4.5/5 ★ – lupincentral's review of Demons of Asteborg.

Blast processing at its best. Despite missing out on the initial Kickstarter campaign, I decided to order a cartridge version of “Demons of Asteborg” after reading about it online. I grew up obsessed with the SEGA Mega Drive, and still have a strong affection for older games, especially those of the 16-bit era. I picked up an Analogue Mega SG a couple of years back, and still fire it up (alongside my Super NT) on the regular. Seven or so months went by before my copy arrived, and I am happy to report that, it was worth the wait. “Demons of Asteborg” is a technical showpiece for everything that I love about SEGA's 16-bit system. The visuals are gorgeous, with some detailed sprite animations and background parallax scrolling that is up there with some of the very best I have seen running on the hardware. Players take the role of Gareth, a knight out for revenge against the demon that killed his mother. Gareth's hunt takes him across the kingdom, traversing fields, mountains, swamps and more. Bosses can be found waiting for him at the end of each stage, presenting new gameplay challenges and stunning visuals for the player to enjoy. There are shades of other games here, in particular Castlevania (which is referenced prominently towards the end of the game). The key difference comes from Gareth's magic abilities. A new ability can be found in each stage, and only lasts for the duration of that stage. At first, I found this to be disappointing, as it felt strange to start a new stage and lose the power up I had worked so hard to find in the previous one. In the long run, however, I felt the game was better off for this. Each new stage is designed with its ability in mind, and therefore the game is constantly evolving to match. There's variety at every turn, and I only ever found it repetitive during later levels, when repeated sequences pop up on two occasions. A special shout out must go to the soundtrack, that has some good crunchy Mega Drive sound to it. The tracks range from classic style tunes from early in the consoles' life, to more European sounding tracks (that personally remind me of Matt Furniss' work). There's also some impossible sounding tunes, like the invincibility theme, that sound far too good to be running on thirty-odd year old hardware. It's an audio treat from start to end, and some later tracks in particular (such as the castle and cave themes) really fit the heavy metal monster action going on in-game. Although “Demons of Asteborg” is playable (and cheaper) on modern gaming systems such as the Nintendo Switch, there's just something special about playing it on original hardware. It is incredible to think, something that released way back in 1988 can still pull off visuals, sound, and gameplay on this level. In my opinion, it matches the quality of many modern retro-inspired indie titles, and seeing it run on the hardware first hand, for someone as obsessed with retro hardware as much as I am, is magical. 9/10