on the surface forgot about Vittoria and the Tower in its center, and a thousand years passed. One day, a swordsman named Ares is pursued by his nemesis, the sorceress Dora Doran who seeks revenge for his slaying of her master. When Dela catches up with Ares and attacks, her magic causes the ground beneath them to collapse and both fall into the cursed Ruins of Vittoria. The player assumes the role of Ares and must escape from the dangerous ruin, with the vengeful Dela constantly in pursuit of him. She is also interested in escaping the maze herself and the two meet repeatedly. The ending changes slightly depending on whether or not Ares helps her out of danger during certain events late in the game. Release Originally released by Nihon Falcom in 1991 for the NEC PC-9801 and FM Towns home computers (and also ported to MS-DOS exclusively in Korea by Mantra and Ssangyong in 1996), Brandish was later released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and PC Engine CD-ROM². The PC Engine version was published by NEC and features CD quality music as well as vocal dialogue and narration. The PC-98 version was re-released as Brandish Renewal in 1995, with some new music and hard drive support. The SNES port is the only English language version of the game ever released. It was published by Koei in 1994 in Japan and a few months later (in February 1995) in North America. Due to Nintendo of America's policies at that time, the game was regionally censored in its depiction of Dela's revealing costume and the plot was considerably altered. Reception GamePro gave the SNES version a mixed review, commenting that the combat, though simplistic, is "more fun than it sounds". They criticized the "practically nonexistent" sound effects and repetitive music, and complained that the way the automap does not rotate along with the scenery is confusing, but concluded that the game's long length and addictive maze-crawling make it worthwhile. They gave it ratings of 4.0 for control, 3.5 for graphics, 2.5 for sound, and 4.5 out of 5 for funfactor. VideoGames gave it a score of 7 out of 10, commenting that, with its relatively weak graphics, Brandish "goes for a solid gameplay over flash." RPGFan gave it an overall score of 75%. Brandish: The Dark Revenant Brandish: The Dark Revenant is a 3D remake of Brandish developed