Equinox (video game)
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| Equinox | |
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| Developer(s) | Software Creations |
| Publisher(s) | Sony Imagesoft |
| Release date(s) | 1994 |
| Genre(s) | Puzzle |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | SNES |
| Media | Cartridge |
Equinox is an isometric 3D action–puzzle-hybrid video game for the Super NES. Also known as Solstice II, it is the sequel to Solstice, a Nintendo Entertainment System game.
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[edit] Plot
Shadax, the wizard hero of Solstice, has been captured and imprisoned by his former apprentice, Sonia. It’s up to his son Glendaal, the only man with the magical powers strong enough to defeat the evil sorceress, to journey through eight levels and hundreds of rooms of tricky platform jumping and block sliding puzzles to rescue him from the Sonia's icy fortress.
[edit] Gameplay
Each level plays out in a similar way. Glendaal moves from room to room looking for ‘tokens’ (blue orbs), twelve of which must be collected and brought to a boss area where they enable the ‘summoning’ of one of the game’s boss characters. Each of these must be defeated to enable progress to the next area. To aid the player in their quest, one projectile weapon and one magic scroll is hidden on each level for Glendaal to find. Colour coded keys/gates and block-shifting puzzles abound. Most levels contain a number of entrances which are accessed from an over-world map, home to a sparse collection of wandering monsters.
Software Creations originally intended Equinox to feature villages and NPCs in the manner of a Japanese RPG, but time-constraints saw these ideas jettisoned for a more streamlined arcade adventure design. Although other RPG elements remain (health and magic points which increase after each level; the collection of weapons and spells), Equinox is generally not considered an RPG.
[edit] Levels
Galadonia: You start the game without any weapons or spells in a typical castle-dungeon environment. This small level culminates in a battle with Bonehead, a giant skull.
Tori: An underground cavern. A highly atmospheric dripping water sound effect and excellent music compliment the first appearance of movable block puzzles. The boss is Sung Sung, a rock monster.
Deeso: A Mayan/Aztec temple, where the game starts to show its teeth. The boss, Quetzacoatl, is a 5 segment stone pole that gradually decreases in height as you hit it.
Atlena: An underwater level, dressed with seaweed and with a translucent rippling filter that covers the whole screen. Tranquil harp music completes the effect. Pincha, a giant crab, is the boss here.
Quagmire: The game’s most original environment, Quagmire looks like an abandoned stately home infested with swamp-life. The music here is extremely eerie and ambient, completing the rich atmosphere. The boss is the aptly named Dollop, a big blob of slime.
Afralona: A bland Egyptian temple. Eyesis, a spinning pyramid, is the boss here.
Ghost Ship: A very large and irregularly shaped pirate ship, complete with creaking timbre sound effects and a swaying camera. Billy Bones guards the exit, a cannon wielding skeleton.
Ice Palace: The final dungeon has just one entrance, and continues in a linear fashion through halls of ice, accompanied by the distant sound of rushing wind. The wicked Sonia is the game’s final boss.
[edit] Graphics
The graphics in Equinox do their job admirably while falling short of the sort of detail and subtlety seen in many Japanese games of the era. The use of bright primary colours is slightly heavy-handed, and tends towards gaudiness, while animation in all but the main character is limited (it’s interesting to note that Nintendo themselves designed and animated Glendaal, and sent the results to Software Creations for inclusion in the game). The main graphical improvement over the first Solstice is the increased size of everything, from baddies to stone blocks, and this in turn has necessitated the use of 8-way scrolling to accommodate the larger rooms. Boss enemies, as mentioned, are impressively large.
[edit] Sound & music
All Software Creations games were a treat for the ears, but Equinox is probably their finest achievement. Sound effects are atmospheric with appropriate use of echo, from Glendaal’s footsteps to the impressively heavy sound of a stone block being pushed across a stone floor. Dripping water and distant, rushing wind sound like they should and add immeasurably to the atmosphere of the game.
The music by Geoff and Tim Follin is inventive and original, holding its own against the better-known compositions of Japanese chip-composers like Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy) and Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger). The style is hard to pin down as it mostly avoids the usual route of simulating ‘real’ instruments, opting instead for a warm synthesizer sound, like something from a 1970’s kids TV series (a darker version of The Clangers perhaps). About 70% is purely ambient, consisting of seemingly random bleeps and strange noises played at low volume. Short tunes drift in and out of the wash, the only exception being the boss battles which play to constant, thumping electronica.
[edit] Problems
The collision detection in Equinox can be very harsh, using a grid system whereby Glendaal dies if any of his pixels moves into a square containing a ball of spikes, even if he doesn’t appear to touch them. When coupled with the unfamiliar isometric perspective and unintuitive controls (pressing ‘up’ moves you in a NE direction, ‘Left’ moves you NW etc.), this can become the cause of many deaths. The fixed 3D perspective is also used by the designers as a stick to beat the player with, playing on the fact that a high block at the front of the screen looks to be in the same position as a low block further back. Also, barely signposted invisible doors make a couple of the levels harder than they should be.
It should be noted that, despite its faults, Equinox is a highly playable game and well worth seeking out via emulation or better still as an original SNES cartridge.
