Sword of Sodan

released on Dec 31, 1989

Like Søren Grønbech's other game Datastorm, Sword of Sodan was most noted on the technical side, as the sprites were large and distinctive-looking. Your task (as either a hero or heroine) is to dethrone the tyrannous Zoras the Necromancer, and avenge his killing of your father. There are 11 levels to take on, with indoor and outdoor settings. Your character has a range of sword-slashing and jumping moves, which must be used to their full effect if you are to make progress. The game features digitised sound and speech, as well as an action-replay feature, an unusual concept outside sports games at the time.


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Not good, but nowhere near as bad as its reputation suggests.

The Amiga version seems way better than the Genesis port, but I cannot figure out how to get Amiga emulation to work so I'm stuck with the booty ass Genesis port.

Recently, greatest youtube channel of all time Classics of Game returned after two years of radio silence, leading to me taking another trek through their back catalogue, leading me to remember "Oh Yeah, I've Played this Game Before! I should log it!"

One of the least fun things I've ever played! Play as Conan as he shish kebab's strangers in the cock for eternity to the pleasant sounds of birdsong! Meander on through neverending stages of this until you die after 5 minutes out of boredom. How EA escaped the 90s publishing nothing but garbage like this is beyond me.

Sometimes I just find myself utterly fascinated at the fact something like this was given a retail release. There are some poor schmucks out there who not only actually saw this nonsense in the flesh on the shelves of a Babbage's or whatever the hell store there was back then, but also spent real money on it. Imagine being that kid. Imagine doing chores and shit to save up money for a visit to the game store and you spend your hard earned allowance on Sword of Sodan, or Bart's Nightmare, or anything on that level. Isn't that sad? There were no forum threads, videos, or even any internet at all to really guide you on the quality of something, the best you had was dinky magazine reviews and the screenshots on the back of the box! You could've spent that money on any single game in the store and you happened to choose one of the worst games ever released! How did people manage back then? I'd cry! I'd bawl my eyes out!

A few days ago a friend of mine on Discord showed me an article about Sega producers wanting to reject Gunstar Heroes due to it's lack of large sprites. I immediately pretended to be one of the executives and yelled "SWORD OF SODAN IS THE GREATEST GAAAAME!!!" (should you italics a title in a quote? hell if I know. I'm still on the fence about italicizing game names to begin with)

After that was when I had the insane idea to re-visit this thing.

Sword of Sodan has large sprites... but that's literally all it has, because the large sprites are ruined by how horrifically choppy the animation is and the characters all walking like they shit their pants. The gameplay is horrendously monotonous and stiff as a board with you either constantly stabbing people in the chest or stabbing them in the dick. If you wanted a side of cheapness to go with your monotony, then you've come to the right place because Sword of Sodan also features terrible insta-kill traps in the later stages to make sure your frustration goes through the roof along with the final boss taking five-hundred million hits.

The game's biggest claim to fame is probably the gore, there's these giant tall dudes you have to kill via decapitation. It was probably gnarly for back then, but this game spams it so much that you'll be numb to it after probably the sixth time it's happened, and that's ignoring the fact it's 2022 and you've probably seen the Ermac fatality in Mortal Kombat X where he telekinetically takes out the guys intestines.

The worst thing about this game though is the absolutely fucking trash sound design. If the monotony of the gameplay won't get to you, then it'll probably be the thousandth time you hear the same exact grunt sound the enemies make from getting hit, and if not that then probably the horrendous shrieking sounds from the flying demon enemies dying. By the way, were you expecting any music? The only thing here is the title screen music, otherwise go ahead and immerse yourself in the unnatural synth sound of birds chirping in the background.

It really needs to be seen to be believed. It's utterly laughable.