Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
During development there was also a plan for 4 players at once, and at that stage "Zool" and "Koakuman", non-player characters in the final version, were candidates to be playable.
It was released on 1989-9-21 as the 1st volume in the "Namco Game Sound Express" soundtrack series, and was a hit, reaching 47th place in the Oricon chart.
The music also won Best VGM in the 3rd Gamest Grand Prix (249 points, the 3rd highest vote in that category to date).
In the 3rd Gamest Grand Prix (1989) run by the game magazine Gamest, it took 2nd place in the readers' vote for the Grand Prix.
The ratings in the game magazines at release were as set out below; the "Cross Review" in Famicom Tsushin gave a total of 27 out of 40, while the "new software tasting chart" review in the 1990-9 issue of Marukatsu PC Engine gave the PC Engine version 10, 8, 10 and 9 for a total of 37 out of 40 — a very high rating, in sharp contrast.
Keimi Iwasaki in particular, then a working professional game designer and programmer and a reviewer for Marukatsu PC Engine, gave it a perfect 10 and called it "the ultimate, finest port.
This score also placed it 40th among all PC Engine titles (485 titles in total, as of 1993).
In "PC Engine All Catalog '93", a special supplement to the 1993-10 issue of the same magazine, it was introduced with a negative comment on its difficulty: "for all its charming screens, it is on the hard side".
Japanese publication Gamest awarded the game the first-place "The Best Game" award in 1991 and listed it as one of the best arcade games of all time, simultaneously awarding it the 7th "Player Popularity" and 2nd "Best Action" awards.
Gamest said that the unique characters, addictive role-playing-like gameplay and overall presentation made The Legend of Valkyrie one of Namco's best arcade titles, greatly applauding the game's strong usage of the System 2 hardware and for providing an experience unmatched by most arcade titles at the time.
ASM in contrast stated that the game was welcoming to newer players, appreciating that it became gradually difficult as it progresses.
PC Engine FAN said the graphics were good but not as "impressive" as the arcade original.
In their review of Namco Museum Vol. 5, IGN said that the cartoony artstyle and scaling effects made The Legend of Valkyrie the stand-out game of the compilation.
Kalata stated that the game's usage of puzzle-solving and adventure elements made it stand out from other games, alongside its "impressive" graphical effects such as sprite scaling and rotation.
The first port to a home console.
The Legend of Valkyrie was the creation of Namco artist Hiroshi Fujii and a designer only known by the pseudonym of "Koakuman".
The Legend of Valkyrie was conceptualized by Namco character artist Hiroshi Fujii, who previously worked on the game's predecessor Valkyrie no Bōken: Toki no Kagi Densetsu, and a designer only known by the pseudonym of "Koakuman".
It was fully translated as it is the first time the game was released outside Japan.
Two mobile phone versions were released in Japan – the first of these was for i-Mode devices in 2005, and the other for EZweb in 2006.
Japanese publication Gamest awarded the game the first-place "The Best Game" award in 1991 and listed it as one of the best arcade games of all time, simultaneously awarding it the 7th "Player Popularity" and 2nd "Best Action" awards.
Namco ported the game to the PC Engine in 1990, a conversion that was met with a more mixed response for its difficulty, downgraded graphics, and altered gameplay.
ASM in contrast stated that the game was welcoming to newer players, appreciating that it became gradually difficult as it progresses.
The problem comes from the socket design on the early SYSTEM II main board, and the sound fault remains even after applying the "System II conversion kit", the genuine Namco kit released at the time to convert an early SYSTEM II main board to the second-generation specification.
The Legend of Valkyrie was released in arcades to critical acclaim for its gameplay, characters, and world.
The development team originally planned to make a game a 4-player game in the vein of Gauntlet with a linkable cabinet-like feature similar to Namco's own Final Lap series, alongside multiple controllable Valkyries, both of which were abandoned later on.
Kalata concluded his review by expressing disappointment that Namco chose not to widely localize the game outside Japan, instead choosing to export rushed translations of titles such as the Tekken series.
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