The 16-bit Arcade and Console Era (1990-1995) - The Krion Conquest (a.k.a. Magical Kids Doropie)

RELEASE DATE: 1991

DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Vic Tokai

BEST VERSIONS: NES

I love stumbling upon games like The Krion Conquest because they remind us that the NES still has the juice to deliver a really good third-party game even today. In this case, it’s a game with a cute witch protagonist named Francesca in the North American release and Doropie in the Japanese one (a verbal play on Dorothy, for reasons we’ll get to in a moment) that looks and feels a lot like a Mega Man entry. I’ve even seen Romhacks that add the Blue Bomber into the game as a playable character and actually make that fusion work. Suffice it to say that if you love old school Mega Man, The Krion Conquest should be on your list of games to play next.

But… why the heck did publisher Vic Tokai give the game such an unmemorable name and such bizarre box art, featuring a woman in white with a seagull-shaped hat, a fiery bird, an obsidian face with glowing eyes and a dorky-looking robot with stubby arms and legs? And why did is game missing most of the Japanese version’s story, which is told through cutscenes? It’s hard to understand today why decisions like these got made, and whether it had to do with cartridge size or Nintendo of America’s onerous licensing policies or Vic Tokai bringing over an earlier build for some reason.

But the origin of the game is actually part of the mystery. According to information cited on the Wikipedia page citing a developer interview about the making of the game (which now goes to a permanently dead link), the original concept was a tie-in to the 1986 anime The Wonderful Wizard of Oz but Vic Tokai decided to pivot to an original project while retaining the name of the main character, Dorothy, and changing her into a witch. There’s also some evidence that the game was being planned to have a very different look and feel under the title Francesca’s Wand at some point. Based on the Wikipedia article’s summary of the now-inaccessible citation, it appears that Vic Tokai’s marketing team got worried about trying to sell a game starring a female character to a mostly male audience, prompting them to reposition it as science fiction rather than fantasy.

And the game begins with a dark story about how in the year 1999, the invading Krion robot army conquered the Earth and an unnamed boy, being chased by robots, used some sort of device to summon Francesca. The manual doesn’t provide any further clarity, so you just sort of have to go with it.

But in the Japanese version, it’s a group called the Akadama Empire who controls the robots, and the boy who summons Doropie is named Kagemaru. He further explains in the cutscenes that only magic can defeat the robots and that all the other magicians in the world have been captured by the Heavenly Machine God Emperor, an evil spirit in traditional Japanese dress inhabiting a robot shell. She seems to be an old enemy of Doropie’s and also serves as the game’s final boss.

Whether or not you have the story, The Krion Conquest/Magical Kids Doropie takes you through five levels, four of which involve the standard progression of fighting through a level to get to a boss and the fifth of which involves the showdown with the Heavenly Machine God Emperor’s three forms. The gameplay is definitely inspired by Mega Man, right down to the fact that you can change your witch’s colors by selecting different powers, one of which is a broom you can ride sort of like Rush in his rocket sled mode in the Mega Man games. You also can shoot upwards or crouch – both of which Mega Man can’t do! – and charge up attacks for a power shot.

Your other attacks vary. The freeze and shield attacks have to be charged to be use, and they’re questionably useful. The ball attack has no charge mode, but fires diagonally and bounces off surfaces. And the flame attack turns you into a firebird and clears the screen, but at the expense of a third of your health bar. Speaking of which, there’s no weapon power bar to manage; your health bar is it, though finding restoratives for it requires patience since items drop a lot less frequently than in Mega Man.

With all of the similarities to Mega Man, you’d expect that The Krion Conquest would follow suit with imaginative level design and boss encounters and… well, the bosses are pretty good, featuring fun mechanical designs and nice graphics. Unfortunately, the game introduces the bosses with a flickering screen overlay that gives you all your details in text but isn’t the most pleasant thing to read.

But each fights sort of like a robot master with multiple attacks and patterns to deal with, and the fourth boss, Sky Hawk, is the most distinctive of the bunch since he’s huge and battles you with a cool cloud background rolling by behind him. Unfortunately, Sky Hawk’s also something of a pushover once you master the timing and angle needed to hit his weak spot, and if you play on an emulator with saved states, neither he nor any of the other bosses will give you much trouble.

And that leads to one of the chief criticisms of The Krion Conquest – it’s challenging due to its linear design and stinginess with restoratives, but it’s also very much a trial and error game where you rely less on responding to cleverly-placed enemies and instead optimize your path through the game with your magic powers. There are ways to skip the 2^nd and 3^rd boss encounters in the US version, which can make a full run a lot easier, but Vic Tokai also stripped out any ability to continue, a feature that’s present in the Japanese edition and which grants you unlimited chances to keep going.

The other criticism is that the game’s four stages and magic powers all feel undercooked, like the game developers didn’t have time to fit in everything they were hoping to. The four levels are based around basic structures – ground, ice, water, sky – and have a lot of similar-feeling areas. The potential for the freeze and shield powers is completely unrealized, and there’s almost no reason to use them. The ball and broom powers, by contrast, are so useful that you really wish you could do more with them.

And then of course there’s the missing story, which would have been impressive if it’d been included in the North American version due to its great art and animations, but which instead feels like a missed opportunity.

But though it’s a flawed and straightforward experience that lacks the depth of the Mega Man series it imitates, The Krion Conquest is still a pretty decent action platformer, and I definitely do recommend giving it a shot. I enjoyed it enough to actually want to see it through, and though I definitely do recommend playing with an emulator and saved states if you’re playing the North American edition, I think I’d actually try to muscle through the Famicom version if it had a Romhack installed because the presence of continues make it a more enjoyable experience overall. (Both versions are also about half the length of a Mega Man game, though the cutscenes do add some padding to your overall play time!)

Unfortunately, The Krion Conquest is not easily available today and you’ll pay collector’s prices for a cartridge. In Japan, it did get a mobile re-release in 2004 through Genki Mobile, but Vic Tokai’s NES library hasn’t exactly been in demand for a re-release. You’ll probably have to play this one on your favorite emulator, but be assured – it’s a fun, good-looking game that’s worth the trouble!

We’re moving on to the 1990s console and arcade games to cover one of the golden eras of video gaming as gaming shifted to 16 bits at home and true 3D in the arcades!

We’ll cover shoot ‘em ups, run and guns, fighters, brawlers, RPGs, platformers and, of course, strategy games, sports games and more. Take some time learn about great games you may have missed like Power Blade, Ranger X, Thunder Fox, Liquid Kids, Alligator Hunt, Arabian Fight, Crystalis, Popful Mail, Alisia Dragoon, Kid Dracula, Little Samson, The Space Adventure, Rocket Knight Adventures, Rolo to the Rescue and even oddities like The Haunting Starring Polterguy and The Ooze!

If you missed my series on the hundreds of 1980s PC, console and arcade games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.

Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 3. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!

If you missed my previous series on the hundreds of 1980s console, arcade and PC games you probably never played, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.

Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 3. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!