Landstalker

Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole was developed by Climax Entertainment and published by Sega for the Mega Drive in 1992. It is an isometric action role-playing game in which you play the treasure hunter Nigel, chasing the legendary hoard of King Nole.

What sets Landstalker apart from most console RPGs of the period is its emphasis on space. The world is built three-dimensionally and a large share of the game is not combat but movement: jumping between platforms, hauling crates and chests, finding routes across chasms, working out how to reach a ledge that looks unreachable. Combat is direct and simple — you have the sword from the start and enemies are cut down by hand.

That isometric perspective is also the game's biggest problem. Judging exactly where your character sits relative to the platform below is hard without a shadow, and plenty of jumps fail not because your plan was wrong but because you misread the depth. Anyone who has met Landstalker knows this frustration; it is the main reason some people love the game and others switch it off after an hour.

Everything else is excellent. The dialogue is funny, the world has a personality of its own, the music is above average, and the game does not hold your hand — the map is more open than was customary.

Landstalker was a critical and commercial success and its DNA is still around: Dark Savior and above all Alundra are considered its spiritual successors. A spin-off, Lady Stalker, came to the Super NES in Japan in 1995, a planned direct sequel was cancelled, and Nigel later appeared in Time Stalkers. The game has been re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, on the Mega Drive Mini in 2019 and on Nintendo Classics in 2023.