The game “El Viento” for the Sega Genesis is a pretty fun platformer, but there are so many other media sources that it’s connected to. Here’s a look at some of these bizarre stories and inspirations.
El Viento is a 1991 platformer game for the Sega Genesis by Japanese game developers Wolf Team. El Viento shares the same fictional universe with Earnest Evans, and happens to be one of the games in the series. It’s a fun game, but, for some reason, it does not often pop up on lists of the best games for the Sega Genesis. Despite this, there is a world of media connected to the world of El Viento, along with some bizarre inspirations.
One of those bizarre inspirations is that many enemy types in El Viento reference H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, a horror and science fiction genre popularized in the early 20th century. El Viento takes place in the same universe as El Viento and Earnest Evans, but not many people know of El Viento’s existence.
The story is set in 1930s New York, where a dark cult of people who want to control the world plan to bring their master, the Dark Prince Hastur, back from death. They will do this by doing dark cult rituals. To make things even more complicated, the mob is on their side, and they are giving them money for this project.
Our green-haired anime Annet is the only one who can stop them. She is a girl with the cursed bloodline of Hastur. But she has El Viento, which is a mystic boomerang.
El Viento is very straightforward – you play as Annet, and your goal is to run quickly through every stage while avoiding obstacles and enemies. There are very little power-ups or weapon enhancements in this game, where more focus is on completing each stage and defeating the bosses to advance the story. Besides her boomerang, Annet has several magic powers she can perform and learns as the game progresses.
El Viento is a punishingly hard game, where after losing all your life it’s game over. In this game, you do not have extra lives, and there are few chances to get your health back. But it is still fun and rewarding to play.
One of the main reasons I picked up this game was that my friend and fellow Dank Artists’ Goemosama shared a track from the game on his Twitter. I decided to stream that game just based on the music alone. And I wasn’t disappointed, because this game, besides having some incredible art, has a very incredible soundtrack by the legendary Motoi Sakuraba.
I asked Goemon to list out his top three tracks from the game so if you need a deeper sampler, try one or all of these:
Go deeper than just the games. This game composer put out an original prog album that sounds like his video game music from that period. Goemon was kind to share me a link to that:
A manga comic inspired by El Viento was created by artist Kazutoshi Yamane, who was credited under his pen name Tetsuya Ueno. In 1991, a manga adaptation of El Viento was published in four issues of Beep! Mega Drive magazine. This story takes place in the same universe as El Viento, where Annet is pursued by members of the Hastur cult who want her pendant. The story ends on a cliffhanger, though, as the artist had an accident, which left him unable to work on it further. You can check that out here.
El Viento is a great game that often goes unnoticed today. This game has an interesting story that inspired two other games in its series, beautiful artwork, and incredibly fun music. It is challenging, but it’s worth it. El Viento is a good game, but the music and stories that follow it are also worth checking out. Give it a try!
I give this game 12 Wolf Team Logos with no company vacation time.
Have you seen any other off-the-wall Sega games like El Viento? Let me know what is one of the strangest Sega games you’ve ever played. Also, a huge thank you to Goemonsama for his help- we did an interview with him last year that you should check out!