In 1983, Kenzo Tsujimoto founded Capcom after being forced out of his own previous company. That company was Irem.
Tsujimoto was a good businessman (pretty obvious when you look at where Capcom is 40 years later), and as a good businessman he did the obvious: scouting who he thought was Irem's best game designer for his new company. That man was Takashi Nishiyama.
Nishiyama's first game was the "golden age" classic Moon Patrol, but his next game was even more important: a Jackie Chan movie adaptation called Spartan X, and renamed Kung-Fu Master in the West. Kung-Fu Master is basically the origin of the beat'em up genre. You walk from right-to-left (and then left-to-right), beating the shit out of absolutely everyone who appears. And it's great! It's hard to think of a better video game concept (except maybe shooting things of course).
So, what about Trojan? Well, Trojan is basically a conceptual sequel to Kung-Fu Master. Except this time you're not playing a karateka dude (or Jackie Chan), but a warrior armed with a sword and a shield fighting his way through some sort of post-apocalyptic future (a very 80s' setting).
It seems a bit derivative at first, but in the sword and shield lay the true ambition of Trojan: it's a game about spacing and blocking. Like in Kung-Fu Master, when you're not mowing down legions of mooks you fight tense boss battles, usually one-on-one. At that point learning to use the block button and being wary of the bad guy's range is incredibly important.
Well, on paper. In execution, it doesn't work as well. Trojan is janky as hell. Crappy hitboxes, uneven difficulty, dumb strategies involving button mashing,... It's not good. It's not a completely terrible game, it can actually be a fun time-waster at times, but it doesn't realize its ambitions at all.
Looking back at Nishiyama's career as a whole, it wouldn't be fair to dismiss Trojan totally. It's not very interesting to play, but the building blocks for greater things were already there. It was still a long way to go though.
Tsujimoto was a good businessman (pretty obvious when you look at where Capcom is 40 years later), and as a good businessman he did the obvious: scouting who he thought was Irem's best game designer for his new company. That man was Takashi Nishiyama.
Nishiyama's first game was the "golden age" classic Moon Patrol, but his next game was even more important: a Jackie Chan movie adaptation called Spartan X, and renamed Kung-Fu Master in the West. Kung-Fu Master is basically the origin of the beat'em up genre. You walk from right-to-left (and then left-to-right), beating the shit out of absolutely everyone who appears. And it's great! It's hard to think of a better video game concept (except maybe shooting things of course).
So, what about Trojan? Well, Trojan is basically a conceptual sequel to Kung-Fu Master. Except this time you're not playing a karateka dude (or Jackie Chan), but a warrior armed with a sword and a shield fighting his way through some sort of post-apocalyptic future (a very 80s' setting).
It seems a bit derivative at first, but in the sword and shield lay the true ambition of Trojan: it's a game about spacing and blocking. Like in Kung-Fu Master, when you're not mowing down legions of mooks you fight tense boss battles, usually one-on-one. At that point learning to use the block button and being wary of the bad guy's range is incredibly important.
Well, on paper. In execution, it doesn't work as well. Trojan is janky as hell. Crappy hitboxes, uneven difficulty, dumb strategies involving button mashing,... It's not good. It's not a completely terrible game, it can actually be a fun time-waster at times, but it doesn't realize its ambitions at all.
Looking back at Nishiyama's career as a whole, it wouldn't be fair to dismiss Trojan totally. It's not very interesting to play, but the building blocks for greater things were already there. It was still a long way to go though.