This game was released in 1990 on the NES and Sega Genesis and at first glance it appears to be a pretty great game from a graphical standpoint, even on the NES. Unfortunately the good-for-time-time-period graphics are the only good thing about this game and it is so surprising considering that it was made by Electronic Arts.
I don' t know who Will Harvey either then or now. I was pretty much a sci-fi nerd also so I'm not sure who they were aiming for by advertising that Mr. Harvey was involved in the production of this game. I probably decided to break the rule of never judging a book by it's cover when i got this one because since we didn't have youtube or even the internet for the most part in 1990 we based most of our purchase decisions on what the box art and presentation looked like and unfortunately they did a really good job with this one.
From a graphics perspective it looks pretty great and the stills on the box made it appear to be a dungeon crawler adventure similar to something like Gauntlet but with more depth in that you had an inventory and collected items. You may recall that Gauntlet, which was and is a great game, was more of a run and gun game with very little in the way of strategy.
I've always been a big advocate of good graphics not necessarily equaling a great game and The Immortal is a fantastic example of exactly that. For the time period the graphics were some of the best we had seen, especially on the Genesis version which is the one I bought, but the gameplay was just stupid. Once you got into the fights with goblins or what not, there was zero strategy, you basically just mad-button mash until you eventually win. You have a fireball (because you are a wizard) but in combat you can't even use it. It's just bizarre and really weak fighting mechanics.
As frustrating as all of that is the really terrible fights that you quickly learn to simply avoid rather than engage in since there is rarely any incentive to do them, there are aspects of the game that get far far worse.
For one thing, there are tons of insta-deaths from traps, some of which you can't even see because of the weird diagonal approach they took with the graphics. Sometimes when you walk through a door the screen shifts to accommodate the new room and by the time it allows you to have control again a fireball or dart trap that activated when you opened the door is microseconds away from hitting you. When this happens, you don't just take a bit of damage... no, that would be far too fair. You die immediately and have to restart, sometimes quite some distance back and in many instance several extremely boring and unavoidable goblin fights ago.
It is a testament of my early teen gaming patience that I managed to make it to the final boss eventually because it seems that half of the choices that you make in this game, including merely looking at things in your inventory, will kill you.
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On occassion you get to fight a spider instead of a goblin
Because it was an EA game, this one actually sold really well and there are plenty of people out there that were groaning about the game then and you would just laugh when you saw that your friend also had it in their library. Misery loves company. My disdain for this game has lasted 30 years and honestly, you should check it out only to revel in the intense patience that we had for bad games back in 1990.
I don't recommend you do so but if you want to have a look the ROM for the game can be acquired for free, HERE