Something reminded me of this game recently, so here it is. Just some things I want to remember the next time it comes up.

I don’t remember where or when I got this game. Looking at the date and the box spine, it looks like I got it in Hong Kong (American games didn’t have the catalog number on the spine), but I don’t really remember playing this game there. It may have been a gift, a game I did not pick myself. In my head there are some images of my bedroom and the shelf where I kept my Sega stuff, in the last place where we lived in in Hong Kong before moving to the USA (as with Kung Fu Kid), and that’s it. The deepest and only memories of actually playing the game are in that little SF apartment I grew up in, the one with the blue carpet. I spent a lot of time playing it, so much so that even my mother noticed the game. She thought that it had really good music, particularly the title screen and opening sequence. My personal favorite was the password-input screen. After I learned of the sound test, I recorded the entire soundtrack on cassette and listened to it before bed. I think that gold-colored Fisher radio is still in my mother’s house.

Catalog number 7017

There were many screens to explore, and a sense of adventure and accomplishment (i.e. “wow! cool!”) when I finally made it to a new locale and the scenery changed. The enemies changed color depending on how strong they were. There was a healer named “Randar”, who is apparently a mascot for Compile, the company that made this game. Later, when I saw Randar in Space Megaforce, I got a pretty big kick out of it. I don’t see any images on Google, so maybe next time I play it I’ll do a screen-cap.

The game had a password feature so you could pick up where you left off, but it was a pain writing down the password. There were a lot of letters, and sometimes I confused one letter for another. Looking at it now, I don’t see how I could have, but I definitely wrote down some passwords that ended up not working (see very bottom of post).

One time, I encountered a bug that corrupted how my gold displayed on the screen. Instead of a number, it showed a bunch of random symbols. It seemed that I had accidentally stumbled upon infinite gold! I went on a purchasing spree, buying up all the different boots and armor that I couldn’t afford before. That made the game a lot easier. The infinite money even lasted after a password save. In combination with the Helpful Hints sheet linked at the bottom of this post, it was no longer a question of if I would beat the game.

Before saying goodbye to all my childhood treasures, I tried to digitize as much as I could, which is why I can post photos now. Among those treasures were some of the papers on which I wrote down Golvellius passwords. I think I’ll try out some of these passwords to see if I can’t find the infinite gold password.

The rapid-fire unit worked pretty good in this game. Before I got rich, I would stand in a safe corner somewhere, use something to physically hold down the controller button, and then go do something else while enemies continuously respawned and ran into my sword. It still took a long time to make money this way, though. The rapid-fire unit was more effective during regular fighting, shortening the time it took to kill enemies.

The last time I ran my copy of Golvellius – July 12, 2017

In July 2017, Golvellius sold for the measly sum of $3.25. I guess no one values your childhood memories more than yourself. That summer, I pretty much sold the entire collection in preparation for moving back to Hong Kong. On one hand, it doesn’t seem to make sense to have so many childhood things around at age 40. On the other, there’s no rule that says you can’t. In recent years, there’s been an increase in the popularity of retro gaming. I sometimes look at Instagram or Twitter feeds of Sega collections and yell out loud in anguish. But could I have kept my games? I don’t have a house, I haven’t had a job longer than a year in seven years, and I keep moving back and forth between Hong Kong and the USA. It’s hard. When I did have the games, I never looked at them. It’s only after they’ve been gone have I really immersed myself in them, reading the manuals, admiring the box scans, and actually playing the games. Bottom line: if I really wanted, I could have traded pride in exchange for storage at my mother’s house.

So this is it for now, a nice little collection of photos and thoughts around Golvellius, Valley of Doom. I’ll post the rest of the photo gallery below, including an original recording of the final dungeon and ending (with the corrupted gold), and will update if I think of anything else. As always, thanks for being along for the ride.

Golvellius Manual (PDF, 39.5 MB)
Golvellius Helpful Hints (PDF, 2.4 MB)
Text from eBay listing (TXT, 1.6 KB)

Further reading:
Golvellius at Sega Retro
Golvellius at SMS Power!
Golvellius Shrine at RPGClassics

I was a paranoid kid.

In addition to the blue bag, I used a couple of binders to store my game materials – one of them was a Trapper Keeper:

And the passwords featured in the above photos, all of them tested while writing this post, the first time in decades I entered a password into the game:

4FGU 2CTP X83B ZATD MPHO JT4D REWW S6FE
NSH7 C2CP EZHK 3GCP 4QW6 KZW4 BU8S KNZE
8ZV2 OAX8 V7OZ 7YR8 CZAD 4A38 V2YB 4P78
G6BZ YA6Z ZUSV 37SZ X4C4 WP4A 7ERA V8FM
NC6S NVPA K6YM CS4D EA78 UYFE FZJR 6DVE - gold glitch!
RDYT EH38 R7E4 YN5W P2ZH 4BX8 R2VQ DNTH
CCBC OA7W B3OQ GHRU L2CD PPSA HDSZ DWG7 - doesn't work - handwriting 😅
V8JY KYWG LE83 SHAF XUL5 CPLL GWFV 583X
8655 YB4A MU57 YM63 UP62 BK2Q UQKP TZRQ
PCTK OCZW N7QU WMEH TBVX DTCH MBZJ 4G7W
RE53 BQY3 GB2F UJK3 KE62 JOY3 GP62 EAJR