Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV (Famicom)

If you’re a regular reader of mine, you may be wondering why I’ve chosen to skip over Adventure Island 3 and proceed straight to its Japan-exclusive follow-up, Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima IV (“Master Takahashi’s Adventure Island IV”). Rest assured that I will be circling back to give the third 8-bit installment its due. The reason for the break in protocol is that today marks six years of weekly(ish) game reviews for me, and I typically like to observe these anniversaries by treating myself to something special. Something I’ve been anticipating for a long time. Adventure Island IV falls into this category for one simple reason: It represents the end. Not for my little writing project here, but for the legendary Famicom itself. Yes, the system that put Nintendo on the video game industry map saw its final official release when Adventure Island IV hit store shelves on June 24, 1994, just three weeks short of its eleventh birthday. A truly epic run in light of how rapidly the state of the art was evolving throughout the ’80s and ’90s. Seeing as the Famicom, famously rechristened the Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan, is my favorite console of all time, there’s no way such a fateful benchmark could fail to resonate with me. Thanks to the excellent English patch by Zynk Oxhyde, I can now witness the end of an era firsthand.

Adventure Island IV is also noteworthy for the way it signaled a sharp turn away from the series’ Super Mario style linear platforming roots and toward a more Metroid-like open exploration approach. Gone are the strict timer and one-hit deaths. In their place is a extendable health meter and an inventory sub-screen to hold the arsenal of weapons and tools Master Higgins/Takahashi will need to rescue his five dinosaur pals and sweetheart Tina from the vile Eggplant Devil.

The setting of Adventure Island IV isn’t especially large or complex by exploratory platformer standards. It’s divided up into six distinct areas, each presided over by its own boss. Defeating the first boss opens the path to the second, and so on down the line. Thus, there’s little need to worry about getting lost or wandering into areas you don’t have the proper upgrades to complete. Similarly, the enemies and obstacles you’ll encounter are relative tame compared to a Metroid or Faxanadu. This makes Adventure Island IV one of the Famicoma’s more relaxing, low-pressure takes on the action-adventure genre. It reminds me of Sunsoft’s Ufouria, a comparison only strengthened by the bright colors, bouncy music, and whimsical tone common to both. We’ve certainly come a long way from the hair-pulling sadism of the original ’86 Adventure Island.

In fact, I found the laid back vibe and slick presentation of Adventure Island IV so agreeable that its occasional mechanical flaws barely registered. What sort of flaws? Well, there’s the fact that most of the items you’ll gather throughout have extremely situational uses. The spear’s ability to stick to the underside of logs, for instance, comes in handy exactly once. And although most tools double as weapons, they’re simply not effective enough in the role to bother using that way. The majority of the time, you won’t feel any incentive to unequip Higgin’s starting weapon (hurled femur bones) unless you need to momentarily hammer a rock, water a wilted plant, or whatever. Only in the final two areas can you find viable replacements for the bone in the form of the boomerang and axe.

Additionally, I can’t say I love how Higgin’s rideable dino pals are handled in this outing. Once you rescue one, you have the option of visiting its pen located beneath the Higgins residence and taking it along with you. The problem is that all it takes is a single hit to banish your dinosaur back to its home base and there’s no way to reacquire it without dropping whatever you’re doing and returning there. I get that they wanted to put some sensible limit on these guys. It’s just that the one ultimately settled on seems overly punitive and actively discourages experimentation.

Thankfully, the moment-to-moment gameplay of Adventure Island IV remains charming as all get out. Environments are lively and varied, animations on Higgins and the other characters are packed with personality, and the flow of the combat and exploration is smooth. As outlined above, it’s not the deepest or most polished effort of its kind and hardcore adventure game fans might themselves wishing for more freedom and challenge. Still, it’s a quality piece of work and I consider it a shame that the bold new direction it nudged the stagnanting franchise in didn’t persist beyond Super Adventure Island II later the same year.

Now that we’ve established Adventure Island IV is an above-average game, how does it fare as a sendoff for the venerable Famicom? Practically perfect. After all, Hudson Soft was its first third-party software publisher to sign on. If anyone other than Nintendo themselves was going to usher their iconic machine off into the sunset, Hudson was the natural choice. Watching Higgins and the newly-rescued Tina stroll down that beach and into the last Famicom end screen together echoes the climax of day one hit Donkey Kong, bringing everything full circle, right down to the Valentine hearts hovering over our happy couples’ heads. Such beautiful symmetry is far too rare in this world.

Super Mario World (Super Nintendo)

After almost six years of reviewing Super Nintendo games, it’s finally time to tackle The Big One, the killer launch app, the best-selling, the most played, the universally adored: 1990’s Super Mario World. As both the pack-in for Nintendo’s hotly-anticipated 16-bit console and a flagship entry in the most successful game series in history up to that point (eclipsed only by Pokémon in the intervening years), it was clearly destined for greatness. It was my own first hands-on exposure to the SNES at a mall kiosk back in 1991. Loving the NES as much as I did, I hardly needed to be sold to. Mario World did it anyway. I walked away from that kiosk significantly more excited than I had been. Quite the feat!

Of course, the elephant in the room is the age-old dilemma of whether Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 3 is the true king of the classic sprite-based platformer golden age. Everyone has their opinion, and mine happens to be that it’s SMB3. It’s a little more challenging and I prefer its stronger world theming and wider selection of kooky power-ups. It’s certainly no slam dunk, however. Not when we’re talking about two massive finely tuned epics packed to the rafters with clever surprises and top-notch level design.

Anyway, beyond giving Nintendo’s latest platform its best possible start, Super Mario World’s most enduring legacy is no doubt the introduction of Mario’s adorable sidekick/mount, Yoshi. This enemy devouring happy-go-lucky dinosaur swiftly became a breakout star in his own right, headlining a dozen of his own games to date and serving as a reliable ensemble cast member in spin-off franchises like Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Smash Bros. Yoshi effectively replaces several of the power-ups from Mario 3 here (specifically the Frog, Tanuki, and Hammer Bros. suits), as he gains access to special powers by eating Koopa shells of various colors. Red for fire breath, yellow for an earthquake attack, and blue for flight. That’s on top of being able to swallow, stomp, or otherwise vanquish many baddies Mario himself can’t. He even doubles as armor of sorts, since getting hit while riding Yoshi will cause him to run off instead of harming Mario directly. If Mario can then chase the panicked Yoshi down and hop back in his saddle before he falls into a hole, he’ll be brought back under control none the worse for wear. Cute looks aside, Yoshi’s a real beast and a major part of why SMW skews easier than its predecessor.

Super Mario World’s other major innovation is alluded to in the name itself. Mario’s adventure now plays out across a single interconnected world map rather than eight isolated ones that each can’t be revisited after completion. If you want to turn around when you reach Bower’s front door and trek all the way back to the first area, you’re free to do so. Far from being a shallow gimmick, this freedom of movement is integral to SMW’s novel exploratory focus. Roughly a third of the game’s 73 levels have alternate hidden exits leading to highly entertaining, technically optional content. Uncovering these exits revises the landscape of Dinosaur Land before your very eyes, creating the impression of a persistent, evolving world with much more to see and do than first meets the eye.

The seamless integration of these two brilliant new ideas with the already proven core Super Mario formula is what ultimately cements World as a video game for the ages. Sure, you’re once again out to save the Princess from Bowser and his seven Koopaling cronies, but between Yoshi and all those secret paths to discover, Nintendo succeeded in ensuring that Dinosaur Land wouldn’t be mistaken for the Mushroom Kingdom. A fresh 16-bit coat of paint also obviously helped its case at the time of release, though the later SNES library upped the graphics ante in a big way and I wouldn’t really cite mind blowing visuals as a reason to fire this one up today. The closest it has to genuine flaws are the largely subjective sorts of things I’ve already covered, such as the generally low difficulty. So despite not being my favorite Mario outing or Super Nintendo title, it remains an indisputable masterpiece fully worthy of its icon status.

Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly-Paradise (TurboGrafx-16)

Just one year after Hudson Soft published Air Zonk, one of the finest of the TurboGrafx-16’s many auto-scrolling shooters, they gave us a sequel, Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly-Paradise. Heroic cyborg-with-attitude Zonk is back to battle a new plot by King Drool and his henchmen to take over Earth. Except they’re calling the lead baddie Emperor Sandrovich this time for some reason. Don’t worry, he’s the same reptile bastard Zonk veterans already know and hate.

True to its name, Super Air Zonk used the expanded memory of the Super CD-ROM format to realize what should have been an even more polished and bombastic sequel. Unfortunately, for reasons we may never be entirely sure of, Super Air Zonk largely squanders its theoretical technical advantages, coming across as an oddly muted and perfunctory follow-up. If I had to speculate, I might point to Hudson’s choice of development studio. The first Air Zonk was the work of Red Company, the established shooting game masters behind the likes of Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder. Super Air Zonk was contracted out to Dual, who’d previously worked on . . . Predator for the NES. Huh.

In any event, Super Air Zonk not only fails to live up to its CD-ROM hype, it underperforms relative to the humble HuCard original. Practically all of its predecessor’s impressive parallax scrolling background work is absent. The CD music, which is mostly in the playful rockabilly style you’d expect, packs less energy and fewer memorable melodies than the last game’s chiptunes. This tidal wave of mediocrity surges clear over the presentation to inundate the gameplay proper, too. Levels here are significantly less hectic. Air Zonk’s positively insane enemy design has been toned down considerably. And power-ups? Forget ’em! Gone are the seven unique shot types with their own charge attacks. Zonk has now been downgraded to a basic straight shot and bomb combo.

One element that is thankfully still present is Zonk’s group of helpful companions, which can merge with him to provide new offensive abilities. Alas, they, too, are shadows of their former selves. They’ve been reduced in number from ten to seven and you can no longer choose which ones you’d prefer to bring along with you. Instead, you’ll meet a preset companion midway through each of the seven stages. In other words, player choice is never a factor. What precious little power-up potential is present always manifests itself in the exact same way on every playthrough. Not a great sign for any shooter.

This review is quite short (by my logorrheic standard, at least) and almost entirely dismissive. Strange as it seems, however, I’m not necessarily saying that you should avoid Super Air Zonk. Yes, it’s half the game its forebear was, if that, but I found it to be an adequate enough lightweight diversion. Its world and characters retain no small measure of charm. The graphics are colorful and the tunes catchy. Tame enemy placement, a ready supply of extra lives, and unlimited continues make it a serviceable casual or introductory shooter as well. It was a late release for the console and the physical disk is consequently one of the most expensive out there, tipping the scales at U.S. $800 and up as of this writing. Personally, I wouldn’t venture to pay 5% of that on the strength of the action alone. If you have a way of running it for free, though, I can think of far worse ways to kill an hour or so.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Pool of Radiance (NES)

Believe it or not, I do have another hobby that rivals my lifelong love affair with video gaming in intensity: Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve been endlessly engrossed by this primal progenitor of all roleplaying games for well over thirty years now. It’s difficult to imagine today, in an age where concepts like experience points and leveling up have permeated into all corners of interactive entertainment, but the very idea of persistent, quantifiable character progression in games was largely unheard of before D&D escaped its co-creator E. Gary Gygax’s rural Wisconsin basement in 1974. Of the myriad updated versions of the tabletop classic to come down the pike since, my sentimental favorite remains the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line that ran from 1977 through 1989. Its heady mix of brooding dark fantasy line art, a grounded and highly perilous treatment of in-game challenges, and the late Gygax’s charmingly verbose prose (dubbed “High Gygaxian” by readers) imbues his AD&D with a spellbinding eldritch flavor that, for me, simply cannot be topped.

Given the considerable nerd factor overlap between D&D’s early audience and the computer sciences, it’s not surprising that it exerted a powerful and seemingly immediate influence on the burgeoning field of video game design. ’70s university mainframes were quickly crowded with the likes of Colossal Cave Adventure and the rather shamelessly named DND. The subsequent rise of home computing in the early 1980s brought such foundational titles as Rogue, Ultima, and Wizardry to the masses. It wasn’t long before this budding family tree branched out across the Pacific, blossoming into Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and the rest of the JRPG canon.      

What is surprising to me in hindsight is just how long it took TSR Inc., the company in charge of the D&D brand until 1997, to fully invest in officially licensed video games. Although Mattel’s Intellivision console did see a pair of AD&D releases in 1982, Cloudy Mountain and Treasure of Tarmin, the platform’s strict technical limitations meant that neither was able to come close to accurately modeling the rules of the pen-and-paper game. It wasn’t until 1988 that Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) was finally able to implement a faithful home computer take on AD&D proper with Pool of Radiance, the first in their so-called Gold Box series produced under license from TSR. To say that it was a hit would be a comic understatement. Pool of Radiance became one of the defining computer RPGs of the era and a nearly unbelievable thirteen sequels and follow-ups using the Gold Box engine made it to market before SSI and TSR’s partnership was dissolved in 1994. Among these was 1991’s Neverwinter Nights, the first graphical (as opposed to text-based) MMORPG.

Whew! That’s a whole lot of backstory to reach the point where I can begin talking about my real subject today: The obscure 1991 NES conversion of Pool of Radiance developed by Marionette and published by Pony Canyon and FCI. This port had several strikes against it from the get-go. Being based on a complex and famously difficult computer RPG, it risked both intimidating the NES’ core audience of kids and coming across as a dumbed down take on the material to the hardcore PC gaming crowd most likely to recognize it in the first place. On balance, NES PoR largely avoids falling into either of these traps. While it has its flaws and is certainly not for everyone, it’s overall a remarkably faithful and playable rendition of a beloved classic.

In terms of specific changes from the computer editions, I actually consider the bulk of them to be improvements. You get a complete musical score instead of stony silence punctuated by stark PC speaker blip sound effects. Bows and other missile weapons have unlimited ammunition, eliminating the need for constant trips back to the weapon shop for arrows. Best of all, the key story elements are now present in the game itself, whereas you previously had to consult a printed Adventurer’s Journal for the majority of the dialog and plot development due to limited floppy disk space. On the downside, the NES graphics can be downright hideous at times. I hope you love green and brown and . . . yeah, that’s about it. The single worst update has to be the streamlined inventory system, though. Forcing you to scrape by with a paltry eight item slots per character, to include equipped items, is a nightmare far worse than the semi-realistic weight tracking it replaced. I had to leave dozens of magic items where they lay simply because nobody in the group had room in their pockets for another scroll or ring. Absurd.   

Pool of Radiance casts your party of up to five characters as newcomers to the frontier town of New Phlan. Fifty years previous, the entire Phlan region was overrun by a hoard of monsters and these villains still control the lion’s share of the ruined city and surrounding lands. New Phlan’s town council is determined to push back the darkness and make the realm safe for civilization once more. That means rich bounties waiting to be paid out to bold young adventurers like yours. Soon, the existence of a shadowy mastermind uniting the disparate monster types is revealed and your mission becomes to identify, locate, and defeat this “Boss” at all costs.

As you might expect with a premise like that, PoR is structured as a very open-ended, player-directed affair. Your initial efforts in New Phlan will inevitably revolve around clearing the nearby slums of kobolds, goblins, and other weak starting baddies. After that, however, you’re given a remarkable amount of freedom, with the council happy to assign you multiple bounties at a time. Do you want to pour through the stacks of a ruined library in search of lost tomes? Retrieve a noble’s stolen treasure? Clear out a keep occupied by an army of the undead? Eventually, you can even leave the protection of the city walls altogether and begin seeking out ever more dangerous monster lairs in the trackless wilderness.

Of course, with great freedom comes great responsibility. True to its name, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is not an easy rule set for newcomers to grasp. What character classes and spells will prove most effective? Is plate mail +2 better or worse than banded mail +3? What’s a THAC0? While the beefy instruction manual does a decent enough job of acting as a miniature Players Handbook, its various charts and explanations still obviously take some time and effort to digest. The monsters won’t be going easy on you as you’re learning the ropes, either. AD&D combat, especially at low levels, can be exceptionally cruel. Your heroes are almost always outnumbered, death can result from a single unlucky blow, and some negative status effects (especially energy draining, which lowers the target’s level) can make mere death seem like a kindness. There’s no mistaking it: This is a game made by and for established D&Ders. The good news is that patience, study, and experimentation will eventually impart all the strategies necessary for successful expeditions. Just don’t count on being able to hit the ground running if this is your first brush with old school D&D mechanics.

Most exploration takes place from a first-person perspective as you navigate various labyrinthine areas. Thankfully, one of PoR’s few mercies is an auto-map feature that will aid you tremendously in surviving its many mazes. Well, most of them, anyway. There are a select few locations where the auto-map doesn’t work and you’ll need to fall back on your innate sense of direction and maybe a sheet of paper. Battles are a different story, playing out as overhead view tactical exercises where careful movement and positioning are paramount. These combats are also where you’re likely to pick up on the fact that PoR’s pacing in general is glacial. The simplest fights often eat up ten minutes or more apiece. In addition, this isn’t a Dragon Quest type setup where you can step outside the starting town, kill five little slimes, and score your first level-up. PoR characters require thousands of experience points to advance a single level, the acquisition of which can eat up hours of real time. To put that into perspective, a complete playthrough is likely to take you 25 hours or more, despite most characters maxing out between levels six and nine.

The funny thing is that all this “uphill both ways in the snow” brutality that was deliberately bred out of most console RPGs (as well as 21st century iterations of D&D itself) does ultimately have a payoff. A damn fine one, too, if I do say so myself. Leveraging your grey matter to conquer objectively overwhelming odds and thrive in this intensely hostile world is bloody empowering. Take, for example, the thrill of unearthing a mighty prize like a long sword +3 or wand of fireballs when you know full well what a massive difference it’s going to make on the battlefield going forward. If I could bottle that feeling, I’d never have to work a day again in my life. Finishing Pool of Radiance gave me the same sort of rush that beating Ninja Gaiden and similar high-octane action titles does. That alone made it worth the effort. It may be slow, ugly, frustrating, and suitable only for those with the patience (or masochism) of monks, but it’s AD&D through-and-through. Just like me.

Marvelous: Mōhitotsu no Takarajima (Super Famicom)

Nintendo’s Marvelous: Mōhitotsu no Takarajima (“Marvelous: Another Treasure Island”) is a game that doesn’t hesitate to wear its heart on its sleeve. Its subtitle makes no bones about it being an homage to none other than R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island, the quintessential adventure yarn about a plucky child protagonist who leaves ordinary life behind when he’s swept up in the intrigues of cutthroat sea dogs on the hunt for buried riches. That’s far from the full extent of the influences on display in this quirky 1996 Japanese exclusive, however, as the gameplay itself is a fascinating cross between Nintendo’s own The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Blizzard’s puzzle-platformer The Lost Vikings.

Marvelous ups the ante on its literary namesake by giving you not one, but three kid heroes, each with his own suite of unique abilities. The trio are partaking in a class field trip to a remote island, chaperoned by their teacher, Gina. I’d love to see the disclaimers tacked onto that permission slip! It’s not long before routine camp life is interrupted by a band of rather silly pirates, who kidnap Gina during their search for the fabled treasure known as Marvelous. Not the type to take that sort of thing lying down, the three brave lads (who are soon joined by a talking bird and monkey duo) set out to rescue Gina and give the dastardly Blue and his crew what for.

Our stars are diminutive speed demon Deon, heavyweight heavy-hitter Max, and lanky gadgeteer Jack. Although you’ll generally want to keep the three of them together when traveling in “follow the leader” fashion, it’s often necessary to assume control of one member at a time while the others hold their positions. Perhaps there’s a gap one only boy can cross initially, multiple distant switches that all need to be pressed at once, or an object too huge for even Max to manage by himself. This core mechanic of needing to direct the three boys independently in order to solve the game’s myriad puzzles is where the Lost Vikings comparison really comes to the fore.

As for the Link to the Past, uh, link, it mainly manifests in the control, art style, and whimsical tone. Marvelous was the directorial debut of future Zelda series stalwart Eiji Aonuma and he hasn’t shied away from emphasizing the connection in interviews. That said, don’t come into this one expecting simply a Zelda outing in pirate drag. Puzzle solving is far and away the main event in Marvelous. Battle sequences are so scattered and perfunctory that you can easily pass an hour or more of play time forgetting they exist at all. The fact that the entire sprawling last dungeon doesn’t include a single enemy is a testament to what a low design priority combat was relative to any given Zelda title. It’s your brain that’ll be put to the test here, not your virtual sword arm.

It’s fortunate, then, that Marvelous’ puzzles are a superb bunch by and large. They’re quite varied, owing to the fact that your team’s capabilities grow throughout as they acquire new items, and do an admirable job of straddling the thin line between dead obvious and punishingly cryptic. If all else fails, there’s a handy hint system accessed by forking over one of your luck rocks (in-game currency) to your bird pal, though I rarely felt the need to rely on it.

Since Marvelous clocks in at a hefty twelve hours or so, I’m glad they put the work in to keep it engaging throughout. Mostly, anyway. I can’t say I was nearly as impressed with the fifth and final chapter as I was with the preceding four. This is down to it being set almost entirely within the ancient complex where Marvelous itself is sealed away, meaning puzzles galore with practically no NPC interactions to break them up. It’s a problem because one common element that elevates Nintendo-developed adventure games of the period for me is their winning sense of humor. The lion’s share of Marvelous excels in this regard. You get to play penguin matchmaker, tickle a recalcitrant cow into submission, play soccer with a giant spider, and so much more. An ugly brown maze of invisible walkways and lazy slide puzzles is no way to cap off a journey like that.

Leaving aside its mediocre (rushed?) finale, this is a well-crafted action-adventure with wit and charm to spare, very much in the same vein as another “lost” Nintendo classic, Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls) for Game Boy. I suppose it’s easy to understand why a late Super Famicom release with massive amounts of text wasn’t seen as a localization priority when a successor system, the Nintendo 64, was already on shelves. Still, Marvelous doubling as the name of the game itself and the fabulous treasure featured therein is entirely appropriate and I recommend you channel your own inner buccaneer and check it out via out Tashi and DackR’s unofficial English translation patch. Yar!