Avenging Spirit, review
Arcade games in the 90’s were great, Jaleco were a powerhouse and Avenging Spirit was considered a classic in the stable. Lovingly brought back to the living room by Ratalaika Games S.L. Its a classic arcade platformer, that deserves to be remembered.
I have a few memories of Avenging Spirit. Originally feeding coins into it between college lessons at a greasy cafe way back when. More recently however it cropped up on my Pandora driven Arcade Cab, and I couldn’t help but have a rose-tinted go.
The nuts and bolts of Avenging Spirit
It’s a classic in every sense, you set out to clear scrolling platform levels in order to beat bosses and save the girl. All very familiar, but the unique spin for Avenging Spirit was the ability to possess bad guys. When you die, you don’t just restart you get to float around as the titular spirit and take someone over. The beauty of this is that you get to try out various enemy attacks, some arguably better than others. The negative is that sometimes you get stranded with a cheesy enemy that you’d never pick.
The levels are broad, tall and are basically a platform path to the end of level boss. There are some missable rooms too where you pick up keys that open the end level to rescue the girl. So exploring a little is key.
Apart from the enemies, of course there are some health pickups and the occasional ubiquitous smart bomb.
From Arcade to Home
The transition to modern consoles has been handled well, and happily stands up to my Pandora experience. There are a wealth of options, allowing you to tweak the display settings for the full historical play through. the sound is harsh arcade noise at its best.
The only real detriment is the lack of Risk vs Reward. The game has infinite continues, so you can happily sit and blast through it in a short amount of time. Of course without the commitment of feeding in coins. This often makes a player lazy, eschewing care in favour of blitzkrieg.
Overall, it’s been great to relive a classic like Avenging Spirit, and for anybody wanting a pick up and play quick blast the price is right.
