Dooooooooooom! No, not that type of doom, although Invader Zim is pretty fantastic (obligatory nod to Jhonen Vasquez). It’s Gate of Doom, the fantastically obscure isometric action beat-em-up originally from Data East that harkens waaaaaay back to 1990! Gate of Doom, also known as Dark Seal to our friends overseas, is a rather challenging game that made its rounds in the later years of arcades as they were dying out. It’s a conversion title, meaning that it never came in a dedicated arcade cabinet. Instead, you simply bought a kit with the PCB (printed circuit board), overlays, marquee, and monitor bezel, and replaced whatever was in your old cabinet with a Gate of Doom board.
In other words, Gate of Doom was only around for a bit, and virtually no one played it. It hasn’t been released on any collections that I have been able to find, and was only available on MAME for the PC for those of you with the know how to find it. However, thanks to the guys over at Flying Tiger Entertainment, Johnny Turbo’s Arcade has brought Gate of Doom back for us all to play on the PS4 and the Switch. And you’re in for some seriously challenging arcade action!
In Gate of Doom, you play a rather generic set of heroes, choosing from a knight, a wizard, a bard, or a ninja. Your goal is to retrieve the king’s treasures, rescue the princess and her retinue, and reseal the *cough* Gate of Doom so that monsters can no longer attack the kingdom. Pretty basic stuff. The characters have unique attacks, such as a morning star for the knight, ninja stars for the ninja, and a flame attack for the wizard. Again, nothing shocking. The interesting bits occur are around the edges of the game though. As you kill enemies, you accumulate magic points and when your bar is full, you can drop a magic attack and transform your character into a myriad of high-powered creatures, including a living cloud of lightning, a medusa who petrifies enemies, and even a giant waterspout. The effect only lasts as long as your magic bar, or until your death, and as you’re not invincible, that won’t be long.
Didn’t I mention it? Gate of Doom is a credit feeder. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s a blanket one for arcade games where there is virtually no way to finish the game with a single credit (the ultimate goal of all serious arcade gamers…the 1CC). Basically, you will just pump credits into the game to finish. There’s a score tabulator at the top of the screen, but the game is so tough, only the most brutal gluttons for punishment would even try it. That’s because the difficulty is set quite high on this version of Gate of Doom. Back in the day, arcade operators had the option of setting the difficulty of an arcade PCB by flipping dip switches mounted directly on the board itself. That way if the game was too hard, they’d turn it down and more people would play. If it was too easy, they’d turn it up so that no one spent the whole day milking the machine and not moving on. But there’s no difficulty slider on this version of Gate of Doom, and its set noticeably high. You will die. A lot. Even with a second player for help.
There’s good reason you won’t survive long in Gate of Doom. Everything can kill you. The enemies are vicious, you are weak, you walk slow, enemy fire moves quickly. It’s pretty much a giant death field of generic fantasy. It’s fun as hell, but it’s rather unforgiving. You’re allowed up to 6 power-ups, which speed you up, add power to your shots, and a few other handy things, but every time you die, you lose all your power-ups. If you can manage to hold on for a whole level, kudos! Not many people could, especially not in this version of the game. The isometric perspective is also challenging to get used to, as it’s easy to walk off of cliffs or into lava. That’s right, the background can kill you too. Trust me, you can’t win. Not unless you feed credits. And even with speedy boots, you’re unlikely to outrun the vicious mini-bosses and bosses of the five levels of the game and their insane attacks. Giant dragons, beholders, ridiculously over-powered knights, Gate of Doom has it all. It’s basically a fantasy smorgasbord of arcade bliss, if you can stomach dying constantly.
As for the conversion, it’s interesting. The controls are fairly solid on the PS4 version of the game and it plays well with a thumb stick, far better than anticipated. You’d probably still be better off with a PS4 arcade stick however. It definitely doesn’t feel quite the same as it used to back in the arcade, but it’s pretty darn close. You’ll feel like you are walking through molasses unless you manage to get boots of speed though. It can definitely be frustrating. The isometric viewpoint reminds me of Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole for the Sega Genesis. Just as frustrating, just as easy to die by falling off of something.
Graphically, Gate of Doom is quite interesting however. Flying Tiger put in a slew of options for the video quality, depending on your level of nostalgia. First off, you can adjust the aspect ratio from full screen to 16:9 or 4:3. I’ve taken a couple screens for comparison, and honestly, I highly recommend 4:3 for Gate of Doom as it’s not only the original aspect ratio, but everything looks like it’s supposed to, not all stretched and odd. It actually makes targeting enemies easier to keep the original screen size too, and you’ll need every edge you can get.
Secondly, there are a dearth of filter options available in game, everything from scanlines to S-video to a VHS mode, of all things. Basically you can adjust the game to any look you’d prefer, although some are definitely better than others. The game originally displayed in “Scanline Round” in the arcade so for most of my playthrough, that’s what I used. It adds the original rounded and slightly distorted corners of a classic CRT (cathode ray tube) arcade monitor. Honestly, it looks almost identical to the original arcade version in that mode. None gives a very clean crisp look, and the other modes are mostly decent, though VHS and Composite are just as fuzzy as you’d expect. If you’re into that sort of thing, that’s up to you though. It’s a nice option, considering some serious gamers will buy multi hundred dollar scanline generators from Japan (like the XRGB3 and the XRGB-Mini Framemeister) just to add the original CRT look back to older consoles that have been modified to run on HDMI on modern TVs.
Ultimately, if you like old-school arcade action, you’re likely to love Gate of Doom. There’s even a sequel out there (also available from Flying Tiger) for the Switch called Wizard Fire (aka Dark Seal 2 overseas) if you can’t get enough self-flagellation. Do yourself a favor and play this one with a friend, at least once, because half the fun of a title like this is yelling at each other while you steal powerups and screw up fighting a boss. There are some interesting enemies, challenging levels, and nasty bosses, and the music is even decent. The hokey story just adds to the retro ambiance and ties the whole thing together in a neat bow. It’s worth the low admission price of $8 (US PSN) to get your game on!
This review was based on a retail PS4 copy of Gate of Doom provided by the publisher.