STORY:

El Viento has a very disturbing back story to the game. The story takes place in New York City during the late 1920s and is like something out of H. P. Lovecraft’s ”The Dunwhich Horror” and an ”Indiana Jones” adventure glued together. Annet, a young woman from South America who, with the aid of her trusty boomerang and magic powers, is attempting to save the world from an evil demon named ”Hastur”. There is this mad religious priest called ”Henry” who is the leader of this morbid religion who is trying to brainwash a young beautiful woman ”Restiana” (who is a blood relative of Annet) into becoming a sacrificial offering to a demon named ”Hastur”. Towards the end of the game ”Restiana” is tricked and then sacrificed and you must fight the monster as the final boss. The story also involves a New York Marfia henchman named ”Vincente DeMarco” who bribes the cult for money in order to let the cult perform their ceromonial summoning at the top of the Empire State building and becomes a recurring pest in Annet’s quest and has a habit of telling her where to travel next as she tries to get him on side.

El Viento (エル・ヴィエント) is a 1991 action platformer developed by Wolf Team for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and published exclusively in the US and Japan by Renovation Products. The title is Spanish for “The Wind.” It is the first game to be released in a loose trilogy completed by Earnest Evans and Anetto Futatabi.

Released in 1991, El Viento is the first and best-regarded game in a trilogy (sometimes called the “Earnest Evans series”), with sequels on the Genesis/Mega Drive and Mega CD.

Like many Wolf Team games, El Viento is ambitious and sometimes sloppy. Set in the 1920s, the storyline offers up a bizarre mashup of H.P. Lovecraft, gangster culture, and American landmarks. If you’ve played other Wolf Team efforts on the Mega Drive/Genesis, you’ll recognise the game’s visual style and sound design right away, with huge pixelated explosions that sound like arse cheeks squeezing a wet fart out.

That said, El Viento is an uncommonly brisk and crisp game, with very smart level design and carefully tuned gameplay, and that makes it a pleasure to play. Only in the last stage, in which the player is pursued by incredibly irritating bats, does El Viento begin to deteriorate into more ordinary fare. Up to that point, it’s probably one of the best and smoothest action-platformers on the Mega Drive/Genesis.

This version is a ROM hack/patch originally split in two and patched over each other and made by two very skilled modders in the community ”God Mode” and ”Jon Najar” (MIJET). This patch has many features not in the retail original that make it very useful to those who find it difficult.

THE FEATURES:

• Invincible to most enemies.
• You have an infinite double jump.
• Can walk and run through locked doors.
• Start a new game with all 5 skills (Magic).
• Only one shot to kill the bosses.
• Allows you to throw 4 boomerangs instead of 2.
• Infinite continues.
• Cheat Mode – Pause the game and press C to add magic, B to skip levels and A to enable slow motion.
• Dozens of graphical glitches alleviated (only visible on real systems).
• Script rewritten/retranslated.
• Dual-language feature added.
• Font changed and better centered on screen.
• Text reformatted to avoid screen edges (better visibility on some displays).
• Disabled musical transition in ending (first theme plays all the way through).
• Fixed a bug in the intro (missing text when intro interrupted in some places).
• Fixed a bug in the ending (text truncated if Scene 7 is skipped).
• Text printing routines enhanced.
• Mouth animations in the intro tweaked and reverted to a more natural speed.
• Tweaked credits slightly.
• Sound test reordered.
• Most songs in the sound test will now loop (override with the A Button).
• Menus are now slightly easier to navigate (top/bottom wrap around).
• A minor typo fix in the Japanese script.
• Removed a (probably) unintentional delay after skipping Japanese scenes.
• Stage 0 now accessible and with translated background (dual language!).

NOTES: 

1. Despite it saying you’re invincible, you’re not completely invincible to all enemies. Boss projectiles and the bats towards the end of the game can still hurt you.

2. Bosses only take one hit to defeat.

3. Can skip a stage at any time by pausing and pressing button B.

4. Music is optimised for PAL systems as it uses Wolfteam’s own Z80 sound driver which optimises audio by default and heavily copies it’s make up and structure from the Noriyuki Iwadare Z80 Cube driver.

5. There’s a slight bug on the title screen where part of Annet’s ankles are blacked out. This was down to me (Adrian) by inserting new text on the title screen and running over something I shouldn’t have in Hex. I left it as it wasn’t worth fixing. There are no other bugs in the game.

6. This game never released in PAL regions as it was yet another case of no publisher wanting to step it up and release it.

7. The Youtube video down below is the same Invincible God Mode hack but done to the ordinary retail version. The one you’re downloading here is God Mode’s patch over the superior Jon Najar hack.

8. In today’s woke world, this game would never be released so easily with such a strong and heavy back story. The story would have to be toned down in order for kids to play it or a rating system would have to be slapped on it for more mature audiences and the protagonist would have to be a non-binary, non-gender character and most likely a person of colour.

INSTRUCTION:

Inside the ZIP file you’ll find the IPS patch, it is in Lunar IPS format and simply needs to be patched to the USA version of El. Viento.

Enjoy!

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