- Nausicaä: Kiki Ippatsu
- Wasureji no Nausicaä Game
- Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä
If the PC-6001 Nausicaä game could be criticized for its simplicity, then the MSX release suffers from being too complicated. There’s so much to keep track of it’s difficult to know where to begin. As mentioned, this fan-site does an excellent job describing the game, its controls, plus various features and characters in extreme detail. The game is less a hori-shmup, and more akin to some kind of simplified side-scrolling adventure/RPG.
You start the game in Nausicaä’s white gunship, just outside her village. There are three pink barges nearby which, if you move up to slowly, you can hook onto and tow using F3. You can take off without one, but you’ll eventually run out of fuel. You can detach the barge by pressing F4. When airborne you’ll start to use up fuel, and pushing to the right will increase your speed and fuel usage, while holding left will decrease both until eventually the engine stalls and you crash. The controls similar to an aeroplane, though you can set the Gunship to fly in a perfectly straight horizontal line. Alternatively tap up or down to alter the angle, and it will climb or descend accordingly. The ship is surprisingly maneuverable, able to pull off little loops and flying in multiple directions. Unfortunately touching the top of the screen hits an invisible barrier which drops your speed, so make sure there’s plenty of room if you try a loop (and do so without a barge attached). Touch the tree line though and you’ll crash.
At any point you can press F1 and Nausicaä will leave the Gunship aboard her little turquoise Mehve glider. The Gunship meanwhile will drift towards the next open field to land safely and later be recovered. Mehve controls extremely smoothly, even more so than the Gunship, and is able to pull off some tight acrobatics. It also doesn’t use up any fuel, making it good for emergencies when out. Here’s an animated gif (745kb) showing control over the Gunship and Mehve, taken from a random fan-site.
After flying over several valleys and Sea of Corruption jungles, having encountered nothing, you’ll eventually come across Pejite Flying Jars which are heading towards your village, to be either shot down or avoided. You’ll also come across an enormous floating attack ship, though this has to be avoided to begin with. When in the Gunship you can fire your guns with space bar, though you seldom if ever need them – it’s actually easier just to avoid later enemies. Mehve doesn’t have any weapons, but she can fly below the tree line without crashing, whereas the enemy cannot – if you’re having trouble, it’s sometimes worth deploying out of your Gunship and travelling for a time at low altitude. When in either vehicle you can also release Strobe Grenades with F2, like the ones used in the film. During the first loop of the game there’s only a single Ohmu you encounter (the Japanese fan-site claims more show up in subsequent loops), and his eyes start off friendly blue. If he’s angered, either by you or the Pejites attacking him, you need to calm him with a Strobe Grenade.
The game has a day/night cycle, with various states which affect the presence of… what is presumably flying insects or spores, from the Sea of Corruption. These can’t be killed and, if in the Gunship, need to be avoided otherwise they decrease your score and eventually make you crash. Mehve is immune to them though. This miasma only exists during navy-blue dawns and hazy yellow sunsets. During the hot turquoise noon they’re not there. Likewise during a black moonlit night. If you like you can shoot the moon, which makes him angry and he ceases casting light on the trees below, for a time.
The object of the game appears to be reaching the end of the game world to the far right, hundreds of screens over. Each time you come across a clear valley you need to land and then press F4 to refuel from the barge, before carrying on. Eventually, after passing the Flying Jars, enemy dreadnaught, and single Ohmu below, you’ll eventually reach what is possibly a city on the edge of the Sea of Corruption. Here things get interesting since you need to get close and then press F5 to initiate “negotiations”. It would appear that Nausicaä is making some kind of peace deal with the Pejites. Afterwards you need to speed off in the opposite direction, to the left, to meet up with dreadnaught again – before it reaches your village. Then use Mehve to come aboard and initiate negotiations again. After this you get a little congratulatory message and do it again, albeit with more enemies and Ohmu.
At least that’s what the fan-sites and online videos show – actually pulling off this Herculean exercise in banality is another matter. The play area is extremely long and boring, with most of your time spent sitting idly by holding the right keyboard key to speed up, only to overshoot a landing valley. If you crash you restart the whole thing from the beginning, except the enemy Flying Jars are even closer to your village now. If they reach it before you’ve finished negotiations it’s Game Over. You also can’t do negotiations aboard Mehve, you have to reach the town inside the Gunship.
As said for the previous game, for something which supposedly came out in 1984, this was probably really impressive. It’s complicated, features a whole bunch of things from the film, and also tries to adhere to the themes of the film, in that attacking Ohmu angers them, and you need to calm them with Strobe Grenades. It also features things like the Gunship barge and skeletons of the God Warriors emerging from the overgrowth below. Plus there’s a cool day/night cycle. It’s certainly not the worst thing that could result from a film adaptation, and assuming it was released in 1984, was possibly well regarded at the time. It’s just not something you’ll want to play today.
