Zanac fans". He added that the multiple-genre format "helps elevate the whole title to a much higher level". Ed Semrad called the game a Blaster Master clone and "only average at best", and he echoed Harris' opinion that those who enjoyed Zanac would enjoy The Guardian Legend. Donn Nauert said that the game is repetitive and offers little challenge and that it would have been better as a pure shoot 'em up; he pointed to a special password ("TGL") in which players can enter to bypass all of the Labyrinth portions. Jim Allee also compared the game to Zanac and repeated what Nauert said about the lack of difficulty except in the boss battles; he overall praised the game for successfully bringing together two distinct themes. The Guardian Legend received accolades from the editors of Nintendo Power. The game appeared in the magazine's September 1989 issue, where it debuted at #9 on its "Top 30" NES Chart. The editors praised the game, and described the protagonist as "the ultimate transforming hero". The game would remain on the chart for nearly a year. In recognition of its achievements, the magazine's editors and staff nominated the game for several awards in its first-ever Nintendo Power Awards for 1989—among them, "Best Graphics & Sound", "Best Play Control", and "Best Overall"—but the game did not win the top award in any of these categories. Nintendo Power published a partial walkthrough for the game in the following November 1989 issue. The game received moderate praise in some German gaming magazines after its European release. In Video Games magazine the reviewer praised the game as being a good action-adventure game in the same style of The Legend of Zelda; he notes that the need to find hidden items and areas and the top-down perspective closely resemble the Nintendo classic. He appreciated the variety and extras in the game, the various strategies needed to fight bosses, its difficulty, and the well-done graphics. The reviewers from Power Play compared The Guardian Legend to The Legend of Zelda and Life Force. They praised the diverse gameplay and weapons, difficulty, and the mixture of action-adventure and shoot 'em up elements. They criticized the game for lacking battery-backed RAM to save player progress—one of the reviewers said that "the wretched fumbling with the password had long ended"—as well as its lack of challenging puzzles and a high difficulty level in some