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• Last Update: June 02, 2012, at 09:53 AM
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The first-person dungeon crawler has an interesting history on console systems. One could easily argue that RPGs owe their existence to games like Wizardry; the Apple ][ version of the game has been cited as the direct inspiration for Dragon Quest, and many Japanese developers of the ‘80s discovered the entire role-playing genre through Henk Rogers’ Wizardry clone The Black Onyx. The dungeon-crawler was absorbed and filtered and reprocessed by Japan and transformed into something completely different, and it’s primarily this distillation that the West associates with Japanese RPGs and console role-playing in general. Yet the console-based dungeon crawler lives on as an enduring niche, albeit one that’s rarely exported to American or European shores.

Even before Etrian Odyssey gave the world a taste of a properly modernized child of Wizardry, there have been exceptions. Shining in the Darkness kicked off a franchise that thrives even to this day (though without Camelot’s involvement, it’s sadly degenerated into otaku-bait), and of course Revelations: Persona laid the foundation for Atlus’ modern prosperity. Easily forgotten in the mix, however, is 1992’s Arcana for Super NES.

Arcana is a product of HAL Laboratories from their pre-Kirby days, the era where the company drifted almost aimlessly from genre to genre in search of a hit that never came. HAL’s output in those days varied wildly in quality from deplorable (Fire Bam) to commendable (The Adventures of Lolo) to nice try (Captain Skyhawk). Arcana, fortunately, weighs in at the better end of the scale. It’s no masterpiece, but it was a good foundational effort that helped set the stage for the Super NES’s eventual RPG dominance.

As the title -- a clever choice of localization for Japan’s prosaic Card Master -- suggests, Arcana is a game built around cards. They’re not actually tarot cards, but no matter. The game predates Magic: The Gathering and other CCGs by a few years, but its inspiration seems to come from the same place. Each character in the game, whether hero, villain, dungeon monster, or companion ally, exists as a card. Exploration takes place through a first-person view, just like Wizardry, though HAL made no attempt at wrangling smooth scrolling out of the Super NES hardware so early in the console’s life; players advance grid-by-grid.

The conceit of the card-based aesthetic helps make this feel less clumsy than it might otherwise, as it creates a sort meta-game context for Arcana’s exploration. The cards also serve as a cheat to help graphical performance, forming a sizable frame around your field of vision -- only about a third of the screen actually contains the dynamic dungeon or battle view, while the rest is a semi-static border of cards and descriptive text. Battle is fairly standard turn-based fare, with an emphasis on scarcity of resources and elemental rock-paper-scissors. Defeated characters are depicted as torn cards, which is a nice touch -- though considerably less kind is the fact that you’re only allowed to lose elemental companion cards. Should Rooks or any of his other human allies die while in the dungeon, bam: Instant game over.

But what did you expect? It’s a first-person dungeon-crawler; that’s not really a genre known for its forgiving nature. As old-school RPGs go, Arcana feels almost forgiving. And the card aspect may be a gimmick, but it makes for a nice aesthetic. A classic? Nah, but fondly remembered nonetheless.