in particular poses quite a conundrum, forcing the enthusiastic player to come up with his own strategy - which basically involves swinging, jumping and a combination of the two.
As with all of Esposito's videos, it's heartwarming stuff that makes us sad we don't have video footage of our own childhood gaming exploits.
Comments (15)
LoL! I actually had Astyanax and my brothers and I used to take turns getting our collective asses kicked on it! Cool music. Gameplay...not so much. Still a fun game though.
I still own this game, and loved playing it. The hero was huge on the screen and the music was pretty good. I ended up beating the game once...hard as get out. Good memories through it!
How hard can it be to pronounce the level's title? It's very much obviously "As-tie-anax".
Crud, I just pronounced "anax" as NX. And now I'm thinking about NX again, dang it!
I love this game! Played through it as a kid and when ROMs and emulators became a thing it was one of the first games I downloaded. It remains one of my favorites.
Ah, Jaleco. They tried so hard and still made such bad games... I rather ended up loving most of them, both on NES and SNES.
Wow, it would be really weird to watch myself as a child playing games. I used to to bounce around the room playing games like Mario 64 or how excited I was when I'd achieve something new in goldeneye like a new cheat unlock. I remember distinctly winning the 'international cup' on ISS-64 at about 2 in the morning staying at my best friends house on a school night and celebrating like Hero's but in mute so his mum didn't tell us of.....hard to sleep when you're buzzing from a big win.....and you're like 9 years old
Lol I owned this game. And I do agree the title was hard to pronounce, and a challenge to play. After beating the game I never went back.
Speaking of hard games, I had Operation Wolf for NES. And it may not be funny back when I was a child but I can laugh now about the only time I raged on a game. After repeatedly losing on the first or second stage I took the game out of the system and spiked it hard on my concrete basement floor. The game literally shattered in pieces lol..
@AlexSora89 I'm sight-reading it as Ast-ya-nax, so there's room for interpretation!
They should REALLY bring this to the virtual console! I remember a neighbor let me play her copy and boy, was it hard!
Oh hey, I have the cartridge for this game, it was in our attic... Though I can't say I had seen it in action before now.
Try this one out for size.
The Magic of Scheherazade
I remember renting that.
Also lol at "he's skinny, he doesn't know anything".
The arcade game--and Legendary Axe on the TG16--were even better 'versions' of this game.
I played this game as a youth as well and actually managed to beat it. I haven't sat down and played it since then so I can't say how well it's aged since then, but I enjoyed it.
Of course being a kid, you enjoy everything.
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