Virtual Hydlide is a roguelike released for the Sega Saturn in 1995. It was developed by T&E Soft and published by Sega in Japan and Europe and by Atlus for North America.
The game is a 3D remake of Hydlide but with randomly generated maps. The plot is the same as the first game: a princess is attacked by Varalys, who turns her into three fairies and scatters them through the land. One of her kingdom's bravest knights, Jim, sets out to retrieve the fairies and the crystals that will restore her to her original form and allow him to slay Varalys.
Tropes:
- All There in the Manual: There is no in-game tutorial.
- Anti-Grinding: Leveling up occurs only after finishing quest objectives such as finding a fairy or defeating a boss.
- Barrage of Bats: The Vampire Boss, during the Boss Rush just before Varalys, is accompanied by a swarm of bats that attack the player.
- Big Bad: Varalys, a demon/dragon/something that is responsible for the princess's divided state. He serves as the Final Boss.
- Digitized Sprites: Jim (or just the "Hero" in the PAL release) is portrayed in-game via a digtized sprite of his live-action actor.
- Dungeon Crawling: The bulk of the game is locating dungeons, descending into them, and defeating the bosses therein. Unlike the overworld, the dungeon maps never change between playthroughs.
- Excuse Plot: The princess explodes into fairies. It's your job to put them back together.
- Haunted House: After Jim gets the cross in the cemetery, the next stop is the Vampire Mansion, an abandoned manor save for bats and its lord (and boss), the Vampire.
- Harder Than Hard: Completing the game in Hard Mode unlocks PRO difficulty which takes away the map and item shop.
- Healthy Green, Harmful Red: The player character (Jim the Knight) and the bosses' life meter is shown as a green bar
that becomes red with every damage they take. - Hit Points: Displayed at the top left, in fraction form, beside the Life Meter at the center of the top.
- Knight in Shining Armor: The player controls Jim (or "Hero") in his mission to find the fairies, release the princess and defeat Varalys. Bonus points: his in-game sprite shows the different types of armor he can obtain during the game, the last of which is a light blueish armor named "Fairy Armor".
- Life Meter: Displayed at the center of the top, changing from green to red, from left to right, as the Hero gets hurt.
- Live-Action Cutscene: The two cutscenes that bookend the game are live-action scenes of a princess being turned into fairies and being rescued by the hero.
- Mine Cart Madness: One of the dungeons is a mine, with mine carts you can ride. Getting into them is touch-and-go thanks to poor hit detection, but the actual mine cart rides are probably the most motion anything gets in the game.
- Randomly Generated Levels: The overworld is randomly generated with each game, changing where all the locations are. The dungeons, however, use the same maps every time.
- Real Is Brown: One common criticism of the game is that it uses a muddy, uninteresting palette that makes Jim's digitized sprite stick out like a sore thumb more than it otherwise would.
- Regenerating Health: Standing perfectly still will heal you at a slow rate.
- Save the Princess: Just like the original, Jim's job is to find the princess's fairies, defeat Varalys, and restore her to normal.
- Scoring Points: Points are used as currency at the item shop.
- Stuck Items: Armor can become "cursed", and can only be removed through creative use of scrolls.
- Unknown Item Identification: Some items are initially unidentified, and require using special scrolls to reveal just what they are. Thanks to the existence of cursed items, blindly equipping them is... unwise.
- Video Game Remake: The game is a 3d remake of the first Hydlide, released in 1984.
- When Trees Attack: Some of the enemies of the remake are Treants, tree-like creatures.The Angry Video Game Nerd: I'm fighting the scenery!
