Back in time, this was the answer that Sega and Climax provided to Nintendo's Zelda. And what a hell of an answer...
Have time to listen to a story? Good!
Grab a seat and help yourself a cup of ron...
I remember the day when I friend of mine lend me that cartridge, he said "Man, that game rocks... You gottta see what I'm talking about.". It was somewhere in 1996, and this game where my first real contact with the world of RPGs.
It was a work of Climax and Sega together, or so I heard. The same team that brought us the original Shining Force series. That alone is almost a guarantee that the game is solid as a rock.
The game presentation were awesome. The main character, this guy named Nigel, running around in a "Indiana Jones" style dungeon crawling. He's a blond elf, wearing a breast plate and a backpack, carring a sword, and looked just what an adventurer should look like in a RPG.
Then, he finds what he were looking for: The Statue of Jypta. Right after escaping the dungeon, he heads back to a town and meet an old man who had hired him for the job. Little he knows that, at the same town, a group of villains were trying to capture what seemed to be a fairy. This fairy thing, who attend by the name of "Friday", asks for Nigel protection and says that She's being hunted for knowing the localization of the legendary treasure of King Nole. This information sounds very interesting to Nigel, who immediatelly agrees to help her if she lead him to the treasure. And that's when the adventure starts.
The game graphics were really great for it's time. You could´ve easilly notice that this game was a labor of love. It was set in a 2d isometric tipe of view, wich were very well explore in dungeons and maps to hide treasures and passages. It also had some great memorable music and playability were really good with the Sega Genesis gamepad, alongside with a killer storyline.
There were different weapon and armor upgrades that were sold in stores or found via quests, and those acttually were showed in the sprites of the character. The puzzles overall were real challenging and fun to solve, provinding to the player riddles and labirinths, it was really entertaining.
Similar games were released through the years, but none had kept the same atmosphere that this one had. The creator of "Landstalker" have done a game for Playstation called "Alundra", which basically felt like a ripoff blended with "Zelda". The storyline were darker than Landstalker, thought.
Now, after almost 13 years after it's conception, a remake is being made by Climax itself for the PSP, and it'll be all in 3D. It's said that it'll be release spring of 2006 in Japan. I've seem the videos, the game so far is 10% done, and basically it was a demo of the scenario... They've managed to kept all the atmosphere that the game had in 2D, and translate this to 3D graphics amazingly well. Damn, now I'll have to get a PSP for me soon in the future!
That's good news for all Nigel fans, since we haven't heard from him for a long time. Last game realeased featuring him was "Timestalker", also known as "Climax Landers", for the Dreamcast console, which wasn't neither as good as the original "Landstalker".
This brings a new hope, maibe in a not so distant future, we'll be seeing a sequel to this game that has brought joy to many of us in the past.
I guess that's all I had to say. If you're interested to hear more 'bout this game, just ask.
Cheers,
Cap'n Daccat
PS.: Forgive me for my bad english, I'm drunk. Yarrr, yarrr!