Below the Cut: Flying Warriors (NES)

(Source: Tomorrow's Heroes)

Flying Warriors - Rating(7 RPP)
1) 3 - Character Advancement: practice/experience based advancement, stat or level increases, multiple classes or characters, customize characters
2) 2 - Combat: character stats used for combat, additional combat options, turn based
3) 0 - Items and Equipment: store to buy and sell, equipment decisions, item decisions
4) 1 - Story: main story at the forefront; world full of hints and lore; descriptions for objects, people, and places
5) 1 - Exploration: open world from the beginning, visited locations remain open
6) 0 - Quests and Puzzles: side quests not related to the main quest, puzzles and riddles to solve

Flying Warriors is another Culture Brain game--the company that's doing its best to blend genre lines by mixing in RPG elements before anyone else--which has brought us The Magic of Scheherazade and the up coming Little Ninja Brothers. I'm not sure any of the Culture Brain games did exceptionally well, but we really don't see them hit a series until Little Ninja Brothers (also known as Super Chinese).

This title doesn't quite make the cut though, as it has a lack of NPC interaction, town/stores to buy and sell items or equipment to, and puzzles to solve. It does offer some innovative leveling and character combat stats for a beat'em-up / platformer. We won't quite make the transition into RPG-beat'em-up yet. Once again, I'm sure we'll get there, but it just hasn't happened yet.

For those looking to play this game, it's one of many games available for free on Virtual NES, online Java based NES emulation. No need to download anything, just have Java installed and play.