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サイバリオン
©1992 Toshiba-EMI
Licensed by Taito Corp.
Release: 1992-07-24 (¥8600)
Cartridge SHVC-SY(TOPN-2002)
Shooter / Multi
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Released in Europe as SYVALION
( SNSP-SY-ESP )
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Syvalion is a multi-directional shooter by Toshiba/EMI and conversion
of Taito's arcade game of the same name originally released in 1988.
The player takes control of a Syvalion,
a powerful segmented metal dragon that can melt down anything (including enemies) with
his deadly flame breath attack. The fearless machine also has the incredible
ability to attack and move in any direction. This feature
is a core element of the gameplay and levels are designed like massive
mazes with many directions to go, surrounded with walls and all filled with hostile enemy forces.
However, the dragon has a fundamental weakness - the fire he breathes is limited,
and a fire bar located at the bottom of the screen slowly
vanishes as he uses his main weapon. As expected, stages get larger and larger as
the game progresses and are capstoned by boss battles.
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The original arcade game was released by Taito in 1988. Syvalion
was also ported to the Sharp X68000 japanese computer, and was also included in Taito
Memories Vol.1 (Playstation 2, 2005). It is interesting to notice that Yasuhisa
(Yack) Watanabe composed the musics for the original arcade game. Any shooter fan
will probably be familiar with his name, he is part of Team Zuntata, and composed many
game soundtracks for Taito, such as Gun Frontier, Master of Weapon,
Metal Black and worked on many other Taito games as a BGM composer. He also
composed the soundtrack for the horizontal shooter Border Down released in 2003 (arcade, Dreamcast).
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Although Syvalion was released in Europe (and therefore translated in English),
its release was ultimately canceled in the United States. The game was however mentioned in the
Nintendo Power magazine from April 1993 (vol.47) and was slated to be published by
JVC, who also published the European version (picture on the right). As a side note, the European
version is really scarce and really expensive today (it had a very limited release and was
apparently only available in Spain).
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G
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Japanese Phonecard
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O
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Click on picture to enlarge |
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
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Syvalion is a complete disappointment. No doubt that the original concept and
designs are very clever, and the golden dragon is simply gorgeous. However the game
suffers from really bad controls. Walls are like giant magnets, and the dragon just
keep hitting them. Yet, after some training, things sort of get better but
are still imprecise and overly frustrating. This is a shame, the difficulty of the
game is greatly increased because of the lame controls. Syvalion could
have been a great title to add to the thin list of shooters for the system,
but it fails to deliver the goods...
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