Cadash

Cadash is an early example of what would become a fairly common trend in Japanese-made arcade games of the early 1990s: the "platform-RPG", combining side-scrolling platform action with an RPG system of statistics, levels, money and magic.

Four characters can play at once in the arcade version, and up to two players may select from four different characters in the console versions: fighter, mage, priestess, and ninja, each with different attacks, statistics and skills. Players then proceed through each level, killing monsters and bosses, collecting keys to unlock doors and collecting gold and experience. Gold is also taken from slain foes and treasure chests. Villages sell items, weapons, armor and (in the console versions) extra lives, with each village encountered providing better equipment.

The game's setting is a medieval fantasy world similar to that of sword-and-sorcery high fantasy such as The Lord of the Rings. The demons and abominations of nature who reside in the underground kingdom of Cadash have not forgotten that, thousands of years previously, they once shared the light with humans. Then one rose among them who was especially powerful, a demonic wizard born of a human woman – the Balrog (Baarogue or Baalogue in the arcade version, and Balrog in the TurboGrafx-16 version). The Balrog promised his followers they could, in time, emerge from their subterranean prison and rule the world of men, taking revenge on humans for their prior defeat in battle and subsequent exile, if the Balrog could mingle his blood with that of a human king.

The Balrog and his demonic armies gathered in force over the centuries, and are now powerful enough to emerge to the surface and make war with the unprepared human kingdoms which had not known war for millennia, all of which quickly fall to the Balrog. The human world is almost entirely laid to waste by the Balrog. However, this was not enough for the Balrog, whose prize is the mightiest of all human kingdoms, the Kingdom of Dirzir. One night, the beautiful Princess Salassa is kidnapped by the Balrog from the Keep of Deerzar, the capital city of Dirzir, and taken underground to the dreaded Castle Cadash.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Cadash on their May 1, 1990 issue as being the most-successful table arcade unit of the month. It was released for the PC-Engine on January 18, 1991.

In North America, the arcade game was critically well received by RePlay magazine in early 1990.