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Most of my childhood was spent playing the NES, Amiga and the Commodore 64 on a daily basis. The NES had an incredible library that continued to grow on an almost weekly basis, and the stacks of boxes with unlabeled floppies for my C64 and Amiga always made it into an adventure to just put one of them in and discovering what was actually on them. Despite this vast selection of games I wasn't completely satisfied, but this would change all of a sudden. I met my lifelone best friend one summer after he moved to my town and we quickly realized our mutual love for video games. As we become good friends he would always tell me about this computer he had which he would play Metal Gear on. Being a time before the internet was available and research requiring some actual effort, I always assumed he was talking about a DOS computer. But when I visited him and actually sat down I was quick to note that this was no ordinary computer, nor would you find any shareware version of Wolfenstein running on this thing. In clear view the letters MSX was molded onto the keyboard and the minute he turned it on, I was blown away. He had acquired this MSX from his father who had imported it from Netherlands without knowing much about it, they were just in the market to find something to play games on. We spent a week staying up every night to play the different games at our disposal, and out of all those 3 titles caught our attention more than any other. Rune Master is a series of role playing board games for the MSX2 developed by Compile. Compile had already established itself with a stellar series of shooters on the MSX which is detailed in the fantastic article about Compile Shooters here at HG101. They would also gain fame with Puyo Puyo, the blob puzzler by Compile founder Masamitsu "Moo" Niitani. Before Niitani worked on Puyo Puyo however, he was the producer on Rune Master.
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 Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master II (MSX2)
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Rune Master - MSX2 (1989)
Title Screen |
Rune Master (MSX2) |
The first game was released in 1989 and introduced gamers to a game play style that wasn't very common in RPG video games. It's all played on a board with dices which dictates how many blocks you move depending on the number you roll. The board is a rather large world map where treasures, monsters and other events are triggered if you land on that square. Your interface consists of a number of small windows, the left side will show the character with his states and items, the middle shows the world map and the right side shows either the story events or the enemy stats. On the bottom you get an overview of all the players and their HP. In order to capture the attention of gamers and tell the story properly, Compile featured the intro to the game in a "Notice Demo" on their Disk Station #7 release. When you start the game, you'll get a name entry screen and the choice to play as 1 from a total of 4 characters.
An all around heroic fighter. Can comfortably use all items in the game.
A magician and the only playable female character in the game. She can gain more from magic spells than the other characters.
His escape success rate is a bit higher than the other characters and he has the highest HP count.
Gains more from healing items than the other characters in the game.
The un chosen individuals will be controlled by the CPU unless you choose 4 players, allowing for some early age video game multiplayer action. Sadly the CPU will drag out time alot as the AI isn't very intelligent at all and for the most part you'll be sitting there shaking your fist at the clouds in anger because they keep on dying. While the different warriors never fight each other directly, they do race against one another, with the player who gets to the end of the board and defeats the last boss becoming the winner. At your turn, you have the choice of either rolling the dice to move or use an item to replenish health. Depending on where you land, different scenarios can be trigger. You might encounter a random enemy, an NPC in need of help or fall into booby traps. Walking down the map you'll also encounter churches and towns which you can enter. The churches will raise your luck points for a fee of 300 gold (damn you indulgence!) while towns allow you to check into an inn to refill all your stats or buy weapons, armor and items. With both weapons and armor you have to buy the weakest alternative before you can upgrade to the strongest option, so if you want the Flame Sword, you first need to have bought at least the Short Sword. All the events in the game are shown in form of a still picture on the right side of the game frame. Even with the relatively small size of the illustration frame, Compile managed to put alot of character into these illustrations and they look quite good for essentially an 8-bit game from this era. Battles are also played with dices. When you begin the game, all you have is the dagger which gives you one battle dice. You engage in battle and roll a number and depending on the enemy's armor count, you have to roll high enough to deduct any HP. So say you face a slime which has an armor count of 3, in order to hurt him, you would at least have to roll 4 in order to take away 1 HP from him. As you win battles and earn money, you can go to towns and buy new weapons which will give you more dices and also bonus points which means that no matter what you throw, it will always add the bonus points to the number you rolled. Magic can also be used to allow one roll bonus points. The game becomes a bit unbalanced quickly as you don't really have to buy very expensive stuff before you are virtually invincible. As soon as you acquired a weapon and a piece of armor around 500 gold each, which takes 3-4 battles to save up, you'll be pretty well off for the rest of the game. The story isn't very detailed or well told. The basic gist told through small bits and pieces in the game tells the story that the Rune Master who lives in the Castle Tower is missing and the land has been filled with monsters. 4 warriors set out to reach the castle and rid the land of evil once and for all. Along the way you can also branch out into side missions and earn some extra cash, like saving the king's daughter from a dragon. When you have crossed the land and fought the many bosses you encounter, you'll finally get to the Castle Tower and fight the demon, a pink farting frog with a crown.
After defeating this vile creature from the depths of hell, the old Rune Master comes to congratulate you and gives you the Rune Ring and crowns you the new Rune Master who will protect the land from now on. What's YOUR price for beating the game however?
This dance. The little dance animation changes depending on which character is used to win the game.
It might not be much of an ending but the game definitely shows some serious potential. The shortcomings will all seem overcome able and the style of game play leaves a fresh feeling of intrigue to what could be done further if more time and effort was put into the product.
This game along with its sequels were never officially released in the west. The English versions were thanks to a Dutch translation group called OASIS who were among the first to ever do what would today be known as fan translations. The translation is a bit dodgy in places and it seems some text was cut out due to space limitations, but for the most part it is quite well done. If you wanna know more about OASIS and their history check out John Szczepaniak's Fan Translation article.
MP3: Download Here
Title Screen
Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master (MSX2)
Rune Master (MSX2)
Notice Demo
Pine
(Fighter)
Apple
(Magician)
Banana
(Thief)
Kiwi
(Priest)
Main Theme
Ending
Ending
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