"Streets of Rage and Zelda had a daughter, and she grew up beautiful."
— James, Insert Credit
Beyond Oasis, or The Story of Thor: A Successor of The Light in Japan and Europe, was an action RPG title for the Sega Genesis, something along the lines of The Legend of Zelda. The player takes control of the young prince Ali, who receives the mystical Gold Armlet at the games outset. Soon after returning home to the kingdom of Oasis, Ali finds that strange forces have invaded his homeland, and he sets out on a quest to gain the aid of the four spirits of the armlet to fight against them. The Four Spirits are Dytto, the Water Spirit, Efreet, the Fire Spirit, Shade, the Shadow Spirit, and Bow, the Plant Spirit. With their help, he attempts to challenge the forces of Silver Armlet, who uses his armlet's power to lead the invaders against Oasis. As the story unfolds, the prince discovers more details behind the origin of the armlets, the character of Silver Armlet, and the dark power the silver armlet contains.
A notable game for a number of reasons. For one, while it was quite like Zelda, one interesting difference was breakable items: if you used a weapon or item too much, it would break and become unusable. Since there was no way to repair broken items, the player is forced to try and conserve what he or she is given.
The game was followed up by a prequel: Legend of Oasis for the Sega Saturn, which is more merciful with the weapons, and adds two new spirits, Airl the Wind Spirit and Brass the Sound Spirit. Legend of Oasis focuses on Leon, the apprentice to the wizard Ordan who battles the evil Agito to become the Spirit King.
Common tropes between both games:
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: The American and European covers both forgo the anime style of the Japanese cover (pictured above for Beyond, and also for Legend), in favor of more serious artwork:
- The US cover for Beyond has evil-looking eyes overlooking the land of Oasis during a storm, while the European cover has Ali's shadow cast upon a stone tablet, with fire crackling underneath.
- For Legend, instead of an anime-styled artwork, which is used in-game, both the European and American covers use computer-generated artwork and have Leon wielding a scimitar, while a purple demonic enemy looms over him in the background.
- Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: The Armlet that can summon the 4 elemental spirits (six in the prequel). It's useless until you clear the first dungeon though.
- Big Bad: Agito is the great evil and Final Boss of both games (either himself or his incarnation).
- Bittersweet Ending:
- In the first game, Agito is destroyed and Ali becomes The Good King, but his sister Gwyne, who he just reunited with after years of thinking she had died, chooses to remain in the spirit world to be the guardian of the Armlets for the rest of her life.
- The sequel also offers its share of bittersweetness: We lose Brass and Aril.
- Breath Weapon: Efreet can use a fire-breathing attack against enemies.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Shade is the Dark Spirit, found in the Shrine of Darkness and looks like a faceless shadow with creepy long arms, but is otherwise allied with the protagonists in their fight against Agito.
- Elemental Embodiment/Nature Spirit: The Spirits:
- Casting a Shadow: Shade.
- Dishing Out Dirt: Bow.
- Making a Splash: Dytto.
- Playing with Fire: Efreet.
- Extreme Omnivore: Bow, the Plant Spirit, is said to have an "appetite". This translates to the gameplay as using its attacks to crack open heavy gates to proceed further.
- Fairy Sexy: Dytto is a petite female sprite who wears a bathing suit.
- Heal It with Water: Dytto is specialized in water magic. The player can use her abilites to restore their health.
- Inconsistent Spelling: In the first game, the Tree Spirit is named Bow. In Legend its name appears in the animated opening as Bawu.
- Kill It with Water: Dytto's water abilites are efficient against fire enemies. It also serves to put out small fires.
- Living Shadow: The Spirit Shade is depicted as an afterimage of yourself and attacks by extending your shadow and scratching enemies. His Super Mode involves Ali going into a meditative state and Shade separates from him, becoming invincible.
- Market-Based Title: The Story of Thor: Heir of the Light is The Story of Thor: A Successor of the Light in Europe, The Story of Thor on the European Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection, and Beyond Oasis in North America. Thor: Chronicles of the Elemental King is The Story of Thor 2 in Europe, and The Legend of Oasis in North America.
- Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: The series has these kind of pits (that drain a bit of life and teleport you to the room entrance), but it also has a powerup (Shade, the Dark Spirit) that will fly you out of the bottomless pit, costing you a bit of mana rather than life.
- Ominous Cube: The inert forms of the elemental spirits are that of a cube. In the ending sequence of Legend, after the defeat of Agito, Leon finds himself without the Golden Armlet and he and Myra discover that the spirits have turned into cubes.
- Our Genies Are Different: Efreet, the Fire Spirit, is based on the ifrit of Arabic folklore, a type of magical being connected to fire.
- Summon Magic: The core of the gameplay: the player has to seek spirits embodying the elements and summon them. Doing so allows the player to use their powers.
- When Trees Attack:
- For both games, Bow, the Plant Spirit, is shaped like a venus flytrap. It also can be commanded to attack enemies with its bite.
- In Legend of Oasis, there is the boss named Berbulb, a giant round plant bulb that opens up its folds to release bees at the player.
Beyond Oasis provides examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Underneath the castle, although there's a reason for this; something important is hidden down there.
- Apathetic Citizens
- Arrows on Fire: Not only did they give you fire arrows, but they threw in bomb arrows for good measure.
- Artificial Stupidity: Combined in a weird way, as although the AI controls the Spirits, the player can give them basic guidelines of where to move and what to do based on the direction he or she is facing and what buttons are pressed. The worst example of this is a secret minigame to get a special item.
- Attack Reflector: Tired of bombs being thrown at you? Arrows too? Wanna have a good laugh? Using any sword besides the fire sword you can bat those suckers right back at him.
- Back from the Brink
- Backtracking
- Behind the Black
- Block Puzzle: The myriad switches which must be held open with rock/iron/steel balls. No reason is given for this.
- Bonus Dungeon: Quite a few and some of them are Difficult but yield the best weapons in the game.
- Boring Yet Practical: The Alt. Knife might not seem much with basic stabs, but it's easily the most versatile weapon in the game once the player gets the hang of the various combos and is unbreakable.
- Bottomless Pits: A danger at first, these become less so after acquiring Shade, who will pull you up when you fall.
- Breakable Weapons: Everything except the Alt. Knife and a handful of infinite-use weapons that are very hard to find.
- Cherry Tapping: While wiping out enemies with the broadsword is fun, there's a certain satisfaction that can be gained form using the knife. Plus, it has all those nifty special moves that are hard as hell to perform.
- Cognizant Limbs
- Dark World: Shadow World, after defeating Evil Eyes.
- Disney Death: After the King faints from his wounds inflicted by Silver Armlet, he remains motionless for the rest of the game, giving the impression he perished. In truth, he was simply badly wounded, and the credits show him recovering in bed with his daughter nursing him back to health; although he does hand the throne over to his son anyway.
- Eldritch Abomination: In Beyond, Agito is in an even more monstrous form than in the prequel: he occupies a pool of green liquid, has four large arms and several snake tentacles that emerge from the liquid to attack Ali.
- Emergency Weapon: The Alt. Knife. It does come with a number of combo moves that increase its usefulness.
- Giant Enemy Crab: You have to defeat one to claim the first spirit companion.
- Golem: A recurring boss is a large rock creature with two arms.
- Hostage for MacGuffin: Played very straight: Big Bad kidnaps hero's sister, demands MacGuffin in exchange for sister's release, hero complies. To their credit, the Big Bad releases the sister unharmed as promised.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Different types of food instantly restore different amounts of HP and/or MP when eaten.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests
- Infinity +1 Sword: All of the infinite weapons count in one way or another, but the Infinite Omega Sword is truly their king, with its long reach and ability to set enemies on fire.
- Long-Lost Relative: Ali's older sister. She turns out to be the antagonist, possessed by the spirit of the silver armlet.
-
Low-Level Run: Very easy to do, as "level-up" power-ups are hard to come by, and don't do much aside from raising your maximum HP by a few points and allowing you to do extra damage. In fact, the game ranks you better if you do a low level run. It keeps track of a number of things and ranks them at the end, and Ali's level is one of those things. - Marathon Level: One of the bonus dungeons has 100 floors. Each floor has enemies that need to be slain before you can advance to the next floor. If you can beat all 100 floors in a row, your reward is an unbreakable sword that can set your opponents on fire.
- One-Winged Angel: Silver Armlet turns into a giant hideous monster in the final boss fight, after you defeat their humanoid form.
- Point of No Return: Tough example. When you reach the Shadow World after defeating Evil Eyes, you're not coming back. There's several weapons and items to find that will help you through the rest of the game, but any gems or infinite weapons you missed becomes out of reach.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Prince Ali, hero of the game. Also Silver Armlet, who turns out to be his mind-controlled sister.
- Samus Is a Girl: Underneath the Black Cloak, Silver Armlet turns out to not only be a girl, but also Ali's older sister.
- Save the Princess: After Silver Armlet's forces raid the castle, he kidnaps the princess and holds her ransom for a great cube hidden underneath the castle. When Ali hands it over, he keeps his words and releases the princess unharmed.
- Some Dexterity Required: Ali has a few special attacks he can do with the Alt. Knife, including a backflip with the somewhat unintuitive "forward-back-forward-attack" motion. And then a triple backflip strike that requires a forward-back-forward motion immediately after a fully circular motion. It's tricky.
- Spell My Name With An S: Some sources refer to the basic weapon as the "Ali Knife" as if it's named after the protagonist. "Alt. Knife" makes more sense after playing Legend of Oasis, where one of the weapons is called the Altair Knife.
- Too Awesome to Use: There are single-use items you can find that let you summon your spirits anywhere, not just in places where the game intends for you to summon them. Subverted once you realize using them from your inventory directly causes you to lose them forever. There however is a perk to using the Armlet's orb on the call items, it transforms into another item as well as summons the respective spirit. So it is a slight trade off, you can either hold onto the item for a free summon in a pinch or potentially just use them to trade up for better healing items or weapons.
- Translation Matchmaking: Despite what the title implies, Beyond Oasis (a.k.a. The Story of Thor) has nothing to do with the earlier Game Gear game Defenders of Oasis (originally titled Shadam Crusader in Japan) other than they were both RPGs published by Sega.
- Wizards' War: In the backstory, two sorcerers, Raharl, commanding the light, and Agito, with power over "chaos and destruction", waged a "devastating battle" against each other that destroyed the realm of Oasis.
Legend of Oasis provides examples of:
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Airl looks like a cross between a bird and a cloud, fitting for the Wind Spirit.
- Attack the Tail: The weak spot of the Screamer boss is its tail.
- Chest Monster: In a certain area of the game, the player can find a "seventh" spirit named Tokipin, who is a living chest that can attack with its toothy lid. It passes itself off as the "Spirit of Treasure", but the player can defeat it and, with its dying breath, it admits it was not one of the (canon) six ones and only wanted to help.
- Cumulonemesis: Inverted. Airl is the Wind Spirit, whose body is made of fluffy soft pink clouds, and is one of Leon's allies. She can still hurt enemies with her weather powers.
- Damsel in Distress: A young woman named Myra is targeted by Agito's followers. She eventually becomes brainwashed and has to be rescued.
- Doomed by Canon: Legend of Oasis has two spirits that didn't appear in Beyond Oasis. Naturally, you find out why by the end of the game: Brass becomes an Infinity +1 Sword and Airl changes into a teleport spot that allows Leon to reach the Final Boss.
- Fish People: The boss of the water dungeon is a green Creature of the Black Lagoon-esque man with gills and fins.
- Make Some Noise: Brass is the dragon-like spirit of sound, with the ability to emit sonic waves that can break crystals. He can be summoned from metallic surfaces.
- Numbered Sequels: The European version calls the second game The Story of Thor 2.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: The boss of the dark shrine is a giant cocoon named GhostEgg. After some moments, it opens its many external eyes and absorbs nearby ghosts who keep wailing, until it eclodes to release a snake-like creature named Screamer.
- Prequel: The game is set centuries before Beyond Oasis.
- Shock and Awe: Airl, being the Wind Spirit and with a body made of clouds, can cast lightning as one of her powers.
- Solid Clouds: One of Airl's abilities is to be able to carry Leon on her fluffy cloud body.
- Two Girls to a Team: Dytto's artwork paints her as female. Airl is also referred to as "her" in the opening.
