of the shoot 'em up sections. The game continued to receive praise from major game reviewers more than a decade since its release. In 2005, Lucas Thomas of the Evansville Courier & Press favorably compared The Guardian Legend with the NES title The Legend of Zelda and the Game Boy Advance title Sigma Star Saga; he emphasized Compile's successful fusion of the action-adventure, shoot 'em up and action role-playing game genres. Later, in a 2008 IGN article, Thomas listed the game at #2 on his "Top 10 Unreleased NES Hits" list and contended that The Guardian Legend took the concept of the multiple-genre game to a farther extent than Blaster Master. In October 2009, IGN ranked The Guardian Legend as #87 on its "Top 100 NES Games of All Time" list and deemed it "one of the most influential games in the history of the gaming industry". In March 2008, Game Informer editors referred to the game as "the ultimate genre bender" and likened it to a combination of the NES games The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and 1942. While they acclaimed the game for its "exciting and challenging" shooter stages, they criticized it for its complex world map and "outrageous" password system. In a Gamasutra interview, Retro Game Challenge designer Mike Engler said that "The Guardian Legend is one of the best games ever released". The graphics and sound of The Guardian Legend have been influential. Robert Dewar and Matthew Smosna of the open computing magazine Open Systems Today cited the game as an example of how graphics co-processors such as those in the NES can compensate for inadequate CPU speed in graphics-intensive computer applications. They noted that the fast-paced action seen in the game could not be replicated on a personal computer at that time (1992) without an expensive graphics board and regardless of CPU speed. The music of the game, composed by Masatomo Miyamoto and Takeshi Santo, has remained popular years after the game's release. Samantha Amjadali of the Melbourne-based newspaper The Herald Sun reported that a remixed tune from the game was rated as the second most popular track on the website OverClocked ReMix in March 2002. Video game cover band The Advantage's 2006 album Elf Titled features a cover version of music from one of the game's dungeon levels. Notes References External links The Guardian Legend arrangemnts at OverClocked Remix The Guardian Legend at RetroJunk