Rastan II First Look | MiSTer FPGA

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:02][music] >> Hey guys, welcome to Pixel Cherry Ninjas channel. So, here we're looking at one of the junkiest arcade games of all time. It's also one of my guilty pleasures. It's an arcade game that I love so much. So, this over here has been developed by Andre Bugazau, and this is an AI core. This is something that they have released. In fact, they actually asked me. They released Superman and Cabal previously. Cabal plays really, really well, so does Superman. And they said to me, "Yo, Pixel, is there a game that you would like?" And I was like, "You know what?

[00:00:36]If you're going to do this stuff, I really like Rastan 2." It's a game that I played in the arcade. Yes, so I know not many people like it. I know it's a bad game after the first level. The first level's decent. After that, it gets quite bad. But man, it's just one of those guilty pleasures that I have.

[00:00:51]And they said, "You know what? They're going to put it to the test." Now, let me turn the sound up a bit because although some of the Well, the graphics look okay, the sound is very, very much a mess at the moment. Not sure if these will ever get released or when they will get released. Not exactly sure, but this was brilliant. Like I like Rastan 1. I like Rastan 2. Really like Rastan 3: Warrior Blade. So, I'm a Rastan fan. All right, let me put in a credit. When I put in a credit, the sound sounded off.

[00:01:18]So, let me put the sound up.

[00:01:21]>> Yes, we do.

[00:01:24]>> Yeah, see that was Ooh, that was even crackly now. I think I might have turned it a little bit too loud. I won't put it that loud now, but I'll have to sound up quite loud just because even though this isn't the greatest of a game, the soundtrack for this is phenomenal.

[00:01:38]Absolutely phenomenal, guys.

[00:01:41]Um although on here, the sound isn't exactly perfect yet, but hey, let's give this a play.

[00:01:51]See, back in the days of the arcade, when you heard this soundtrack, wow.

[00:01:55]Honestly, banging.

[00:01:57]Absolutely banging.

[00:02:00]You can hear you can hear like corruption within the sound. Oh, I got the fire already.

[00:02:05]And I got the claws. Oh, no. That was a bit weird. I saw the claws there, but I ended up getting the big sword, or maybe there was a big sword hidden there. All right.

[00:02:22]I kind of did like these claws. Oh, here. Look at the spark. All right.

[00:02:28]Very, very fast. Doesn't have the range.

[00:02:30]The broad kind of sword had more of the range. Now, you never got the sparks when you fired up, but down a normal you got it, right? That thing's going to take a lunge at me.

[00:02:44]That would be nice to see how far along this goes. Andre Bergasse is a very, very talented developer. He's best known for his stuff on the Zap project. I want to avoid that sword. I did good.

[00:02:56]And yeah, they've now kind of Well, they're dabbling now with um FPGA core development using AI, but the results are looking promising.

[00:03:07]Obviously, there is still quite a bit of work to go here. There you go, popped all the enemies on the screen.

[00:03:15]I'm hoping the sound levels are kind of okay here.

[00:03:19]It might be a little bit too loud, and you can hear kind of like what I'm hearing.

[00:03:26]In fact, I used the soundtrack for this um for this game quite a lot. Quite a lot for a backing soundtrack.

[00:04:05]>> Okay.

[00:04:11]This is still like the sprites for your characters. It looked really really good in the arcade. There's some weird stuff happening with the way the blocks and stuff are moving.

[00:04:20]There's a little bit of jerkiness there.

[00:04:22]I can't remember how to beat this boss, to be honest. I don't remember.

[00:04:25]I use my block.

[00:04:30]Hey, I love like the death animation here.

[00:04:33]Okay, we done it. So, look. From here, the game goes downhill. It really does.

[00:04:38]The second level, honestly, isn't that good. I love these little screenshots in between the levels, the way they're doing or he's doing the boss in.

[00:04:47]Uh good stuff in a weird weird weird stuff here. You get like Look, these things here that you can't really just have to jump over. I don't think you can I don't Yeah, if I remember correctly, yeah, you can't uh destroy them. Then you got this dude here. It's like I'm Rastan. You're like this little piggy dude there.

[00:05:06]So, by the way, if you If you hold up, you can put the shield above your head. And given the fact Rastan hasn't bathed for a while, uh he may actually just kill people kill the enemy with his pong.

[00:05:19]>> [laughter] >> So, not really a You look at that. Okay, cheat. Like, defend yourself from the falling blocks.

[00:05:27]And uh then that dude's going to chuck Oh, the dude on a dinosaur is going to chuck something at you. You have three lives.

[00:05:34]I kind of remember playing this in the arcade and only having two lives. So, nice the default setting is actually quite generous.

[00:05:41]But, as you can see, some of the enemies here look cool.

[00:05:50]>> The trap city arcade, right? If we get so Okay, so far we're not at a terrible part. There's a part where it just goes all um it goes into like a labyrinth type of thing and you have to kind of jump on to the edge of the block or go into the edge of the block and go forward from there. It is terrible.

[00:06:16]Ooh, bad move. Oh, no, okay. I jumped up there. Cool.

[00:06:19]And look at that.

[00:06:24]This is This is kind of it over here.

[00:06:26]So, I need to go here and jump literally right from the edge or you fall and and and that's actually one of the all right parts. It gets a lot worse. Let's see if we can continue.

[00:06:41]Again, hitting your head, they're really really annoying parts. Need to do those last pixel on the edge kind of jumps.

[00:06:53]I thought I got this part actually, but I didn't.

[00:07:09]Oh, that's a cool power up. I don't remember getting that power up much in the arcade. Okay, this is the part where it starts getting really, really bad.

[00:07:17]Yeah, here you go. Look, you got these dragon things here. Oh, this is this this This is where I used to get to in the arcade when I used to play it as a kid and I never got past it, but I kept playing it again and again trying to get past it. This bit is just horrible. This This is not fun. And I think from this point onwards, it's only downhill from here. Ooh, I was hoping to hang onto that rope. I went to the rope.

[00:07:40]Yeah, it goes bad. So, when I when I when I die here, that's going to be the end of it.

[00:07:47]Okay.

[00:07:49]I mean, it looks cool. I like like the dragons. I like how everything is here, but man, dodging everything here is terrible. I know this can be one CC'd.

[00:07:56]In fact, a friend of mine with another YouTube channel called Retro Tuner, I think he one CC'd Was it a PC Engine version or was it the Mega Drive?

[00:08:05]Actually, look look at look at that over here. You need to go to the very end to do this jump. This is This is the terrible part of this with the fire breathing above you. Okay there.

[00:08:13]And this is going to go off.

[00:08:14]Really need to watch stuff here, you know? And again here, right on the edge to jump up there.

[00:08:21]Okay, I'm not even trying now. Now, the second um level enemy that I did see in the arcade is like the horseman. I can't remember what it's called. Oh, no, it's not. Okay. Maybe that's for This Medusa.

[00:08:31]So, again, I think the bosses are just high Okay.

[00:08:47]Reappear to where I jump. Right guys, I I think that was it. Uh I know the sound was loudish for this, but I wanted you guys to hear it. Um do let me know what you think. I'm hoping this really gets cleaned up. So, a big shout out to Andre Bogaz for actually going to uh lengths to bring out this core for me to kind of enjoy.

[00:09:08]Uh so, yeah, let me let me know what you guys think. I would like this to go the full way, and I would like this to become a normal core. There's games on the Mister that I I I grew up playing. They're not really good games. This is one of them.

[00:09:22]Superman potentially. People say it's a bad game. I like that game. Uh stuff like Final Blow, which is on uh Wicker Wacker's Taito F2 core. It's a terrible game, but as I played it growing up, I like having them on the Mister. I like once in a while just turning uh the game on, switching it on, and you know, when a friend comes around and go, "Hey, you remember this?" And you know, we have we give it a little blast. But, that's it for this video, guys. If you have enjoyed it, thumbs up, subscription, all that good stuff, really appreciated.

[00:09:50]I completely get it if you hate AI and you think this is a terrible idea, then press that dislike button. I'm just bringing stuff out here, but there's a lot of stuff happening in the Mr. FPGA and FPGA gaming world in general. We are getting a lot of AI cores coming over, and it's kind of interesting having a look at them. I wonder what will happen eventually. I do think that at some point there might need to be a divide for So, for example, your open-source manual cores on one side, and your AI cores along with any cores that are closed source, because you can't see the source, it could just generally be an AI core. So, maybe have them as separate categories, but I guess that's a discussion or something for another day.

[00:10:29]In the meantime, guys, thank you as always for watching. Be freaking awesome to one another, and I don't care what anyone says about Rastan Joe, it's freaking awesome.