Megalextoria

Source: Game Player’s – July 1991 – Page 79 

It’s games like this that make you wonder how and why the decisions were made to develop it. In this case, the answer could only have been to make a quick buck. This game was released in 1991, very late in the life of the NES. Many late releases had excellent graphics, sound and game play because developers and learned every last trick with this system. But that was not the case with this game.

The first problem is that this game started life as a completely unrelated game called Myth: History in the Making for 8-bit computers. This game involved a time traveling teenager from the 20th Century who must save the world from the Dark Angel of Time. This was somehow morphed into Conan for the NES.

This in itself might not have been so bad if a good job had been done with the port, the graphics done well and the controls tweaked for the NES. However, this was decidedly not the case. While the review above from the July 1991 issue of Game Players magazine is somewhat critical of the game, they are still over generous. The graphics were poor, particularly for such a late game and the controls were not adapted well from the 8-bit computer versions. What may have made sense for a one-button joystick, wasn’t well suited to a two-button control pad.

This seems to have been nothing more than Mindscape’s attempt to turn a quick buck and the end of the life of the original NES. If you want to give this game a shot, I recommend the original 8-bit computer version of Myth over Conan. If you do want to try Conan, you’ll probably be paying quite a bit for an original cartridge if you go that route. It’s late release and poor reception make for a relatively rare game.