Astal (SAT)
Two years ago, I wanted to get into streaming, but I didn’t have the means to do so at that time. So, I started to do Let’s Plays on my YouTube Channel (Which are unlisted now, but I might put them back up) with my very first Avatar and the first game I decided to do was Astal for the Sega Saturn, but the Japanese version.
Astal was released to the US on September 27th on the Saturn, and I feel it’s one of the best games on the system. However, it’s one of the games that was made more difficult when it was brought over here in a trend that was happening because of video game rentals. The major changes were you only had 2 continues instead of unlimited, and you only had three hits before you died instead of five. They also didn’t bother to translate the things Astal says at the start and end of each level. They did at least translate the dialogue so I guess that’s a good thing. One peculiarity about the game was when it was released here in the US the spine didn’t have the game’s name on it for some reason.
And everyone is voiced by Lani Manella. Yes, that one. The voice of various characters like Rouge the Bat, Omochao, and Bubsy in Bubsy 3D.
This, plus the game being 2D when 3D games were the new thing made the game not sell well, plus being a Saturn exclusive wasn’t helping things as the Saturn didn’t sell as well here as it did in Japan. The box art also was kind of hideous looking as was the trend for American box art for anime looking games in the 90’s.
As for the game itself, you play as Astal, a boy who has no chill whatsoever and is the violent protector of a girl named Leda. These two were created by the Goddess Antowas to populate the world of Quartalia. Leda created life, and Astal pretty much brutalized anything that came near her, in the narrator’s own words “Astal protected her fiercely, sometimes too fiercely. Astal brought Leda shame and sorrow. But she loved him, Leda loved Astal.” And this wasn’t helped by an evil god named Jerado who wanted to take over Quartalia creating his own person, named Geist, who kidnapped Leda. Of course Astal went after her, and in the course of trying to rescue her destroyed the entire ocean.
Needless to say, he saved Leda but Antowas was pissed that he messed her world up, and banished him to the moon. This is something I will bring up much later. Oh, this all happens in the intro cutscene, before you even see the title screen of the game. At the Title screen, you can wait a bit and a little music video giving one last little bridge to the story will come on and in the US version the lyrics were taken out so it’s just an instrumental piece. it shows Leda getting kidnapped again, Astal brute forcing his way off of the moon he was chained to, and landing on the planet like a meteor. Since this was the first let’s play I ever did, and I was learning editing I decided to look up the translated lyrics to the song (Which luckily I did find but they are a very rough translation I imagine) and add my own subtitles. I’ll embed the video here for your perusal if you so desire.
Now, for the game itself, Astal has several moves you can perform, and they mainly focus on grabbing and throwing. It’s not as fleshed out as Mischief Makers though, as you can’t hold anything. As soon as you grab an enemy, you toss it. You can also inhale and blow at enemies to stun larger ones and kill weaker ones, jump on them for the same effect, pound the ground to stun anything on the ground, do a dashing throw and do an overhead smash when you jump in the air. And the graphics are gorgeous looking, it really shows what the Saturn was capable of when it came to 2D games.
Look at how good that picture looks. And it looks very good moving as well. The sound quality is great too, this game has a fantastic soundtrack with one song in particular standing out as being amazing to me. We’ll get to that later, but there is something I forgot to mention. Halfway through the first level you run into a bird in a cage with some goons guarding it. And of course, the first thing out of Astal’s mouth is him saying “Get out of the way.” Which sums up his character perfectly.
After you kick their asses and free the bird, Astal promptly tells the bird to piss off and take a hike and the bird ignores him. So you have a sidekick through the rest of the game, and a very helpful one at that. The bird can be controlled by the second player so this is a two player co-op game which makes things fun.
The bird has several functions accessed by the X, Y, and Z buttons on the controller. There’s a meter in the middle of the screen that lights up with panels and that powers the bird’s moves. Certain enemies will have little sparkly orbs around them, hitting them will fill the meter and depending on what’s going on, the bird can do different things. If the left circle above the meter lights up, you can press X and the bird will go and get a health power up for you. if the meter is one spot to halfway full, the bird will get you a red fruit that gives you one health back. Halfway to full you get a green fruit that gives you three health back, and if it’s full and you have full health I think that triggers the bird giving you an extra life. this doesn’t matter as much in the Japanese version because of the infinite continues and you start right at the level you left off at but it really matters in the US version only having 2 continues.
If the middle light turns on, you can press Y and the Bird will do something that is specific for the level you are on. Like in the cave level with the bats, it will get rid of them for a moment to clear your way. Mostly this will pop up in the boss fights where the bird will interrupt the boss’ attacks to help you. Each time it does this it will take up 2 panels on the meter.
And the right light will let you press the Z button and the bird will just attack all the enemies on screen. if it’s half full the Bird will just streak around leaving a trail and bounce around the screen. If it’s full, the bird will split apart into several different copies and they will all bounce around the screen for a bit. And whenever the meter is empty, the bird adorably sits on Astal’s shoulder and rests.
So, let’s go over the Levels and talk about the story as it progresses.
Level One: The Journey Begins
Typical first level, just a flat stretch of land for you to play around in and get used to the controls and Astal’s movement. One thing I didn’t mention was you can double tap the controller to run and Astal is one slippery guy when you get him going. That’s how you do the dashing throw I talked about earlier. Just run to the right, get the bird, and run to the right some more.
Level Two: Into the Darkness
A dark cave level, where there is a ceiling of bats that move up and down to try and block you off and damage you. The Bird is very helpful here, as they can clear the bats for a moment in time. You also meet enemies who only get stunned by your weaker attacks, and have to be thrown or smashed to defeat them. There’s times when the cave goes dark also, and all you can see is Astal’s eyes like in an old cartoon.
Level Three: The Evil Eye
First boss and as first bosses go, it’s pretty easy. Just a larger version of the eyeball bats in the previous level, but there’s a cool little cutscene where Astal looks up at the moon and it turns into the boss. As he flies around, just smash him and toss him. Sometimes he summons smaller bats, but the bird can be put on patrol to destroy them as they appear. After you knock half his health down, he looses his wings and begins to bounce around. This is slightly more difficult because he might bounce in an erratic pattern but it’s not that bad. One thing to note is the bosses have health bars that are represented by a large crystal that gets smaller and smaller as you hit them. After you beat the boss and Astal leaves, Geist appears and takes the energy of the boss, and then teleports away. Very mysterious action. Anyway, cutscene time!
Our first story scene and it’s pretty simple. Astal ruminating about giving a savage beating to whoever kidnapped Leda and telling the bird to piss off or he’s going to eat them. This is the start of Astal’s Character arc, where all he cares about is getting Leda back and still being very violent. Even when being this violent was what got him banished in the first place and got her kidnapped again. And even though the bird is helping him, he sees them as a nuisance and wants them to go away.
Level Four: The Deep Forest
Here’s where we start platforming, as there’s lots of jumps to make and you have to make sure not to fall into the water as it harms you. Thankfully it doesn’t kill you in one hit and also if you fall in and take damage, it pushes you up so you can try to get out. You will also learn to use enemies as platforms as you can jump on the flying ones and bounce off them. Not too difficult, but this will show the platforming to come.
Level Five: The River of Dreams
This level steps up the difficulty and in the US version this is the first place where you’ll probably get stuck. The gimmick is that you are on some kind of dragon/turtle monster thing and you have to ground pound on it to make it push you up into the air, as there are plants that can harm you that you have to jump over and duck under. And you’ll need the creatures high jump to get you over some of the obstacles. Later in the level a fish will begin to jump up in front of the creature which will make it start to push you up in the air when you might not want to be there, so you have to jump to make sure it doesn’t shove you up into the air. A tricky level and the only auto scrolling one in the game.
Level Six: The Forest Fiend
The second boss, this one a large plant that tries to smash you with it’s bulb like a large fist. It stays in place at first and tries to hit you, fire seeds at you, and make large plants grow to try and trap you in a place to hit you. The bulb will sometimes lower down so you can hit it, and you can also smash it after it tries to smash you. At half health, it will uproot itself and begin moving from side to side. It will use the same attacks, it’s just harder to hit because it’s moving around. After you defeat it, the boss’ energy, looking like a gray circular light will rise up and drift away to somewhere… But I’m sure it’s nothing. Time for another cutscene!
We get to finally meet Jerado, the big bad of the game as Geist shows him Astal and we learn a few things about what’s going on.
- They don’t actually have Leda with them
- The monsters that Astal has been fighting are somehow making Jerado stronger with their defeat.
So the bad guys don’t actually have the girl with them which you’d expect she’d be trapped there, with this game’s theming probably in a giant crystal or something. We also see why Geist is collecting the energy of the bosses that are being defeated. I like Jerado’s design a lot. Just a big chubby monster man with horns and fangs sticking up. I like Geist’s design as well. Just a guy in black robes with long blond hair. It’s simple but you can see he’s the guy that’s going to give you a lot of trouble right off the bat
Level Seven: Volcanic Valley
At the start of this level, they show a little scene of Astal using his breath attack to blow out a wall of fire, and this is something you need to learn to use in this level and the next one. This level, being the middle of the game, changes things up by having a level, then a boss, instead of two levels and a boss for the next four stages. As you make your way around the valley, you’ll be blowing out fire dragons and enemies so you can attack them, as you’ll take damage if you try to grab an enemy on fire. Near the end you’ll see an immense rock that you can lift up which will shield you from the rocks falling from the sky that a volcano is spewing out. This calls back to level one, where you could lift up giant trees and throw them at enemies that I forgot to mention. At the end of the level you can throw the rock into the background and it will land on the top of the Volcano, blocking it off and capping it.
Level Eight: Guardian of Fire
Here’s another boss, and it’s a dragon made of fire. So you need to use what you learned in the previous level to attack it, making sure to blow the fire out first. The head detaches and shoots fire out all over, but the body is what you need to hit. It follows a pretty simple pattern. It will dive at you, land and the head detaches to attack. This is when you can blow the body out and attack it. After a bit the body will crumble to the ground and you have to blow out the head to finish the dragon off. No cutscene here, off to the next level… the hardest level in the game.
Level Nine: Sea of Clouds
I hate this level so much. But it’s the most awesome level in the game. The music is the best, the look of it is so cool, and I like the idea of it. But good lord, this is the level that will really give you trouble in the US version. Much like the title of it, this level is just platforms over a huge bottomless pit. The entire level is in fact, a giant bottomless pit so if you mess up a jump, it’s a life lost and back to the start since there’s no checkpoints in this game. You have to time your jumps and deal with enemies flying around. The only thing that really helps you in this level is you can have the bird fly into some moving platforms and make them freeze in place for a bit. But there’s a couple of blind jumps and you really need to pay attention to where Astal is on the screen, especially if you have him running. Welcome to the second half of the game where they take the kid gloves off and up the challenge. This game has cheats, and one of them is Invincibility. However, all it does is turn off collision detection so if you have the code on and fall to the bottom of the screen, you’re stuck there and have to restart or use the code that takes a life away and restarts the level. So you can’t even cheat your way through this level.
Level Ten: The Behemoth
This boss is intimidating looking with his huge body and large horns but he’s a breeze compared to the level that we just went through. He runs and jumps around, and tries to impale you with his claws. You can run up to him and throw him when he stops and his horns curl forward to attack. Not too hard, you just have to make sure if he does get his horns out and begins sticking them into the ground, you should stay away because you can’t throw him, you have to grab his head to do that. Now that he is finished, we get another cutscene. But not before seeing the behemoth loose his horns first, and then turn into a ball of energy and float off.
So, in this one we get Leda talking to Astal and getting to the root of his problem. Astal is so protective of Leda he doesn’t trust anyone and has no compassion. And we’ve seen it plenty of times before, mostly with Astal’s interactions with the bird. She almost pleads with him to relax and chill out as the cutscene ends, Astal looking like he’s once again trying to drive the bird away by throwing rocks at them? Jesus Christ Astal…
Level Eleven: Glacial Rift
Well, we had the fire level, it’s ice level time complete with ice physics and slippery floors. You also have to watch out for avalanches that dump snow on you, and in the middle of the level a huge bridge that breaks down behind you as you try and cross it. As you run across the bridge, you need to be mindful of the enemies that get in your way. Luckily when you jump from a running start, Astal keeps running when you land so you can keep the speed up. Also, we’re back to two levels and a boss so the level structure is back to normal for the rest of the game.
Level Twelve: The Crystal Palace
Here’s a level that’s totally inside someplace, like the cave way back when. This level is pretty straightforward, the one thing you need to be careful of is when you enter a space with tall, thin columns you jump across, they are going to tip over when you land on them so keep moving across because usually there are going to be spikes at the bottom. One thing I forgot to mention, there is an enemy in the game that is a creature with a giant diddle hand that tries to grab your bird. If you smack it, it goes away, but if it grabs the bird it leaves and you’ll be alone for a while. You never loose the bird permanently, but the thing usually comes at a part where having the bird would be very helpful. At the end, you can make the bird knock down three stalactites to make getting over a large pool of lava easier.
Level Thirteen: Frostbite!!
Well, Astal gets trapped by some strange being and you have to fight this boss as the bird. Luckily, the bird has a much smaller hitbox and is a hell of a lot faster than Astal so you can speed around the room. the bird also has a dash attack, and a three hit combo with a peck, a wing slap, and then a kick. You have to land all three hits of the combo to take off a health point of the boss though. But the boss gets stunned at the first hit so once you land one, you’ll land them all unless you stop. The boss itself mostly swings from side to side of the room, can turn into a tornado, and will summon enemies to hassle you. The bird can also dash around with the C button so they’re pretty maneuverable. After you beat the boss you free Astal and he has a small chat with the bird, and also this leads into the next cutscene.
Jesus narrator lady, relax. So after this, we see Astal finally starting to like the Bird, even thanking them for their help. He then tells the bird to now hang around him, as he wouldn’t want to see them get harmed. But of course, the bird follows him anyway. In the cutscene, the narrator lays the biggest guilt trip on Astal, since it is his fault that everything got messed up because of him and for the first time in his life, Astal realizes “Hey, I really fucked everything up.” and begins to cry at that fact. Allowing himself for the first time in his life to be vulnerable and show his feelings. And the bird stays with him and comforts him as he does this. The bird is never given a name in the game, by the way.
Level Fourteen: The Plains of Destiny
Giant bugs. That is all. Well, maybe there’s more. The level starts with you having to walk under a huge centipede and avoid it’s feet as they come down. After that, there’s another bug that is walking, but the feet are in a wave like pattern you have to stay under so you don’t get stepped on. After this, you get chased by a third bug, but a giant jewel comes and destroys it. Geist then appears in the background and begins chucking the same giant jewels at you, and you have to hide behind large rocks to avoid taking damage, and avoiding the enemies in the way. The jewels do destroy the enemies on screen though so Geist is just so intent on killing Astal he doesn’t care who is in the way. When you get to the end, you fly off to do battle with Jerado’s second in command
Level Fifteen: Destiny Unfolds
Now, we fight Geist but first…
Geist gives Astal the lowdown on what we already know, but tells him and us how it works. Basically, all the bosses we fight were parts of Jerado’s body. Which is why the bosses looked the way they did (eye, hand, horns, things like that). But of course, since Jerado is complete he has no need for us and it’s time to fight. You fight Geist on a small platform, and you die if you fall off the edges. His attacks are the giant crystal he was throwing at you in the previous level which will hit one side of the platform or the other, so I like to stand in the middle and run in the opposite direction. His other attacks are to snap his fingers and summon his balls (Phrasing) and they can either fire a beam straight down, bounce around, or shoot lightning down at you. After each of these attacks, he will pull the balls towards him and kick them at you. At this time he is able to be hit as he will be on either side of the platform. You can also have the bird destroy the balls when they appear. Halfway though the fight, the little scene in the second half of the video will play (Where Geist is lamenting he can’t win and the platform rises up in the air higher). From here, Geist will actually try to dive kick you, summon balls in an arc over to you to try and hit you, and the other attacks he did previously, but he won’t throw the huge jewels at you anymore. He actually makes himself more vulnerable as he will be at the platform more, especially when he does his dive kicks. After you beat his ass, He’ll fly off to the castle floating in the background. Time for the final level!
Level Sixteen: The Fight for the Future
So, after Geist’s failure, he’s done away with and we finally meet Jerado face to face. He makes the usual bad guy speech about owning the world and all that, and stomping right on top of Astal. One thing I like about this scene is after he says the world is his, he says “I’m so Happy!” It’s kind of goofy and silly and I really like that. But of course, Astal just picks his ass up and throws him to the ground, making a huge hole. This isn’t enough of course, we have an actual boss fight to do.
Fighting Jerado is pretty tough, as he doesn’t present himself with a lot of times to be hit. He teleports in the background and his main attack is to send crystal dragons at you that you can attack to make sure they don’t hit you, or you can have the bird hit them. His other attacks are to throw a large rock at you to try and crush you, and just pop up and try to punch you in the mouth (Which is my favorite attack as he just tries to belt you one). When he goes to punch you, you can grab his hand and throw him if you are quick enough, (The look on Jerdado’s face is priceless) and the other way you can hurt him is sometimes he’ll throw a jewel that turns into a tree and you have to toss it into the background. You can only hit him with the tree when he’s forming one of his crystal dragons otherwise he just teleports away. It’s quite the battle, but when you defeat him, he falls into the hole and Jerado is very, very dead. Time for the ending where we finally learn “Who was Birb?”
So, there Leda is. She was with us all the time. How did it happen? No idea. They don’t explain it really, just saying it was Jerado’s dark magic. And so with the ending, the Goddess wakes her ass up and chats with them, praising Astal for learning compassion. One question I have to ask and something that bugged me about the ending all this time was the Goddess talking about compassion, but where was that compassion when you chained Astal to a moon and sent him off into space, bitch? But of course there’s no answer for that, all she does is say “Hey, thanks for saving the world, here’s the power of creation, bye!” and she leaves. It’s just as well, all the bitch did was sleep anyway.
And that was Astal, a fantastic game for the Sega Saturn. As much as I am a fan for the Saturn, I think this game would have been more popular if it was on the PlayStation. Or, if the gaming media at the time didn’t shit on every 2D game that came over here since 3D was the new hotness. But I would recommend this game for anyone who likes platformers, good looking games, and rocking sound tracks. If you need a physical copy, get the Japanese version. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than dropping (as of this writing on 9/5/23) $250 for the US version. or you could just play it by… other means.
So that will just about wrap this up, my first big article for my blog. I had a lot of fun writing it and looking though the game again. it is one of my favorites for the Saturn. Too bad it didn’t sell that well, it would have been interesting to see a sequel, though that wasn’t the end of Astal. He popped up a couple of times in the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comic book a little cameos here and there, but that was about it. It’s a shame really.
