Faxanadu

Faxanadu is an action role-playing game developed by Hudson Soft, released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1989. It is a spin-off of Nihon Falcom’s Xanadu. A wanderer returns to his elven home town to find the World Tree poisoned and its springs dry, and climbs the tree to find the cause.

The game is side-scrolling, with towns where gold buys weapons, armour and magic. Progress is saved with mantras, passwords given by the priests in each town.

A native PC port exists: FaxanaduRecomp, a static recompilation by mstan.