Rusty (video game)

Rusty is a side-scrolling action game^[1] in which the player takes the role of Rustea "Rusty" Sprincul, a vampire huntress who together with her owl companion investigates a case of women who have disappeared from various villages in the countryside.^[2] The player fights against enemies such as skeletons, zombies, and many other monsters, as well as the large boss characters by using the player character's whip and items they find in the stages; additionally, the player's owl companion helps the player by attacking enemies for them.^[2] By jumping and attacking at the same time, the player can use the Mind Slasher - which is a "power crash" move that differs depending on what power-up they are currently using; these moves include slowing down time, shooting exploding energy balls, or becoming temporarily invulnerable. In addition to its use as a weapon, the player can also use the whip to swing from golden rings found in some of the stages.^[1]

The game consists of ten stages,^[3] of which eight are based around finding keys to unlock doors; the seventh stage involves quickly making one's way through the area, and the tenth is a boss-only stage. Stage designs are non-linear, with paths that loop around, and alternative routes with hidden rewards for the player to find. However, in contrast to the game's stage design, a timer is included. The stages include a village, a graveyard, a manor, a cathedral tower, a cavern, a water-filled labyrinth, a courtyard, a clocktower, and Bloodsoon Castle - itself divided into several stages. Every stage ends with a fight against one of the bosses.^[1]

Many women have been abducted from various villages throughout a European countryside, and have been transformed by demon possession into hideous monsters, who are known as the Eight Fiends. Responsible for performing the sacrilegious act is Bloody Mary, a vampiress who is Queen of Bloodthorne Castle. Assisting her is a mysterious masked hunter named Gateau. Along with creating monsters, the two are also using the blood of women to resurrect the ancient vampire Monte Carlo, the Master of Bloodsoon Castle who has been deceased for 300 years. Being implored by the townspeople and the village elder, Rusty Springcul sets out to rescue the girls, and vanquish the evil terrifying the land.

The game was developed and released by C-Lab in July 1993 in Japan for PC-98 with MS-DOS.^[1][3][4] It was produced by Masayoshi Koyama and directed, programmed and written by Naoto Niida, and features music by Masahiro Kajihara, Kenichi Arakawa, and Ryu Takami.^[4] It was never released officially in English, but received an unofficial English translation patch in 2017, 24 years after its original release;^[2][3] the English version was developed by the ROM hacking group 46 OkuMen, who had formed to translate the game 46 Okunen Monogatari: The Shinkaron before going on to translate other Japanese games. Kotaku was impressed with the efforts to translate the game, and noted that it was unusual for games more than 20 years old to get translations.^[3]

A demo version of this game exists. The 5"2 HD floppy disk that came with the November 1993 issue of "Monthly I/O," a computer technology magazine published by Kogaku-sha, contained a demo of the game in which Stage 1 and Stage 2 could be played. At the beginning of this demo version, there is an illustration of Rusty and a monologue voice that is not included in the production version.