Capcom’s early NES games had pretty clear premises. Commando tapped the throbbing Stallone-Schwarzenegger vein of the one-man army shooting faceless baddies on a foreign battlefield, Section Z was the same thing in space, and Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins was the same thing but with, um, ghosts and goblins. Then there was Trojan. Twenty-two years after it’s release and I still have no idea what the hell was going on with Trojan. You’re a guy wearing overalls who, I suppose, is named Trojan. Despite the fact that Trojan is carrying a sword, he is not a soldier of the ancient city, Troy. He is also not a spokesperson for male contraception.
Trojan fights bugmen and European knights in what appears to be Detroit for most of the game. In between stages, you get a look at a map of your progress through the mean streets and mountains of Detroit on the way to a room with a giant skull over it. Nothing says “final boss” like a skull room. When you get to the skull room, you fight a bigger guy with red overalls and engage in one of the game’s sword duels. These duels were actually pretty novel in 1986, a nice change of pace from the Kung-Fu left-to-right fighting. When you kill the boss, little Trojan stands on the map, the skull room crumbles, and you find out red-overalls was named “Achilles”. The game put the quotes on, not me. It’s like they were making fun of their own attempt at some kind of silly Greek mythology theme.
Trojan is not a lost classic. It is not a classic of any kind. It is, however, pretty fun. Don’t hunt down the NES cart or anything, but if you already have the PS2 Capcom Classics Collection, it wouldn’t kill you to give it a try.
Previous Up All Nights:
Dark Sector
Ex-Mutants
Nightmare Creatures
Bad Dudes
P.N. 03