Light Crusader

About Light Crusader

Light Crusader (1995) is Treasure's last Genesis game, an isometric dungeon-crawling action-adventure in which the knight Sir David searches beneath the town of Green Row for its kidnapped people.

Light Crusader in Depth

Seen from an isometric angle, Sir David explores a large multi-level dungeon beneath the graveyard of Green Row, fighting enemies, solving puzzles and finding the missing townsfolk. He can roam the town to talk to people and shop, and further down the dungeon are other settlements, including a guild of wizards and an entire town of goblins. Besides running and jumping, David attacks with his sword standing still, moving, jumping or lunging in mid-air. He commands four kinds of elemental magic based on the classical elements, which can be used alone or combined, up to all four at once, for attacks or buffs; water on its own heals him. The pause menu manages magic, items such as food and gear, and a map that the player fills in by exploring, without showing items or townspeople.

Invited by the king of Green Row, David learns that townspeople have been disappearing. The culprit is the wizard Ragno Roke, who, enraged when the queen rejected his marriage proposal, plans to sacrifice them to reawaken the demon Ramiah, sealed in the dungeon.

Making Light Crusader

Treasure's Kazuhiko Ishida programmed the game with Keiji Fujitake and president Masato Maekawa, with art by Iuchi and others and music by Aki Hata. The team wanted to improve the controls and enjoyment of pseudo-3D games with an isometric view, but Ishida found it hard to program multiple joints in 3D and Iuchi said the perspective strained the Genesis, delaying the game by over a year. Sega published it worldwide in 1995.

Mean Machines Sega called it "a superlative arcade adventure with great playability" despite finding it easy, and Next Generation said it was "one of the more exciting and graphically pleasing Genesis titles" but "by no means a RPG", criticising shallow puzzles and story and awkward controls. Three of EGM's four editors were negative, citing poor visibility, clunky combat and too many puzzles. Micom BASIC Magazine ranked it second in popularity in August 1995. It has since appeared on the Virtual Console, in Sega Genesis Classics and on the Genesis Mini.