“GET ALL FIRED UP... FOR THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME!”
That’s a bold promise for any game, but in the late '80s, video game ads thrived on bold promises. Enter: Hydlide for the Nintendo Entertainment System—a game that dared to mix dragons, magic, medieval mayhem... and one of the most iconic cases of love-it-or-hate-it RPG history.
📜 Published by FCI (Fujisankei Communications International), this ad screams classic fantasy vibes with its comic book-style art: A horn-helmeted knight stands defiant, shield glowing, as he clashes with a two-headed dragon that’s breathing what looks like pure pixelated rage.
🧝 What Hydlide Promised Us
According to the starburst of features right on the ad:
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ROLE PLAYING
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ACTION-ADVENTURE
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PASSWORD FEATURE
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2 SPEED LEVELS
It almost sounds like a proto-Zelda or an early Ys game. And in a way, that’s exactly what Hydlide was trying to be—an action-RPG where players explored a sprawling world, battled monsters in real time, and gradually powered up to take on the evil forces threatening the kingdom.
Released in Japan in 1984 and hitting North America years later, Hydlide was one of the earliest RPGs available on the NES, predating many genre-defining giants.
🐉 What Hydlide Actually Was
Now, here’s where the retro crowd divides like the Red Sea. Some players fondly remember Hydlide as their first exposure to RPG elements: leveling up, managing magic points, and learning the brutal trial-and-error of early game design. Others… well, they remember it more like this:
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The game starts off with you literally dying if you take one step too far.
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There’s no clear direction. At all.
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You have to manually toggle between “Attack” and “Defend” modes.
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That music. That endlessly looping theme song. Once you’ve heard it, it’s burned into your memory forever.
Despite that, Hydlide deserves respect as a pioneer. It paved the way for what action-RPGs would become and showed just how ambitious games could be—even if it meant frustrating the player into throwing their controller.
🔍 A Closer Look at the Ad
There’s something charmingly over-the-top about this artwork. Our hero’s got that Conan-meets-Spartan look with a mini-skirt and horned helmet, swinging his sword against a green-scaled monstrosity. This wasn’t just selling a game—it was selling a legend. A cartoonish, slightly clunky legend—but a legend all the same.
Also: shoutout to the "Password Feature" being a huge selling point. Remember when not having to restart the entire game from scratch was considered a revolution?
🎮 Legacy of Hydlide
Today, Hydlide is mostly remembered as a curiosity—often the butt of jokes in retro gaming circles. But let’s be real: it walked so that The Legend of Zelda could run. And if nothing else, it taught an entire generation of players two things:
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Save often.
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Don’t judge a dragon by its pixel count.
✍️ Final Thoughts
Hydlide might not be the "adventure of a lifetime" it claimed to be, but it is a time capsule of early console gaming ambition. And this ad? A perfect slice of 80s fantasy hype, back when game boxes promised epic tales and delivered... well, something mostly epic.
🧠 Got memories of Hydlide? Did you conquer the dragons or rage-quit at the first slime? Share your story in the comments—bonus points if you can hum the theme music from memory.
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