I finally beat Fire Hawk: Thexder the Second Contact today, after playing it on and off for a few months, and was absolutely blown away by it -- Game Arts did an outstanding job with that game, and any owner of an MSX2 or higher who has yet to play it definitely owes it to themselves to give it a shot, as it's easily one of the most fulfilling and well-designed platformers I've yet played on the entire system.
That said, I've been looking into other Game Arts titles from that era, and came across a lesser-known action RPG/platformer/Metroidvania called "Zeliard" that I've never heard of before. Looking up footage of it, it seems like a pretty kickass game all around, and is absolutely something I'd want to play -- especially since, by the looks of it, it shares its basic game engine with Fire Hawk, just repurposed for a different gameplay style. Everything from graphic tiling to movement to enemy behavior seems very much akin to Fire Hawk in its design, and even the music has the same sort of sound to it (which is, of course, an awesome thing!).
The problem is... Zeliard never came out on MSX, despite being two years older than Fire Hawk. As far as I can tell, it came out for the PC88 in Japan and for DOS in North America (and Japan?), but that's it. And that seems a little odd to me, since Game Arts games of that era were typically multi-platform and included MSX -- and Fire Hawk got an MSX port, despite being a technically more advanced game that seemingly shared a lot of code.
So my question is, does anyone know if there was ever an MSX port planned for Zeliard? Maybe a prototype in existence, or a fan-made port? Or has there ever been any word from Game Arts as to why Zeliard never got an MSX release?
I'm just really fascinated by this game, and figured some of you guys might know a bit more about it.
Here's a longplay of the English MS-DOS version, BTW:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkAnWnfmQCM&list=PLA16562F31...
Thanks, for any answers any of you can provide!
-Tom
