This is Console History, a special sub-series of my more general History Lessons series, covering console role-playing games, action role-playing games, Metroidvanias, and action-adventure games in nominally chronological order starting in the late 1980s. The chronology is garbled in the beginning as the scope of the series expanded, but it gets more organized later on. As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.
For those just tuning in, I’m taking a detour from the nominal timeline of this series. I say “nominal” because I’ve completely failed to be chronological so far. While I started out focused on early console role-playing games, this quickly expanded to include action role-playing hybrids, and now early Metroidvania games (including Metroid and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest themselves). Having learned about some more early titles that experimented with this nonlinear open world platformer style, I’ve gone back to play a few. That means that of the 24 games I’ve covered so far, Rygar is actually the 9th in order of Japanese release date. It arrived in April 1987, almost exactly one month after The Goonies II, which I wrote about last time. It only took three months to get a US release, however, meaning it actually made it to the States about four months ahead of The Goonies II.