[1cc] Rastan Saga - ALL clear - 755,400 pts

Rastan Saga is another childhood game I've never managed to clear back in the day, so I'm glad I got it done.

00:00 - Stage 1
04:20 - Stage 2
09:38 - Stage 3
15:09 - Stage 4
20:33 - Stage 5
25:28 - Stage 6
30:49 - Ending

Back then, if you wanted to play a Conan the Barbarian video game, that was probably the closest thing you could find. It's pretty cool and fun, even though it can be a little bit janky at times. There are some weird bugs here and there, enemies dying for no reason, some enemies warping from one edge of the screen to the other, and hitboxes can be really weird. Despite that, it's good fun and the style is really cool.

The international version gives some explanation about the items if you let the attract mode run for a while, so I'm using this for the following list of items you can collect. All of these items' effects will stop after a while.
- Shield: reduces damage taken a little bit.
- Mantle: reduces damage taken by half
- Armor: greatly reduces damage (attract mode says "all damage", but I definitely take damage)
- Medecine (blue bottles): restores some health
- Poison (red bottles): inflicts some damage
- Gold sheep: restores all health, extremely useful
- Jewel: gives some points
- Ring: Weapon speed up
- Rod: ? (no idea what it does, neither does the attract mode)
- Necklace: doubles points gained

It should be noted that the poison bottles give you a huge 20 000 points when you collect them, and the damage taken isn't big. I prefer to collect them in order to get the points, as it means more extends. Extends are awarded at 100k points, 200k, then every 200k (400k, 600k...), which basically means that 10 poison bottles are worth one life. Considering the small amount of damage they deal, I think it's worth it.

You can also collect 3 different weapons, the Mace increasing your range, the Fire Sword shooting fire balls, and the Axe giving you more power. It seems like they always disappear after a certain amount of time and it doesn't depend on how much you used them, so feel free to mash that button to take advantage of them. They greatly help you during stages, so I recommend going as fast as possible when you have them so you can beat more of the stage easily. Enemies should pose no resistance when you get them, so you can rush. When you're with the basic sword, take your time, it seems there's no timer.
Also, special weapons are extremely useful against bosses when you can bring them (which is every boss aside from the 1st and 3rd), so you have to rush at the end of each stage to make sure you can bring the weapon to kill the boss safely. Otherwise, some can become very tricky.

Quick overview of each boss:
- 1st: Shouldn't be too hard, though it's pretty difficult to do it without getting hit. It's impossible to bring a special weapon, so you have to do it with the sword, but he's not too hard.
- 2nd: I really hope you managed to bring the axe, otherwise you're in trouble. Extremely easy with the axe as you kill him so quickly before he does anything, but with the sword he's pretty hard and jumps everywhere. Bringing the axe isn't too hard, but avoid taking too much time during the stage.
- 3rd: My wall when I first played the game, and pretty tricky and hard to explain. Basically, you hit him, then immediately turn back and walk a little. When he reappears, hit him once and go back again. Seems like doing so will manipulate the place where he'll teleport, and he will stay in place. I messed up in this run and improvised, but it's possible to kill him without giving him the opportunity to attack.
- 4th: I really hope you brought the mace. For that you have to be pretty fast in the stage, and that's why you can see me taking damage against the wizard just before the boss' room: I wanted to go as fast as possible to bring the weapon. You can notice in the following stage that the mace disappears pretty quickly, which means I didn't have a lot of time left and that timing is tight. With the mace, all you have to do is stay where you start, crouch, and whack him when he jumps. Without it, I don't really know. He's very hard.
- 5th: Again, it's preferable to bring the axe to deal with it quickly. To get the axe in the stage, I prefer to jump to the other side when going down that pit. Otherwise you may miss it because of the weird hitboxes. The dragon isn't too hard with the axe, but try to move back from time to time to avoid taking damage. With the sword, you will have to jump above him (with the high jump, not the long one) and repeat the same process.
- Final boss: pretty easy actually, just jump and whack him, not a lot of strat involved. Again, having the axe is better, but he's perfectly doable without it.

The game isn't extremely hard overall, but a lot of stuff can insta-kill you, and many enemies are hard to avoid, so at some point you're bound to take damage. Enemies near the end of the game deal a truckload of damage, so you have to be careful.