#mystic ark

[scampsaccount]

some akihiro yamada art i love

[nintendometro]

The Japanese commercial for 'Mystic Ark' on the Super Famicom.

[transparencyboo]

I recently played through Mystic Ark (1995) each night before bed during the last week or so. I initially saw a promotion for the game next to Terranigma (a longtime favorite) in a Famitsu magazine earlier this year, and got mesmerized by its Labyrinth-esque cover artwork in particular. I immediately knew I had to play whatever this was.

So I took the slowburn approach by first going through The 7th Saga and Brain Lord, two previous games by developers Produce. While not remotely essential for this venture, they still gave me some neat context and groundwork for the game's roots. I think they ultimately helped me appreciate this game all the more.

In Mystic Ark you wake up alone on a desolate eerie island and need to travel to different worlds in search of the titular arks to grow stronger and regain your freedom. These worlds act as self-contained stories with distinct vibes, genres and presentation. It's a delightfully novel idea for a game to take an anthology approach, and I wish more games would attempt this because it's highly effective in keeping up intrigue and wonder. Every time you depart for the next world is a big mystery and you usually need a moment to piece together what each new tale is gonna be about.

For example, the first world is a light hearted tale about war and conflict told through two rivalling factions of pirate cats. The game sees you meandering in back-and-forth fetch quests to support both sides' advances towards the same goal, it has a lot of cheeky humor about this and presents itself in a very cute and endearing fashion.

Another story has you enter a mysteriously abandoned world devoid of even monsters, only populated by a few orphaned children who play in a ghost town by day and then go home to a mansion run by a suspicious nun. As you go along with their antics and babysit them out of dangerous situations, the situation only keeps getting stranger.

One world in particular locks you inside a horror story without your party members, as you work your way through a labyrinthine haunted house by solving puzzles interspersed by ominous scribbles by a paranoid previous resident. The atmosphere hangs heavy and the suspension has you on needles, it's a lovely showcase of Mystic Ark's core concept that it effectively pulls these twists and turns without ever feeling jarring.

One aspect I enjoyed in particular was the semi-point and click flavour in your interactions with the world. Many points will pull up an extra menu with a nice picture of what you're looking at and various options of how to fiddle and prod at it. Supposedly the 1999 Playstation sequel Mystic Ark: Maboroshi Gekijo leaned even further into this, and I'm not at all surprised. Would love to play it whenever someone decides to translate it or I get good enough at Japanese. Whichever one comes first.

Mystic Ark is a gorgeous and rich experience that continuously rewards the player for sticking with it. Even though the individual tales all have satisfying conclusion, the game still maintains a lot of mystery by keeping the finer points untold. You rarely get the full picture and that only helps to make you keep wondering. The ending to the game itself is as vague as it begins, and allows for many different interpretations. My take is that the game, through its anthology structure, tells us about the many little worlds we can find all around us, the stories that reside in anything. The worlds are entered by interacting with regular objects like a ship model, a painting or a storybook, and recurringly we must return to the island to gather figurines of lost actors in the stories to progress. I think Mystic Ark emphasises the player's power as a sort of story teller, fiddling with the plots in interesting ways, to build a genuine interest. At the end we are seemingly encouraged to take this depiction of narratives and inspiration to go out into our own world and find our own stories to tell.

It's a mesmerizing all-timer and for sure a new favorite of mine. /Kiki

(Extra note: The game was only released in Japan, so I played a fan translation. There are two of them and after some comparison I went with the one by Dynamic Design because it felt a bit more vibrant and inspired in its word choices. Your preference may differ though and they both seem to be good.)

[lesbovalentine]

i’ve already posted about starting mystic ark because the art for it entranced me even though the game itself, being a 1995 nes game, looks wildly different

but do u know how it hurts me that its weirder looking sequel has not even a single fan translation i can find to its name. the best i can do is learn japanese and watch the single japanese playthrough of it i found on youtube which is clearly a normal achievable goal for ur girl who cant finish projects of any sort

[kimimithegameeatingshemonster]

Hey, have you ever wondered what the little known 3D adventure-leaning PlayStation sequel to the 2D SNES RPG Mystic Ark was like? Great! This article's for you:

[h0neytune-cherub]

Akihiro Yamada

[aytonai]

The Secret of the Ark

[conceptmobius]

World of Sonic: Underexplored

[judahmaccabees]

The Compendium of Mystic Truth, the Final Words of The Lord

Freely given, so no one will ever own what they don't own again

[swan2swan]

Dangit, Mei-Lin, shie's a DOCTOR, not a...well, not that kind of Doctor. She's a Professor. A Paleontologist. Not a woodsman.

[foxyheels]

Atlantis and Lost Civilizations Pyramids The Ark of the Covenant Sorcery and White Magic Vampires and Werewolves

Audio Renaissance Mystic Adventures Audiobooks on mp3. Part of the Audio Renaissance (R.I.P.) library of the late 80s. Find on Etsy.

[transparencyboo]

Alicia gifted me one of my favorite games for my birthday. 😎

[lesbovalentine]

i was just gonna take a pic of this new enemy but. then i saw the new prompt of “create figurine” anyways i now have a doll of “undead troll” and i have no clue what to do with it

[chaotix]

did my best to transcribe these entries from the screenshot of gerald's journal. here's what it roughly says:

"Entry #170

I dechiphered the engravings on an [redacted] I found on a previous dig in the Mystic Ruins Jungle and calculated the location of a fabled floating paradise. I went alone to verify my findings and was rewarded with the spectacle of an angelic island.

The land was vast, lush, and hosted a number of biomes in close proximity to each other. I believe I could see an entire floating city at one point. Most majestic of all was a shrine devoted for what appeared to be a massive [redacted]. Could this be the legendary "[redacted]"?

I dared not approach or overstay my welcome. As much as I wanted to explore every inch of the island, I felt it was a sacred land; just setting foot on it's soil felt taboo. I don't know if any civilization remains — the land is vast and my stay was brief. But the majesty of that emerald and shrine will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Entry #185

I am about to embark on the most ambitious project of my life. The Earth's first orbital space colony will be the ninth wonder of the world! It will be a place of science researching all manner of things to improve our home below. Seeing as it is a vessel meant to preserve life amid the harshness of space, I have christened it the "ARK". It will be a vessel to pass on the value of life and peace for the next generation. ( And while most of the infastructure will be hidden within the base planetoid, I may have gone a little self-indulgent in the designs, ha ha!)

The real concern is the source of the funding. While the United Federation supports us, most of the financing is coming from [redacted]. I have no illusions about what they'll want, but I'm building the ARK to preserve life, not end it. While I have my concerns, I am a genius so I'm sure I'll figure something out when the time comes."

[h0neytune-cherub]

Akihiro Yamada, Mystic Ark Artworks