0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - AbalaBurn

     

Abala Burn also known as Abala Burn - A Battle Legend of Astterica is a 3D adventure fighting game that was released exclusively in Japan on the Playstation 1 on the 20^th August 1998, the game was developed by Tamsoft and published by Takara, Tamsoft would go on from here to develop the Senran Kagura series of games.

The player has the choice of eight playable characters Blood, Pooly, Ariel, Kleude, Bian, Rose, Aquila and Nate, while each characters story starts in a different location which each character having their own motivations for trying to find Lemuria, the Gameplay has been described as a blend between Rival Schools, Tobal and the developments studios one Toshinden series, the game has an arcade mode as well as a main story mode as well as some light action RPG elements.

The games story is based around the quest to find the legend of Lemuria who is said to grant any wish, with each of the characters having their own motivations for finding Lemuria Blood revenge on a demon annihilating his town, Ariel opening her emotion for the future of her kingdom, Kleude prevent his mother from dying, Rose save her sister, Bian he just want an adventure like father, Pooly prove he's good enough to join his army, Nate prevent his army from being annihilated and Aquila wants to know why it was created.

Another Japanese title and as you have already probably guessed review are hard to come by so we head off again to GameFAQs and their user ratings, with the GameFAQs users giving this game an average rating of 3.25/5 which equates to a 6.5/10 or a 65/100 to overall a pretty average title.

Looking more closely at the user ratings over half of those who rated the game gave it a 3/5 with one user giving the game 2/5, 2.5/5 and 3.5/5 respectively a couple of users did rate this game very highly awarding the game a full 5/5.

Difficulty wise over 50% of users who rated the difficulty they found it just right with an additional 27% finding the game tough with minorities finding the game too easy or unforgiving, when it comes to playtime the average length for a users playthrough clocks in at 5.2 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific but from a podcast I listen to and  I have heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude who along with Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com don’t unsurprisingly don’t stock this Japanese only release, so moving quickly on to Amazon.com who don’t have an extensive collection of copies on sale but what they do have is quite reasonably prices, a used good quality copy which is shipped from Japan with free shipping will set you back $9.30 which is £7.16 in the UK, in the Euro region it will set you back €7.94 while in Sweden you will be looking at a 75.98 krona.

A used very good quality version of the game is available for 9 cents cheaper as well this again comes with free shipping, at the other end of the price spectrum they remain pretty reasonable the most expensive used copy on sale is at $17.35 with shipping bumping it up to $25.33.

If you are looking for a brand new copy of the game then this is where it gets pricey with a minimum spend of $87.81 for a new copy which converts to 717.43 Swedish krona, in the UK you would be looking at £ 67.59 while in the Euro zone you would be looking at an outlay of €74.97, like several of the used copies all the new copies on sale come with free shipping.

Heading to Ebay.com once again the shipping costs really do bump the prices up with a minimum spend of around $15.50 for a used copy of the game with prices rising as high as the $25 mark for a used copy which is so close to the only new copy on sale you may as well opt the new copy which is on sale at $25.97 this ships from China and comes with free international shipping.

Written by

P J Gibbon