The Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion need your help...Scarecrow's missing and the Emerald City's in trouble!Team up with the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion as they travel the Yellow Brick Road in search of weapons and magic spells. Help them defeat their enemies and the Scarecrow from the Emerald Palace. The fate of Oz is in your hands!Collect the entire inventory of Magical Tools to aid you on your journey to rescue the Scarecrow. Be sure to keep your wits about you if you want to send your enemies running. You never know what you might find along the way. Remember to keep your eyes open!FEATURES:
- A whimsical fantasy-adventure featuring those familiar character from the Land of Oz.
- Colorful and engaging 3-D graphics throughout.
- Challenging battle sequences.
- Collect the complete inventory of Magical Tools.
- Point-and-click navigation combined with a multitude of QuickTime movies to animate your travels.
- Hours of fun for the entire family.
~ from the back of the US box
There's a long list of adaptations of L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz books. There plenty of movies (this year we were blessed with Wicked For Good at cinemas) but when it came to video games, I couldn't think of many. A little research tells me they are out there - the SNES platformer, the J-RPG on the Nintendo DS, the WadgetEye adventure - but today I want to talk about a game even more obscure than those. Yellow Brick Road, a bizarre adventure-RPG hybrid created by the Japanese Synergy in 1995, is just the right kind of weird piece of obscurity I tend to wish for when clicking my heels.
The game continues Baum's Oz continuity, but only in the loosest, vaguest sense. It's not specifically stated, but through context clues, I assume you play through the eyes of Dorothy. You clicked you silver slippers (no MGM license here) to revisit Oz, only to find it is once again in trouble. A new evil threatening the Emerald City - the Gnome King, a villain who you may remember from Return to Oz. The Cowardly Lion has been tied up, the Scarecrow ran to the city for help, and the Tin Man has gone to get his axe.
 |
 |
Finding the famous characters will have them join your party (left).
They will then be available to fight grizzly bears and gnome guards (right).
This is when you arrive, and before long, all three will join your party. It's a good thing too as up until now, Yellow Brick Road has been nothing more than a first-person adventure game. By the time you free the Cowardly Lion chained to a boulder, you would have encountered your first fight. A turn-based fight not dissimilar to a Final Fantasy battle of the same era. The transition between the two is jarring, going from a leisure stroll on the lemon-coloured path to a time-sensitive battle. The translation of the Japanese manual (I couldn't find the English one) makes it clear these modes are meant to complement each other, but in practice they feel like two separate prototypes welded together.
The adventure sections play from a first-person perspective with static screens. The only button you'll ever need is the left mouse button, which performs context-sensitive action. The cursor will change depending on what you can, but I imagine most everyone will find it not just intuitive but almost insultingly simple. With bright, primary-coloured locales, these section are mostly aimed at young children - fitting considering the IP. There are no real puzzles, and any blockages you may come across are not far away. Those switches, keys and battle items are so obvious to find, they might as well be in front of you. And in most cases, they literally are. Items are automatically used too, removing even the slightest hint of puzzle difficulty, which is a shame.
 |
 |
The beetroot-shaped Kabu-kun Brothers get everywhere in Oz (left).
They often hide important stuff like this key needed to open a locked door (right).
Combat, however, is where the game suddenly changes tact. Battles are turn-based and played on a small isometric playfield. Our three allies stand in a line on the bottom right while up to three enemies gradually inch closer in front of them. None of them have a health bar, and attacks don't do any damage at all. Instead, they push back the danger until they're so far away from you they give up and run away. If they get too close, however, it's game over.
Each character can attack on their own; the Tin Man has his axe, the Cowardly Lion his claws and the Scarecrow throws his hat. Beyond this, you can find battle items in the game world. These cannot be used by all allies, for example the Tin Man cannot use the Crown while the Scarecrow cannot use the circular saw. These weapons are often unusual, but all they really do is add to the combinations of attacks you have. You see, enemies have weaknesses against some attacks and immunities to others. Battles play out less like a tactical offence, and more like a game of trial and error to see exactly what their weakness is. And if you don't find it quickly, you will likely lose the fight.
 |
 |
You will be flashed character data before battle starts. It would be useful info if it stayed up long enough (left).
The aim of the battle is to find the right attack to push back each enemy before they reach you (right).
What truly makes Yellow Brick Road memorable is not its gameplay, but its sheer oddness. It technically follows Baum's world, yet feels disconnected from it emotionally and tonally. The story never goes deeper than the surface of surface level, and characters are barely defined. The voice acting does a lot of the heavy lifting, but the choices they make borders on surreal. The Tin Man speaks in a slow monotony, the wordless Cowardly Lion sounds less like a feline king of beasts and more like an anxious barking dog, and the Scarecrow inexplicably channels something uncomfortably close to Mickey Mouse. Combat clearly exists to pad out an otherwise extremely tiny game, giving it an illusion of depth over an actual.
Despite the fact that the game was popular enough in Japan to spawn releases on the PlayStation, Saturn and - even more obscure - the Pippin, Yellow Brick Road isn't much of a game. A fascinating curio, maybe, but not something anyone would rave about. It did garner two Japan-exclusive sequels that have yet to be honoured with a fan translation, and I'm tentatively excited to see how they progress from here. Perhaps as a whole the trilogy would feel more like a complete package, but as it stands, Yellow Brick Road is at once overly short, overly simple, and overly convoluted.
To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox running Microsoft Windows 3.1 to get the game working on modern systems. Japanese language Manual and Picture Book as well as a machine translated English Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 10.
File Size: 455 Mb. Install Size: 710 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ
Download
WINDOWS 3.1
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Yellow Brick Road is © Synergy, Inc.
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me
Like this? Try These...
Looks awesome in the pictures, thank you for bringing all these gems back to light and sharing them with the rest of us. Merry Christmass, god bless you and repay you for all your efforts and skills.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know you you also enjoyed Wicked: For Good and aren't shy of saying so, unlike some cool kids. It's fine; it will still make it into the Oscars next March.
ReplyDelete