Review: StarTropics (NES)

It's about time I put a non-generation-spanning franchise game under the microscope here, so I present my critique of Nintendo's StarTropics. This Japan-developed but US-only release really presents itself as a game that Americans are supposed to like. You take on the role of Mike, a baseball-loving, yo-yo-swinging adventurer from the island of Americola. If the title wasn't a giveaway, the setting of StarTropics is a series of islands, each with a humorous "cola" ending on their title. The game is broken up into 8 chapters, each taking place on a unique island, except for the final two which are on a spaceship. So we've got baseball, soda, aliens, and action/adventure. Maybe Japan had our 1990's interests down pretty well.

With each chapter, StarTropics presents a smaller story that needs to play out in order to progress further with Mike's overarching plot to find his scientist uncle who mysteriously disappeared. This leads our protagonist to traverse numerous underground caverns, littered with puzzles, enemies, and secrets. It's very Zelda-like in the way you usually advance from one screen-filing, top-down perspective room to the next, but the controls are altered in a significant way, and not necessarily for the better. StarTropics surfaces are basically laid out as large grids, limiting your movement to only four directions. More the issue though is that Mike is always stuck on the grid and can never stand in-between "tiles." This means if you move one way and immediately recognize that as a bad move, Mike will still need to fully subscribe to the original command, stop, and then turn around. This grid makes sense for the jumping puzzles that use actual tiles and switches, but makes regular ground movement horribly stilted.

The lack of fluid control does seemingly make the game more difficult, but StarTropics is actually a very fair game, despite the frustration it can cause. Dungeons are conquered with sometimes lengthy trial and error, slowly progressing and figuring out the tricks to passing through each room. The nice thing about this is once you figure out how to beat a room, you'll likely breeze through it on successive visits, making the restarting process feel like the game is trying to teach you rather than punish. Boss fights often require you to use the surrounding environment to defeat them, adding a level of strategy to the projectile-dodging. In general, the puzzles and action in StarTropics are smartly designed experiences that both with and despite the controls, feel very unique.

The art direction is initially one of the main draws here. The tropical ocean backdrops are a nice change of pace from the high fantasy worlds that are so commonplace in this genre. I found the whole setting to be pretty amusing, as all the islands are filled with what seem to be sun-tanned Caucasian natives. Pale-faced Mike clearly hasn't spent enough time outside in Americola to fit in with his beach-bum relatives. Visuals in the overworld are pretty bland and blocky, but the caverns have a zoomed-in perspective that lends iself to a higher degree of detail. Unfortunately, most of the caves look pretty similar, with only some palette-swapping taking place occasionally (but with purpose). The alien levels are the obvious black sheep here, presenting a jarringly divergent aesthetic of pipes and ducts to the previous crevices and rocks.

For all the connotations critics draw to the original Zelda adventure, I found the gameplay experience of StarTropics to be entirely different. Most of this has to do with the tone of the game being rather upbeat and tongue-in-cheek. I know when I first played Zelda I was much younger, but the dungeons in that game were terrifying. By comparison, StarTropics feels more like The Goonies, with a kid exploring some caves and fending off the occasional ghost (OK, perhaps I was afraid of The Goonies too, but I'm guessing most kids weren't). With the trial and error process in the dungeons, I continually had to die and restart the levels, making me consistently aware that I was playing a video game where I needed to get past some challenge. The story of StarTropics is mainly corny fun, and doesn't pull you further into the world so much as simply make you recognize that it's done some cool or cute things. This is partially due to the largely episodic nature of the chapters, but also the cliched implausibility of its alien invasion conclusion.

Maybe this review reads as a little more harsh than I mean it to, but while StarTropics pulls off a fun and unique challenge, it's also a game that I'm glad to be finished with. Maybe this says more about me than the game, but 8 chapters feels like just the right length for a game of this structure and type of difficulty. I should probably seriously avoid Demon's Souls. Thus, I leave my time with StarTropics very well satisfied, and willing to play its sequel (Zoda's Revenge) at some point down the road, but it's not at the top of my queue.

:screenshots from VGMuseum:

Review: Castlevania II - Simon's Quest (NES)

Another famous game franchise entry is up for review here in the form of the sequel to Konami's side-scrolling action/adventure game, Castlevania. Unlike so many follow-ups, Simon's Quest actually innovates and dramatically changes the gameplay structure of its forebearer. These deviations don't work in all cases though, making Castlevania II a game that strives for more ambitious inventiveness than it's ultimately capable of fulfilling.

The alternative tone is apparent from the outset as whip-cracking protagonist Simon Belmont begins his quest in a small town absent of enemies, but instead inhabited by townsfolk who offer cryptic "clues" for Simon's journey as well as selling items as merchants. The only direction given the player is the paragraph of prologue during the title screen dictating that Simon must recover five pieces of Count Dracula, whom he defeated in the previous title, in order to rid himself of a deadly curse which has been cast upon him. The player can choose to exit the town screen to the left or the right, which seems to offer a degree of open-worldness, but the left option is a far too difficult path at the beginning of the game. This is one example of many in Simon's Quest where the game appears to offer the player distinctive choices when in actuality there is only one correct solution.

Upon exiting the town the player will have to fight though enemies to get to the next destination, which, for the most part, is a breeze. If the player simply upgrades Simon's equipment at every opportunity in the towns and finds hidden items along the way these monsters will continue to be pushovers. Even the boss characters can be beaten with ease given constant attacks with the right weapon. Defeated bad guys might drop hearts which act as the game's currency. Simon's Quest also cycles through day and nighttime settings every few minutes, with enemies at night being more powerful and espousing more hearts as a reward. There will probably be a couple occasions where the player must grind through some enemies outside of a town to build up enough hearts to purchase a desired item for sale, but usually normal world traversal will yield enough moneys to serve one's needs. Simon begins with three lives, and will lose all stored hearts if he is killed in action so it's best to think strategically about when to venture away from towns and when to grind through nearby enemies to play it safe.

Simon's Quest is a very difficult game, not because of its enemy forces, but because the game is incredibly vague about what the player is supposed to be doing in so many situations. The "clues" from townspeople are most often not helpful or incorrect information. There are three acquirable crystals that are essential to progressing in the game but even in the instruction manual it's not explained how they can be used. Apparently having one equipped and holding the "down" button in the correct locations will open up new pathways. This obtuse trial and error process also rears its head with the countless fake floors and walls that reveal themselves after being doused with holy water, requiring throwing vials of water every step just in case there might be something secret that would otherwise be overlooked.

Unfortunately, the way to make Simon's Quest a much more fun and manageable game today is to sparingly use an online walkthrough to inform players on these otherwise indecipherable situations. It seems reasonable that if someone was to play this game when it was just released that a number of the abstract solutions to the game's challenges would have been spread through word-of-mouth. Given that Simon's Quest is a much older game now, using a free guide is the way to go unless an extensive timeframe has been set aside to play it.

Castlevania II does have plenty of positives going for it that both show innovation for the series and help compensate for some shortcomings. First and foremost the game has an excellent soundtrack that players may find stuck in their head hours after putting down the controller. The score includes the debut of Castlevania series staple "Bloody Tears," which sounds especially great considering it's coming off a NES cartridge. Simon's Quest's day and night cycle may not have truly capitalized on the feature, but it was still a pretty novel addition at the time. The main purpose of the device, other than some combat variety, is to keep track of time. Remembering back to the prelude text, Simon is growing weaker because he's been cursed, and so the sooner he can defeat Dracula for good, the better. This brings about another emerging gameplay system: multiple endings. Depending on the speed one completes the game, they could be rewarded to one of three endings depicting whether or not Simon was fast enough to reverse his condition and truly kill Dracula.

Castlevania II certainly has its problems (botched localization, lack of instruction, and an incoherent hint system), but knowing about these issues ahead of playing will prevent them from being much of interruptions. This is a case where some limited exposure to help texts or even just taking into account the troublesome scenarios listed in this review, will make for a far less frustrating game experience and allow for the positives of the game to shine. Not to make too many excuses for a game that clearly misses the mark on some important design decisions, but there is still a considerable amount of fun to be had here.

:screenshots from VGMuseum: