The Krion Conquest, known in Japan as Magical Kids Doropie (まじかるキッズどろぴー), is a side scrolling action-adventure video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, made by Vic Tokai in 1991. Later, Genki Mobile ported the game exclusively to Japanese mobile phones.
Story
The year is 1999. The player is put in the middle of a war already lost when the Akudama Empire (known as the Krion Empire outside of Japan) attacks the Earth with its army of robots. No conventional weapon in existence is efficient against this opponent. The robots are however totally vulnerable to magic. A hired mercenary, Kagemaru, summons the only non-sealed witch, Doropie (known as Francesca outside of Japan) to stop the Akudama Empire's offense.
Gameplay
Players control the wand-wielding character, who can fire different objects based on the wand type the player has selected. The gameplay resembles Capcom's Mega Man series, while the cut scenes resemble the ones in Tecmo's NES version of Ninja Gaiden. Among other things, her outfit color changes when a different wand is selected (using a similar style menu). The powers included are the normal shot (red outfit), the phoenix ability (pink outfit), the freeze shot (blue outfit), the bouncing ball shot (green outfit), the shield ability (orange outfit), and the broom ability (purple outfit). There is also at least one enemy which resembles a Mettool (the hard-hat enemies; officially spelled "Mettaur" in the U.S.). Unlike the first three Mega Man titles back then, The Krion Conquest allows players to shoot directly upward, crouch to dodge enemies and projectiles, and shooting charged magic before the release of Mega Man 4 (December 6, 1991) and most later Mega Man titles that feature the charging "Mega Buster".
Development
According to its designers, the development of the Magical Kids Doropie project took approximately 10 months to finish. The title was originally planned as a licensed game based on the 1986 anime, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, because the main designer wanted to. However, in Japan, the anime's copyrights were held by TV Tokyo. Therefore, the designers were unable to use it and decided to think up their own basic design until Doropie came about like that. Doropie's name is a remains of Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz anime. The rest of Doropie's design didn't have any other Dorothy nor Oz references nor model in particular. But the character designer gave high priority to the point that quite a few people noticed in her design. Which is, Doropie having no eyelashes. Drawing eyelashing is a one of a expression method of a female character. But the character designer tried to make it cute without symbolic parts, and she was created. Her witch costume with a magical broom was the oldest heroine's design used in arcade and home video games back then.
Release differences
The North American version, The Krion Conquest, excluded some features from the Japanese version, Magical Kids Doropie, such as the removal of the "Continue" feature (making it more difficult), no lives to pick up, and no official English names for other characters (making its plot weaker). The most obvious difference between the original Japanese release and the North American version is the removal of every cut scene, except the introduction sequence and several redrawn in-game graphic elements. The circled hexagram seen at the end of each stage in the Japanese version was removed in the North American version due to Nintendo of America's rules not allowing religious beliefs in video games.
Source: Wikipedia, "The Krion Conquest," available under the CC-BY-SA License.