Collection essentials #116: Beyond Oasis

It’s no surprise that, with the huge success of Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, a lot of developers would try to take their own stab at that style of adventure game. Beyond Oasis was far from the first, and in fact it came quite late in the Genesis’ lifespan, seeing a worldwide release in 1995. As far as Zelda-likes on the Genesis go, this is absolutely my favorite. It was made by a fairly obscure developer named Ancient (though they’re still around today), and they really nailed it.

I only played through it once, and that was almost nine years ago, so I can’t give you a super-detailed description of all there is to this game. But as you can expect from a Zelda game, there’s dungeons to traverse and puzzles to solve. It sets itself apart from Zelda in a few different ways, the most immediately obvious being that this game has a jump button, while you typically can’t jump in Zelda games, so there’s actually some platforming going on here too. 

Something really neat in this game is the spirit-summoning system. There are a few spirits who you can recruit on their journey, each affiliated with a different element (for example, Efreet is a fire spirit). When you summon one of your spirit friends, they will fight enemies for you and help you out with their magic. Your magic power will slowly drain while they’re out, so you can’t have them forever. Combat is very fun in this game, thanks in part due to the spirits, but there are also various moves you can pull off which provide for even more variety. 

Beyond Oasis got a sequel on Sega’s next console called The Legend of Oasis, but that one didn’t really do it for me. The original is where it’s at, and for me it’s definitely a candidate for a replay at some point down the road. I didn’t do all the optional stuff in my first run, after all!