Gate of Doom

released on Jun 01, 1990

Fantasy hack and slash game with a lot of digital speech. A diagonal scrolling action game allowing players to choose 4 characters including Knight, Wizard, Bard and Ninja.


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A top-down "arcade RPG" with co-op, four playable characters, and a neat "magic transformation" super that auto-scrolls between different selections. Love the vibes, but the awful hit detection and damage-sponge bosses are the nails in its coffin.

While I haven’t played all of them, I haven’t really been too impressed by Data East’s beat-’em-ups in the past. For what I have checked out, most of them feel very clunky, have a pretty bad flow when it comes to beating up your enemies, and the only redeeming aspect of these games would be with the ridiculous lines of dialogue and attitude of them, such as with both Bad Dudes and Two Crude. Thankfully though, with today’s title, we have found a Data East beat-’em-up that I actually like, because it feels like there is some kind of care put into it! Originally titled Dark Seal, Gate of Doom is more of a unique take on the genre from the company, and it is one that I had a pretty good time with while playing it. Of course though, as is tradition with Data East beat-’em-ups, there are several elements that I didn’t end up liking, and it did hinder my experience in several parts, but none of that stopped me from enjoying myself, and I am glad that I ultimately decided to check it out.

The story is your typical fantasy one, where you have to seal up a portal to the underworld and kill all the baddies as four legendary heroes, all taking place in your typical fantasy setting, so there is really nothing to get excited by here if you have seen or played any other fantasy anything, the graphics are fine, but it does have that Data East look about it, being very crunchy overall, which doesn’t bother me that much, but if you have played any other arcade game from the company, you pretty much know what you are going to get, the music is actually pretty great, having a lot of solid tracks, each of them fitting well for the environment and the situation that the players find themselves in at the time, the control is solid enough, with a basic setup that one can easily pick up and learn quickly, even though there are some issues with the movement that I will get to in a bit, and the gameplay features a lot of what you would expect from a beat-’em-up, but it is mixed in with plenty of other elements that make this game quite different from others both then and since.

The game is like a mix between a traditional beat-’em-up and a dungeon crawler RPG, where you take control of one of four warriors of varying classes, go through plenty of dungeons, caverns, and what have you, take out many different classic medieval enemies that will try to stop you on your path, gather plenty of items, potions, and points to help you out on your journey, and take on ferocious bosses that will give you hell along the way. At it’s core, it is very similar to every other beat-’em-up ever, but what makes this game stand out would be with the presentation. The game has a top-down perspective, which gives the game that authentic dungeon-crawler vibe, and there is also status ailments that you can get throughout the game, which may suck, but they also give the game an RPG vibe as well, which you can’t really say about most other games from this genre.

What also makes the game much more interesting, for me, would be with the special moves. Yeah, most beat-’em-ups usually have some kind of special moves that you can use to take out plenty of enemies at once, but in this game, there are multiple ones, symbolized by these icons in the book above your special meter, and whatever icon you see in the book at the time, you can transform into it giving you an advantage. Going through all of these special moves whenever you get the chance to see what they do is one of the best parts about this game in my opinion, with there being plenty of transformations that help out quite a bit, such as a tornado one where you take out plenty of enemies in your path, a giant rat with an army of smaller rats that you can sick on people, and even a giant Medusa head that allows you to turn your enemies into stone. Although, there are one or two transformations that don’t really help out whatsoever, such as one where you turn into… a pig. There isn’t anything special about it, and you can’t attack as it. It is just… a pig. Guess you could say that transformation is a load of hogwash (kill me now).

With all that being said though, there was quite a bit about this game that kept me from enjoying it more then I did. First off, your movement speed is pretty slow, which isn’t that big of a deal, considering that levels themselves aren’t that long, but I would’ve liked it if you could move a little faster, or even getting a dash button of some kind. Secondly, the setting of the game overall is pretty boring. It is your basic generic fantasy world, which isn’t always a bad thing as long as you do something different or unique with it, but this game does none of that, aside from one boss that you fight later down the road, but that really doesn’t count. And finally, at points, this game can get pretty damn difficult, to the point at times where it isn’t even fair. For example, there was one boss that was a big, red dragon, and it seemed like, no matter what attack he threw at me, it always insta-killed me, whether it be its fire breath or shooting fireballs, and I was constantly dying and continuing as a result, which is not really something you want to do in a game like this, but it really did feel out of my control in instances like that.

Overall, despite the boring setting, sluggish movement speed, and the at-times bullshit difficulty, I still had a pretty good time with Gate of Doom, with how many different, unique elements are blended together for the time it came out, as well as how fun it is to use your transformations to take out your foes, and I would consider this to be the best beat-’em-up from Data East that I have played so far. I would recommend it for fans of the genre, as well as those who didn’t really get into Bad Dudes or Two Crude, because you will probably find something to enjoy about this game, if you don’t go in expecting a masterpiece. Although, the reason why this game was changed to Gate of Doom, and the reason as to why they didn’t stick with the original Dark Seal title, is something I will never understand.

Game #343