Heroes of the Lance (NES)

Heroes of the Lance

Platform: NES Year: 1990 Developer: Natsume Buy: Amazon

For other games in the series see DragonLance.

Heroes of the Lance is meant to be an action RPG based on the characters and settings from the Dragonlance book series. While the creators did include a great deal of references to the book series they did an awful job at making the game playable. Controlling your character is difficult to do, dieing is far too easy, monsters are annoyingly difficult, the menus are not intuitive, and the mapping system makes little sense. The game has a lot of potential because each character has their own unique abilities. Goldmoon can heal and resurrect, Raistlin can float and cast spells, Tasslehoff can disarm traps and jump well, Caramon is a great warrior, etc.

The game is often seen on lists of the top ten worst NES games lists. Most people that try to play the game never even make it out of the first room before giving up, let alone come anywhere near beating it. The game feels as though it was shipped far too early, but could have been fun if the developers had more time to work out the kinks. Fortunately, a much better sequel was released called Dragons of Flame (NES) which was pretty much a Zelda 2 ripoff. Unfortunately, it was only released in Japan.

Screenshots

The title screen. The heroes are introduced. Prepare for indigestion. For some reason the game puts a priestess on point! Checking Tanis's stats. Caramon battles with the smallest dragon ever.

Music

VGMPF Album Art

Of all the faults of this game, music is not one of them. The soundtrack is actually quite nice, especially the title music and victory music. The Boss music is pretty cool too because is speeds up as it goes on to make it more nerve-wracking. If only the boss wasn't so easy. The last track seems to be unused. It sounds like it should be used as a game over fanfare or when you get the bad ending, but neither section has music. Although the NES port does not have credits, the MSX port (which uses the same music) does, which is why this game is attributed to Seiji Toda. Iku Mizutani arranged Toda's music for the 8-bit NES. He did all of the sound programming. Iku's driver required the composer to write in hexadecimal and binary.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Arranger	Length	Listen	Download
01	Title	Seiji Toda	Iku Mizutani	1:07		Download
02	Section 1	Seiji Toda	Iku Mizutani	1:17		Download
03	Section 2	Seiji Toda	Iku Mizutani	1:09		Download
04	Section 3	Seiji Toda	Iku Mizutani	0:39		Download
05	Waterfall	Seiji Toda	Iku Mizutani	0:52		Download
06	Boss	Seiji Toda	Iku Mizutani	1:07		Download
07	Ending	Seiji Toda	Iku Mizutani	2:43		Download
08	Unknown	Seiji Toda	Iku Mizutani	0:04		Download

Credits

• Ripper: Gil_Galad
• Recorder: TheAlmightyGuru
• Game Credits:
  • Not Credited Composer: Seiji Toda
  • Not Credited Arranger: Iku Mizutani

(Source: MSX2 Credits, Verification from Iku, game lacks credits.)

Like many games at the time, the game lacks credits. This may have been a contractual obligation between FCI and Pony Canyon. Iku Mizutani has verified that he did the arrangements and created the sound driver. According to Mizutani, he had just started working for Natsume when the game was being developed.

Game Rip

Format	Download
	Download (Info)

Although Heroes of the Lance was only released in NTSC regions, most NSF rips online use an incorrect PAL timing. This rip has the correct NTSC timing.

Ripping NES music is a very arduous process that is beyond the scope of this site.

Releases

USA Title: Heroes of the Lance Platform: NES Released: 1991-01-?? Publisher: FCI, Inc.     Japan Title: ヒーロー・オブ・ランス (Heroes of the Lance) Platform: Famicom Released: 1991-03-08 Publisher: Pony Canyon, Inc.

Links

• mobygames.com/game/nes/heroes-of-the-lance - MobyGames.
• gamefaqs.com/nes/587335-advanced-dungeons-and-dragons-heroes-of-the-lance - GameFAQs.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Dungeons_and_Dragons:_Heroes_of_the_Lance - Wikipedia.