EDITOR'S NOTE:
Oh no, not again, it's the curse of the resolution and screen size of the NES, arrrrgggghh!! Fortunately, this one's actually been made easy for us thanks to the Arcade Archives release of the Vs. System version. Snipping off the borders on that version and shrinking it down gives us a rather nice 292 x 240 which happens to be the same as Earthbound Beginnings so that seems about right- anything wider would be a bit too chunky. So, our screenshots here are HTML-resized from the 256 x 240 shots we took from Mesen (which handily defaults to the palette they use on The Cutting Room Floor) except the Vs. System version shots which are shrunk down from shots taken via the Playstation 5 with the annoying copyright info watermark edited out. Anything else, let's see.. Oh yeah, some story details are adapted from the fan translation and we included a few translated screenshots but most of our time was spent on the original version, more on that later. Oh, hang on, my writer stooge is making wild gesturing noises, they want to make it known that for this article as well as using Mesen they beat this game on original hardware- direct quote, "It was hard because I had to tip-toe around the Famiclone I have when going to the bog in case I accidentally made the thing reset"- so there.

Dare you climb this tower again?

Today, Gaming Hell leaves the Golden Armour at home to scale the Tower of Druaga once more, in The Quest of Ki.



So in 1985, shortly after the release of The Tower of Druaga, the game's creator Masanobu Endō left Namco to form his own game studio called Game Studio. Simple, right? However, he didn't just abandon Namco entirely- instead the company would develop games for Namco to publish, in particular the Family Circuit series of racing games and Hopping Mappy [I want you all to know, the writer did not believe Game Studio was responsible for this one, but they were wrong, very wrong. - Ed] but more importantly, they were able to continue the Babylonian Castle Saga Endō started at Namco by developing the rest of the main games in the series. Specifically, they developed The Return of Ishtar for the arcade in 1986, the 1988 puzzle-action platformer The Quest of Ki (today's subject, don't you know), the 1991 remake of The Tower of Druaga on PC Engine and the 1994 adventure game The Blue Crystal Rod. They're all pictured above in the order of year of release, isn't that fancy? There were of course games with the Druaga name past that point- the 2000 Game Boy Color card game Seme COM Dungeon: Drururuaga, the 2004 Mystery Dungeon spin-off The Nightmare of Druaga and at least one online game- but those four from 1984 to 1994 consist, to me at least, of the 'core' games of the series. It helps that most of the art in-game for these games is in the style of series veteran Yuichiro Shinozaki (as well as the box art for the most part, except for The Quest of Ki which was done by Marvel Land and G Gundam artist Kōichi Tokita, although Shinozaki did make some early box art for the game, as seen in the 40th anniversary artbook), so when I think of the Babylonian Castle Saga, it's these games I go to.



Before we get to today's game, though... We have to go back a bit, to an Atari arcade game from the early '80s. Trust me, this is going somewhere.

Released in arcades in 1983, The Adventures of Major Havoc is one of my favourite Atari games, fascinating in its own right as it combines multiple genres and even cramming in a game-within-a-game as you can play a round of Breakout between missions. We'll have to gloss over many of the details in the interests of time, but the important part of Major Havoc today is the third gameplay style, the platforming sections. Inside a maze of tight corridors and obstacles, Mr. Havoc has to navigate his way to the reactor, touch it to start the countdown and get out safely before it explodes. The jumping is not really like anything you'd expect, though- you can hold the button for as long as you like and Havoc will keep ascending until he bonks his head on the ceiling, at which point he'll plummet to the ground, either shaking his head as he lands safely before regaining conrol or, more likely, getting himself killed by glancing against something dangerous. You have to judge when you let go properly as well, because once you stop ascending, you'll drift down and won't be able to ascend again until you're safely on terra firma. Careful use of this unusual jump along with the roller controller for analogue movement (run too fast into a wall and you'll get stunned) are the key to getting in and out of the reactor maze alive! It's a game that I'm always happy to put a credit into (and it's more available than ever now, as it's on Atari Flashback Classics and Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration on modern consoles) and, well, I guess someone at Game Studio did too, because...



Five years later, Game Studio would take the basics of Major Havoc's platforming sections and make a whole puzzle-platformer out of it- The Quest of Ki.

This Famicom-only game (well, sort-of, we'll see an arcade revision later) serves as a prequel to The Tower of Druaga, explaining how Ki wound up being turned into stone and in the clutches of Druaga in the first place. Oh, you thought she was just kidnapped like some kind of damsel in distress? Absolutely not- she went up that tower herself first, and didn't need any gold armour or even a weapon. The Babylim Kingdom was peaceful under the rule of King Marduk, watched over in the sky by the Blue Crystal Rod placed there by the God Anu. However, Emporer Balarant conquered Babylim in a vicious invasion, and he ordered the people to build a tower to get the rod. Angered, Anu struck the tower with lightning to destroy it... Accidentally awakening the evil Druaga, who had been sealed inside the rod. Using his wicked magic to reconstruct the tower, he took the rod with him to the top floor. The Goddess Ishtar then entrusts the priestess Ki with a tiara giving her the power of flight, and a mission- climb the tower and get the Blue Crystal Rod back! What awaits Ki on the 60th floor...? Well, I've sort-of given the game away already, but that's fine.



So, the very basics are pretty much the same as those platforming parts of Major Havoc (this set of 2ch questions asked to Masanobu Endō even reveals the prototype name was 'Minor Havoc', bless) but with a few adjustments and extra abilities here and there. That tiara really does let Ki fly- holding down A lets her float at a decent speed to the top of the screen, and letting go lets her drift down slowly but you can't press it to ascend again until she reaches the floor to do another jump. Hitting the ceiling, as in Havoc, stuns Ki (she should really put on a safety helmet, like a lot of fanart depicts her wearing) as she drops in a straight line, and she also has to take a second before being able to move again afterwards, and the same happens if you hold B to run and let her collide into a wall. Yep, that's the basics of Major Havoc for sure! One major addition is that Ki can actually either delay or speed up her wakeup- mash A to get Ki up faster (be careful not to jump out of it- you'll learn the timing but it's tricky) or mash B to get her up slower. That doesn't sound like much but it's a very important technique that'll become vital on later floors of the tower, so be sure to try it out and learn how it works.

Now, at first, these controls will feel weird. The main thing you'll have to play around with and get used to is Ki's momentum and inertia, especially when it comes to running and jumping. Sure, she plods along at a reasonable pace when walking, but when running she becomes a little speed demon and takes a moment to come to a stop or turn around, if that isn't put upon you when you ram into a wall because you couldn't slow down fast enough. More importantly, jumping has a lot of start-up when you begin your ascent and when you land on the floor, so acting quickly to, say, dodge fireballs heading your way in a rhythm is actually a lot harder than it would be in contemporaries like Super Mario Bros. or Adventure Island. The key here is that once you spend some time with these mechanics, you realise you have a lot of control over Ki, especially in the air, and they'll eventually do everything you want them to do to get through each floor. Learning how long to hold down A to get the height you need without bonking your head, when to start and stop accelerating or correct your direction, how your speed is different between ascending and descending, these are things that come to you with practice, and while there's still a little slipperiness especially when running, I think the movement mechanics are just right, simple in concept and capable of doing what you need of them with mastery and patience. It feels super satisfying to pull off stuff like dynamic turns in mid-air, shallow long jumps to just skirt past danger and hop-skip-and-jumping your way past spike pits! The crouching after hitting a wall, as strange as it seems, is also pretty fun to pull off, ducking under fireballs by intentionally bonking your head and delaying your wakeup may seem like crouching with extra steps, but I think it's a clever way to do it and you'll need to learn it!



Of course, movement is one thing, but where The Quest of Ki really separates itself from Major Havoc is the general premise and, more importantly, the level design. This is all about the platforming, and the simple controls and concept are used very nicely to create a puzzle-platformer that starts of gentle and eventually becomes as brutal as you'd expect from a Druaga game. Each floor of the game has a key, a door and (sometimes) a treasure chest to pick up. Hey, at least you don't have to solve any diabolical puzzles to get the treasure beyond how to reach it, right? Grab the key, go through the door to the next floor, no problem. Each floor is, of course, littered with enemies and spikes that kill Ki in a single hit, and as is tradition for Druaga, there's a lot of foes, all requiring different approaches- from series mainstays like Slimes that hop around, Ropers that stand still and wiggle menacingly and awful, awful Mages to new, fiendish foes like Arch-Beholders (don't sue, Wizards of the Coast) that change their movement depending on whether you're holding the A button or not, Basilisks that turn you to stone if you meet their gaze and even Namco characters in the latter half of the game like Pookas, Mushlins and, ahem, the Stubbron Artisan / Ganko Shokunin, a real product who spouts motivational (?) phrases at you). The treasure chests are a bit different in that rather than a permanent upgrade, these only last for the floor you're on and act more like the spells from The Return of Ishtar, such as sending some enemies to sleep temporarily, removing specific enemies, disabling projectiles, score bonuses, speeding up the timer (as Ishtar warns at one point, don't pick up everything you find on the floor), empty boxes and even free flight, allowing you to press the A button mid-descent and just fly around. There's a nice variety to these treasures and they're used for pretty funny pranks the game plays on you that we'll get to later, so they're not just gimmicks, they're interesting wrinkles to take into account on each floor.

For the most part, I think the difficulty is just right for me. Once you get a handle on the physics, the level designs compliment them nicely and are bite-sized- these stages aren't massive or sprawling and there's only a handful of stages that you could call proper mazes. The focus of the challenge is on figuring out how to get to the exit with the key, factoring in the behaviour of the monsters, obstacles and treasures (and how to get them) along the way, then just executing it through your mastery of the movement mechanics. This is a very different challenge from the original Druaga, one that still requires you to try a lot of things, but it's all a lot more logical and transparent in a way, where you know exactly what's in your toolkit and you don't need to, like, bash your head against a specific wall to make a treasure appear or anything. Also in your favour, you've also got infinite continues until you turn the console off and can 'use' your lives to remove pesky enemies if you're struggling- most (but not all) enemies disappear for your next try after they kill you, so you can throw a few Kis at the floor to make things easier. This is a nice compromise, as it gives you a chance to get through a tricky floor but you can't just brute-force your way through the game as enemies are reset once you continue (and some enemies like the Will O' Wisps can't be removed this way) so you'll have to learn most of it. While there is a timer breathing down your neck, this is definitely a game for patient players willing to throw themselves at a stage a few times to figure things out, then just brush up on their execution, and while it can sometimes be frustrating, it's not the kind of frustration where you feel you can't win, you can do it in the end! This is especially true for the Special Floors, which are a really fun and interesting challenge, testing the limits of what you can do with this simple control scheme and even adding a new mechanic into the mix, winds that affect your aerial movement (something it has in common with Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels). I suppose if nothing else, the whole thing is a show of my patience for this kind of thing nowadays- failures in this game just get shrugged off as funny or mean in an amusing way, because it's so easy to pick yourself up and try, try again. Probably the only things I'd legitimately call 'unfair' are the frequent uses of Giant Leeches and Mad Elements, creatures that hide in the ceilings and floors respectively- that pop out when you get close with almost no telegraphing that are usually placed in spots where you're likely to crash headlong into them. A bit too memorisation-based for my liking, that.



I did just mention the Special Floors, so we may as well take a moment to talk about them and how they relate to the first part of the game. Clearing the 'canon' 60 floors of the tower gets you an ending, but continuing once you get back to the title screen starts the Special Floors, 40 more floors that are a significant upgrade in difficulty. These are the floors that make sure you know all the ins and outs of what Ki can do. However, I feel it's important to note that this doesn't mean the first 60 floors are a complete pushover. They definitely start very easy, gently easing you into how the game works, but what I like is that even in this 'easy' part of the game, there's pranks and tricks the game plays on you just like a Druaga game should. As a few examples, Floor 25 has an entire section to the right that's full of tricky manoeuvres and monsters to get through with a treasure chest at the end... That's actually a Mimic that'll kill you. Floor 33 has a treasure chest defended by Will 'O Wisps and a Giant Leech that's very difficult to squeeze past and, in the end, is empty. Floor 49 has a gigantic spike pit that rewards you with Poison that makes the timer run faster so you'll probably die. These are just a few examples, but I noted down quite a few little pranks like this before the infamously difficult later floors. Those last 40 floors though... They're great. The difficulty ratchets up a lot and demands a lot more of you with even more , and while it does test the limit of the mechanics (some require some extremely precise movement, such as the infamous Floor 98 that requires well-timed jumps and using the wakeup-altering tech), I think they do a great job as an 'expert mode' of the game. This is something that was a slight trend in the '80s, the idea of a super-hard version of an existing game being the official sequel (the arcade version of Super Xevious, Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, Hyper Lode Runner, etc.) but this game pulls it off a lot better- these extra stages are twisted for sure, but not 'I am giving up on video games forever' twisted. At least to me, I've got patience apparently.

That said, even my patience has limits, and I still think the cruelty of the 'warps' for the Special Floors is a bit too much- the friendly Quox that warped you ahead in the first 60 floors (allowing you to get to the Special Floors in about ten minutes) is replaced by the evil Black or Blue Dragon who chastises you for grabbing a warp then sends you backwards, usually very far. The Tower of Druaga had a system like this, but that was usually a punishment for screwing up so badly that you would've needed to restart anyway, but here your curiosity is punished in a way that feels a bit too mean compared to the other pranks the game plays on you. Setting one off by mistake can be absolutely crushing- when I was playing on real hardware I nearly set off the one on Floor 92 and had to pause, collect my thoughts, then slam Ki into the nearest set of spikes because, well, I was on the cusp of losing four hours of gameplay progress. You can at least cancel warps by dying or resetting the console fast enough, but I can absolutely see someone having their will to continue just wiped out by one of these- they should've paid attention to the Black Dragon, as on Floor 61 he tells you he won't let you warp ahead from now on but still, that's rough. It's a shame because as maddening as they sometimes are, I really like those last 40 floors, they're a fun challenge! Although going back to the subject of patience, it might also be worn a little thin by the presentation, as while the character sprites are nice (especially Ki and enemies like the Beholders and the Basilisk), the background and environment tiles never change, and the music is just the one theme throughout aside from the music when you pick up the Feather. Fitting for a Druaga game I suppose but somewhat behind the times for a 1988 release.



To wrap things up, I'm not going to lie and say this is a game for everyone. It's a Babylonian Castle Saga game, which means that it's going to play mean tricks on you, frustrate you a little, ask seemingly-insurmountable tasks of you and it's also a 4-hour sit, minimum, your first time. Probably even more. That said... I kinda love this game. Simple, easy-to-learn mechanics make this a game I'm willing to throw myself at a few times to clear a floor, and while there's definitely a puzzle element to it, as you do have to figure out how the layouts, monsters and treasures intersect and how to approach them to clear each stage, it's not like the original Druaga where you have to do really unintuitive stuff to progress. There's definitely a few elements I feel aren't quite as fun to deal with- 'gotcha' enemies hiding in the ceilings and floors as well as those backwards warps in the Special Floors that can just completely kill your run are the only things I think you'd need to look out for in advance. There's not a lot of games out there that really play like this, and marrying the Major Havoc mechanics with a little puzzle-solving is an excellent combination. Even when I was getting stuck and flabbergasted at some of the things the game was asking of me, I was really enjoying it! For some players, it may be a case of "their smile and optimism, gone" (I had to sneak in a mention of GameCenter CX, the episodes with this game, 54, 55 and the 9-hour livestream, are very famous) and if you find the tower's climb too much, that's OK. For me though, this is just the right kind of challenge, and if what I've said sounds interesting, give it a try, you'd be surprised how high up the tower you'll make it! Gaming Hell believes in you, just like it believes that Ki should really invest in a safety helmet.

For bonking its head against the ceiling then landing on a Slime, The Quest of Ki is awarded...

In a sentence, The Quest of Ki is...
A challenging climb up that cursed tower for platformer sickos.


And now, it's that time, folks!
EXTENDED PLAY!


If you wish to conquer the cursed tower yourself...

I highly recommend this Japanese guide which has maps for all 100 floors.

Good luck!


There's not a whole lot of rereleases and ports of The Quest of Ki, which is a little surprising, but there's a few to go over.



We'd better start with the big one, then- in 1988, Namco released Vs. The Quest of Ki in arcades.



Well, not just any arcades- as mentioned by ohfivepro, this and several other Namco games on the Vs. System (essentially an arcade-ified NES) were produced in very small numbers and only distributed among Namco's own-brand game centres. Pretty clever, really, I imagine it was useful as a way of advertising their home games to the arcade crowd! As a result, many of these are extremely rare, and some were only rumoured to exist until the Arcade Archives series got on the case, but more on that later (and indeed, our screenshots come from the Arcade Archives versions, just cropped a little).

For now, let's take a look at what's different here. The biggest changes relate to the Special Floors, as there's twenty (!) new twisted maps added for Ki to face and you can now start a new game from the Special Floors, and you can select from Floor 61 to Floor 119 (this screen appears to use a repurposed level select debug feature from the Famicom game which is neat). One of these new stages took me just under three hours to complete, so, yeah, they're rough. To fit these new floors in, they're slotted inbetween the normal Special Floors, usually every other or every two original designs to keep you on your toes. Finally, Quox's warps still exist, but to prevent players from lasting too long on a single credit, the ones from Floor 61 onwards don't send you back as far as they used to (and some even send you forwards!) which I would say was a change for the better if they weren't still cruel even in their nerfed state- the one on Floor 120 (previously Floor 100) merely sends you back to Floor 59. The rest of the game remains the same. The table below shows which stages are reused from the Famciom game, which are new, and where the warps take you. Floors 1-66 are the same as the Famicom game, and then it all starts to change...

Arcade Floor # Famicom Floor # Arcade Warp Famicom Warp
67
-
-
-
68
67
-
-
69
68
Forward to 117
Back to 51
70
-
-
-
71
69
-
-
72
-
-
-
73
70
-
-
74
71
-
-
75
-
-
-
76
72
-
-
77
73
-
-
78
-
-
-
79
74
-
-
80
-
-
-
81
75
-
-
82
76
Back to 57
Back to 44
83
-
-
-
84
77
-
-
85
-
-
-
86
78
-
-
87
79
-
-
88
-
-
-
89
80
-
-
90
81
-
-
91
-
-
-
92
82
-
-
93
-
-
-
94
83
-
-
95
84
-
-
96
-
-
-
97
85
Forward to 118
Back to 37
98
86
-
-
99
-
-
-
100
87
-
-
101
88
-
-
102
-
-
-
103
89
-
-
104
90
-
-
105
-
-
-
106
91
-
-
107
-
-
-
108
92
Forward to 119
Back to 28
109
-
-
-
110
93
-
-
111
-
-
-
112
94
-
-
113
95
-
-
114
-
-
-
115
96
-
-
116
97
-
-
117
-
-
-
118
98
-
-
119
99
-
-
120
100
Back to 59
Back to 19



Moving on... Oh, is that the shrill rattle of a lost feature-phone version from 2008? Sure is!



Released on March 1st 2008 via i-mode and March 31st 2008 via Yahoo! Mobile, there's not a whole lot of info out there about this one. From what we can gather from inside-games, Dengeki Online and Japanese Wikipedia, it seems to be a standard keitai port but with an arrange mode with completely new graphics, the ability to crouch at the push of a button, no more running but walking being faster, three speed settings, a replay mode for stages you've cleared and... 100 exclusive stages!? You can play these after clearing the first 100 or start straight from them if you're a Famicom veteran. I hope someone finds this version someday because while I'm not wild on some of those changes to the mechanics (being able to duck on command seems wrong), I really wanna see those extra stages!



Moving on, the next reissue of The Quest of Ki would be in the Japan-only Namcot Collection on Switch in... 2020?!



Yes, The Quest of Ki managed to dodge just about every other avenue of Namco Famicom games being rereleased- it's not on either of the Namco Anthology releases on PS1, it's not on any incarnation of the Virtual Console, it's not on any of those Evercade carts, it's not on Antstream, none of that. However, it was available in the third set of games for Namcot Collection, which lets you buy individual games rather than an entire collection. There's not much else here, really- you get to display the game's case and a plastic standee of Ki on your in-game shelf, plus there's a full set of scans of the instruction manual, and that's about it. Sadly, this was not one of the games included in either Namco Museum Archives Vol. 1 or 2, the international versions of this collection that bundled together 11 titles each and came out on Switch, PS4, Xbox One and Steam.



We'd have to wait a little longer for The Quest of Ki's international debut- the Arcade Archives version of Vs. The Quest of Ki, released on Playstation 4 and Switch in 2024.



As this game is currently publicly undumped for use in MAME, this was not only the game's first worldwide release, it was the Vs. System version's first wide release, well, ever. They even included the game's instruction card, which I was genuinely surprised by, it's nice to know someone at Namco kept one of those around. This has the standard suite of Arcade Archives options- the basic dip-switches, a Hi-Score Mode and 5-minute Caravan Mode (both of which allow you to pick either the first 60 floors or the Special Floors) with online leaderboards... As this is a Babylonian Castle Saga game, Hamster rolled out the red carpet in terms of extra features- an entire solution to the game (including item and enemy descriptions and maps for every stage that can be brought up at any time) is included. Very useful, that. You also get some Preference Options that allow you to remove the black space that appears when character sprites overlap, display visuals near the edge of the screen normally not visible and display the score, current floor number, key status and wind direction in-game (the score and floor use the in-game font while the key and wind indicators use custom graphics in the game's border). Writing about this version would've been impossible without both this rerelease and their livestream that lists the game differences (also in the manual) so ta, Hamster, my cheque for mentioning Arcade Archives at the drop of a hat is in the post, I trust.





Oh, if you want, here's all my streams playing through this Arcade Archives version of Vs. The Quest of Ki!

As tracked by viewer TheOpponent, it took approximately 17 hours, 16 minutes and 55 seconds (give or take half an hour) for me to beat this version.

2 hours and 52 minutes of those were on Floor 114.




One last thing before we go, let's talk about the fan translation of the game we used for a few screenshots in this article.

Created by Zynk Oxhyde, the same hero who created the Roll-chan series of Mega Man sprite hacks, their patch for The Quest of Ki comes in two flavours- one that simply translates the text found in the intro, Ishtar and Quox scenes and endings (with translation by Tomato- this is the version we've used for a few shots), and one that does that but also redraws a lot of the game's graphics to make it look more like The Tower of Druaga, which you can see above. The new Ki sprites are absolutely adorable, as to be expected, but I will be honest, I think recolouring the floors to be closer to Druaga is a nice idea in theory but in practice, it makes spikes a lot harder to see as they don't stand out quite as much. It's up to you, but players just starting out might find the Ishtar and Quox hints helpful (in the first 60 floors at least, later on Ishtar starts being silly and the evil dragons are just rude), so this translation could be a good starting point before you graduate to the Vs. System version.




I guess I'd better look at the rest of the games in this series in the future, huh...

THE WORLD IS (still) WAITING FOR THE RETURN OF ISHTAR