About A Game: Fire Rock (FDS)
In some of the communities I'm in, this game has a reputation for its difficulty, the weird way it controls, and probably also its general obtuseness. People frequently treat it like an impossible game for aliens. But I found the game immensely intriguing from the first time I saw it, and grew very fond of it.
Fire Rock is an action platformer for the Famicom Disk System, and as such of course is Japan-exclusive. It was published by Use Corporation and developed by System Sacom. On the title screen it says "M. Flint presents", with Mark Flint being a somewhat mysterious developer who is mentioned in a surprising number of System Sacom games. His name is also on the title screen of the FDS game Moon Ball Magic, and there is even a collection of PC-98 games titled All About Mark Flint.
The game starts without any introduction cutscenes or text, but the manual provides a little bit of plot. In the year 2102, alien invaders arrive on Earth unnoticed on a beam of light. They prepare their attack underground, in the ruins of an ancient civilization, and when they finally launch their invasion, we as a lone hero must venture into their base to defeat them. For some reason, even though taking place in the future, our character is a half-naked barbarian type who is armed only with throwable torches.
The first thing you will most likely notice when you start playing is the controls and how you have to struggle with them. Your jump is surprisingly high and floaty, and landing from a jump results in a bounce. The ground is also weirdly slippery and it's very easy to slide or bounce into the nearest lava pit and take damage. Getting hit will also bounce you back and often drop you into the next pit.
Your already impressive jump height can be increased gradually by picking up meat items, which is usually required to reach new areas of the stage. Our little barbarian can also climb walls by moving against them and mashing jump. This focus on skills that let you move upwards makes sense because the stages are laid out vertically, only being one screen wide and scrolling up/down.
Your only attack against the alien hordes is a throwing torch, which can be improved by picking up torch items and becomes the titular "Fire Rock" at its maximum level.
The goal in each of the six stages is to find four special items and defeat four bosses, and then find the exit door. The bosses are mostly unique, with only a few repeat appearances. Part of the challenge of the game is to even find the bosses in each stage, and then to find their tiny weak point, which is the only spot that can be damaged by your attack. When you're in a room without a boss, the game often spawns smaller flying enemies. These enemies pretty much only exist to harass you, since they infinitely respawn and you gain nothing from defeating them.
Stages have some interesting diversity both in gameplay and graphics. One later stage has a maze of one-way walls that you have to figure out, and another one has a door maze with lots of doors (I said interesting, not good). Graphically, the stages have some nice themes, starting out in a cave-like stage, with high-tech walls and overgrown ruins later on.
In general I quite like the graphics of Fire Rock. They're very stark and raw in an early NES kind of way, with an always-black background and only few colors used for the environment. When entering a boss room, the color palette of the room also changes, which adds to the atmosphere.
The game does not have many music tracks, but some of them are real earworms for me, and they generally do a good job of getting me excited.
If you do like a bit of a challenge, I very much recommend trying out Fire Rock. Its weird controls and obtuseness will most likely have you struggling, but I can't really think of many other games that play like it. The game is fairly difficult, but gives infinite continues for each stage, so you're never set too far back, and should be able to beat after a few hours.
As with some other games I got really into, I tried to make Fire Rock more accessible to other people by writing a little gamefaqs guide about the general gameplay and bosses, and mapping all the stages and their door connections (especially useful for the door maze): https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/famicomds/578598-fire-rock/faqs
And if you just want to watch the game, or are looking for some more hints on how to beat it, here's my full playthrough: