Aztec Adventure

The Good
Aztec Adventure: The Golden Road to Paradise is an old Sega game from 1987, designed for the Sega Master System. The gameplay involves you trying to reach Paradise by exploring ten lands that include forest, desert, marshes, ruins, and underground waterways. While you are doing this, you need to destroy all the flora and fauna that get in your way with your sword, and by defeating them, you can collect a variety of weapons that include fireballs, bombs, tornadoes, and arrows (eight at a time). Some of these weapons are more powerful than others, and some of them can be used against bosses that you will also meet, which area more powerful than everything else. Each boss takes so many hits using your default weapon unless you have at least two companions, a rabbit and a dog.

You will not find your companions though if you do not give them some money bags (which can be obtained by defeating innocent bunny rabbits), so until then, they remain your enemies. Throughout the game, I could get away with destroying them, picking up any weapons that they leave behind. Then leaving the screen, coming back, destroying them again, picking up their weapons, and vice-versa. This is a great way to stock up on some weapons if you do not have any.

Before you battle it out on the lands, you get to see the next boss that you have to defeat. This lets you know before hand what you are up against. The gameplay itself consists of the walk-and-shoot type that was very popular in games in the mid eighties.

The graphics look good, and reflect the land that you are in. Your character, Niño, as well as the rabbit and dog, looks like they got pulled straight out of a Japanese anime. All the characters and objects, as well as the scenery, are well done.

The music and sound effects in Aztec Adventure are good, and if you were lucky enough to obtain the second SMS model, you can use the built-in FM chipset to enhance the sound. Those without the new model would have had to put up with the standard sound.

The Bad
When the rabbit and dog join you, there will be times when they get stuck by an obstacle unless you walk to a certain spot where they can follow you. And if they get stuck and you decide to enter the next screen, they will not follow you. I found this a bit frustrating.

The underground walkways require you to use a raft to cross a river, and you will lose some life if you decide to cross the river without any raft. There were many times that there was a river with no raft, so I was forced to lose a little bit of life.

The Bottom Line
Aztec Adventure has ten rounds in total, and they take some of your time to complete. In each round, you will have to defeat everything that gets in your way in order to get to the bosses. And speaking of bosses, there are more than one in each round, and the gateway to the next level will not open without all of them destroyed.