The Return of Ishtar/Gameplay

Controls

 * Joystick: Use the 8-way joystick to direct Ki (or Gil if you're player 2) around each room. (The screen will only scroll according to Ki's location). While holding down the second button, Ki can use her joystick to cycle through the six different types of magic spells ("ATTACK", "PROTECT", "ASSIST", "LIGHT", "MEDICAL" and "SPECIAL") and select them with first button.
 * First Button: Use this button to make Ki cast her currently-selected spell at the enemies. (Gil will automatically draw his sword whenever an enemy gets close enough to him). While holding down the second button, Ki can use this button to select a different spell. There are a total of sixty-four different spells in the game - but she will only start out with ten of them.
 * Second Button: Use this button to make the menu of spells appear in the bottom-left corner of the screen. As mentioned in the section on the joystick above, Ki can cycle through the six different types of spells with her joystick, and select them with first button, but she will lose the ability to move and cast her currently-selected spell at the enemies while doing so.

Ki and Gil
The two protagonists of the game; player 1 controls the spell-casting Princess Ki (shown in the image to the left), while player 2 controls the sword-wielding Prince Gilgamesh (shown in the image to the right). The screen will only scroll according to Ki's location - so if you are player 2, you will have to stay close to your partner if you want to explore the rooms. Ki will attack by casting spells at the enemies, while Gil automatically draws his sword whenever an enemy gets close enough to him; however, each time Gil kills an enemy with his sword, the numerator of the fraction in the bottom-right corner of the screen (the denominator starts at 15) will decrease by a preset amount depending on what enemy type it was. If it goes down to 0, he will evaporate, and it is game over for both players - and it is also game over for both players if Ki is touched by any enemy at all, which instantly makes her evaporate.

Vampires
These blood-sucking monsters come in four different colours - purple, orange, green and black. The purple ones take two hits to kill, the orange ones take four hits to kill, the green ones take ten hits to kill, and the black ones take twenty hits to kill. None of the four varieties of Vampires have any recovery points.

Slimes
These oozing blobs come in eight different colours - green, black, red, blue, yellow, pink, dark yellow, and dark green. The green ones will take 6 hits to kill, the black ones take 10 hits to kill, the red ones take 34 hits to kill, the blue ones take 56 hits to kill, the yellow ones take 106 hits to kill, the pink ones take 136 hits to kill, the dark yellow ones take 168 hits to kill, and the dark green ones take 208 hits to kill. The green ones will also have a singular recovery point, the black ones will have 2 recovery points, the red ones will have 3 recovery points, the blue ones will have 4 recovery points, the yellow ones will have 5 recovery points, the pink ones will have 6 recovery points, the dark yellow ones will have 7 recovery points, and the dark green ones will have 8 recovery points. They also from the original game.

Bats
These nocturnal animals come in four different colours - purple, orange, blue and black. The purple ones take four hits to kill, the orange ones take ten hits to kill, the blue ones take twenty-six hits to kill, and the black ones take seventy-two hits to kill. The purple ones don't have any recovery points, but the orange ones do have one recovery point, the blue ones have five recovery points, and the black ones have twenty recovery points. The blue ones are also known as "Hambrabi" (Katakana: ハンブラビ) - literally "Hanburabi".