Super Mario Bros. Special – 35th Anniversary Edition (NES)

It’s March 10th! You know what that means! Well, maybe you do. According to Nintendo circa 2016, the contrivance of “MAR10” is sufficient to dub today Mario Day and celebrate all things relating to the video game industry’s arch-mascot. Just this once, I figured I’d relinquish my usual stubborn urge to spurn all viral marketing and indulge in one of the plucky plumber’s perennially popular peregrinations. Incidentally, did you also know that excessive alliteration is generally considered indicative of poor writing? I’m full of fun facts today!

Having recently covered the monumental Super Mario Bros., I thought it might be a fine change of pace to present something comparatively obscure. Easier said than done, of course, as worthwhile games starring the most famous character in the medium don’t exactly grow on trees. Except on mid-’80s Japanese home computers, it seems, where Hudson Soft developed and published a total of nine licensed Nintendo titles for PC-8801 and Sharp X1 series machines between 1984 and 1986. The majority of these are straightforward conversions of well-known Famicom/NES releases like Golf and Ice Climber. A few, however, are effectively brand new works based only loosely on their source material. 1986’s Super Mario Bros. Special is firmly in the latter camp. While obviously patterned on Nintendo’s 1985 platforming masterpiece, it contains 32 original levels on top of new power-up items and enemies imported from Donkey Kong and the arcade Mario Bros.

Sounds amazing, right? Alas, the elephant in the room here is that both versions of SMB Special are rather terrible. Right up front, you can say goodbye to the console game’s scrolling. Instead, you’re presented with a single screen at a time. Reaching the edge results in either an abrupt blackout transition to the next on PC-8801 or a Legend of Zelda style flip-screen one on X1. Either way, the basic inability to see what sort of hazards await before you leap headlong into them is enough on its own to prevent Special from being a classically great Super Mario experience. Add poor performance, clumsy controls, broken hit detection, and garish graphics to the mix, and it’s abundantly clear why neither Hudson nor Nintendo has seen fit to re-release this in any form.

Yet despite all its technical incompetence, there were still those who saw untapped potential in Special’s unique level layouts and features. Two such individuals were the skilled ROM hackers frantik and Levi “Karatorian” Aho, who joined forces in 2021 to create Super Mario Bros. Special – 35th Anniversary Edition. By taking all of Special’s signature design elements and faithfully porting them into the buttery smooth NES SMB “engine,” the world at large was finally able to appreciate Hudson’s game free from the frustration stemming from its botched ’80s implementations.

So how is it? No bad at all, although it still doesn’t quite live up to Nintendo’s own in-house work. Stages are fairly well-balanced for the most part, with just enough tweaks to the formula to stand apart. You’ll encounter the rotating fire bar hazards outside castle areas, for example, and transitioning between surface, underground, and water zones within the same level is more common. That said, there’s a significant difficulty spike that brings the last leg of the adventure closer in line with Super Mario Bros. 2 (aka The Lost Levels) than the first SMB. I found it doable, but the tone of my playthrough definitely shifted from casual romp to intense teeth-gritting focus around world seven.

The added power-ups and enemies are a mixed bag. Special includes the wing, which allows Mario to “fly” using the same controls as swimming and a hammer straight out of Donkey Kong that Mario automatically swings up and down to pulverize any foes that draw near. Both are neat gimmicks, though they suffer from the triple defects of being rare (each appears exactly twice), hidden in out-of-the way invisible blocks, and of very short temporary duration. As such, they’re closer to cute Easter eggs than meaningful additions to the core gameplay. There are a few other hidden items, such as the famous Hudson Bee, but these are one-time score or timer bonuses that hardly impact play at all.

Our cast of baddies fares better, since the bulk of them deliver fresh challenges. Sidestepper crabs are functionally identical to Spinies, a basic ground enemy that can’t be stomped. Fighter Flies also can’t be stomped and, worse, continually hop toward Mario and thus require strict jump timing to bypass in the absence of a Fire Flower. Icicles resembling the ones from Mario Bros. fall from the ceiling as Mario passes underneath. Finally, the rolling barrels and animated fireballs from Donkey Kong both represent grounded hazards that move inexorably forward and can only be defeated if you have a hammer handy.

On the flip side, these additions are offset by some noteworthy cuts. Contrary to its title, SMB Special is strictly a one-player affair. Get bent, Luigi! The iconic warp zones that provide shortcuts to the later worlds are likewise nowhere to be seen. Regardless, I think the pros of this take on Special more than outweigh the cons and succeed at transforming a misbegotten regional oddity into a quality platformer worth a look from Mario lovers everywhere. As a lifelong fan, beating down the sewer pests from Mario Bros. with the hammer from Donkey Kong in the 8-bit Mushroom Kingdom is simultaneously a trip and a delight. Kudos to frantik and Karatorian for polishing this roughest of gems to a near mirror sheen and merry Mario Day to one and all!

FX-Unit Yuki: The Henshin Engine (PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16)

Video games about video gaming have a long, poorly documented history. The archetypal meta-game framing device (perhaps inspired by Disney’s Tron) is everyday gamers somehow getting physically drawn into the digital world and having to fight for their lives there. See Kid Chameleon or, uh, Cheetahmen, I guess. The 1983 horror anthology film Nightmares put a rather bizarre spin on the formula in its memorable “Bishop of Battle” segment (starring a young Emilio Estevez!), and the concept made its way to television later in the decade via the title character of NBC’s Captain N: The Game Master cartoon.

A much later example is FX-Unit Yuki: The Henshi Engine, an indie action-platformer/shooter hybrid developed by SaruPro. Originally crowdfunded and released in the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Super CD-ROM format in 2018, it’s since been ported to the Genesis, Dreamcast, and Switch. I played the PC Engine version because, well, that’s what the game’s all about! Our lead, “average gamer gal” Yuki Shirakawa, has just landed her dream job as a game tester for JEC, makers of the FX Engine console. It soon becomes clear, however, that nefarious agents of JEC’s rival, the SG Corporation, are attempting to sabotage the code of its upcoming titles. The obvious solution is for Yuki’s bosses to plug her into an experimental virtual reality device in order that she might become, in true scantily-clad magical girl style, the mighty FX-Unit Yuki and defend her favorite games from the inside.

Yeah, the references here aren’t subtle. Neither is the dialog, which can be downright groan-inducing at times with its emoticons and exclamations of “wut,” “so ridic,” and similar glaring indicators of a middle-aged man trying to write a teenage girl. That said, the still shots that comprise the between-stage cut scenes look good (arguably better than the average in-game pixel art) and the scenes themselves aren’t voiced, so you’re at least spared hearing amateur actors stumble over these feeble lines.

The meat of FX-Unit Yuki is its eight levels, the majority of which are obviously crafted to resemble the PC Engine’s most iconic hits. In essence, the game is one massive extended homage to the platform itself. This is both its primary draw and its downfall. As a presumed fan of the material, you’re meant to welcome all these nods to the greats with nostalgic warmth and a chuckle or two. This recognition phase passes quickly, though, and you’re then stuck playing through decidedly inferior renditions of some of the best games of all-time. Excited by the prospect of some janky Wonder Boy? Maybe a little sad, ugly Castlevania? Level design in these platforming areas is the most insultingly rudimentary it could possibly be. You walk, whack one or two generic baddies, jump over a hole, and repeat until you start to regret that humanity evolved thumbs. Dull as that is, the two auto-scrolling shooter sequences manage to be drastically worse, with basic enemy patterns that never, and I mean never, get around to varying. The Cotton parody has the saving grace of being relatively short, while the travesty that is the Lords of Thunder one promises to be twelve of the longest minutes of your life. You’ve been warned.    

Enter composer Simon Johansson, who thankfully stepped up to furnish FX-Unit Yuki’s one untarnished high point. His songs are universally magnificent and rise so far above the rest of the material they support as to be almost jarring. Any professionally-made game from the PC Engine’s heyday would have been proud to boast tunes like these. Their catchy, driving melodies lend the flat action a much-needed shot of intensity and I can’t imagine being willing to invest the hour plus a full playthrough demands without them.  

That was…harsh, I know. I regret this, as it’s certainly not my intention to come down too hard on poor FX-Unit Yuki. Whatever its shortcomings as a standalone work, one has to acknowledge it as a labor of love produced on the cheap by a very small team of well-meaning hobbyists for a niche system I happen to adore. The world needs more of this sort of thing, not less. It’s tough to really hate on a love letter, even the awkward, sloppy kind you might find scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin. 

Alwa’s Awakening (NES)

I’m always on the lookout for promising modern games that will run natively on my vintage consoles, be they hacks that add fresh content to classic hits or completely original works. Alwa’s Awakening is one of the latter: A 2022 NES conversion of the 2017 PC release by independent studio Elden Pixels. Am I glad I looked into this one! As a splendidly polished, drop-dead gorgeous spin on the Metroid style exploratory platformer, it couldn’t be more up my alley.

Awakening follows an everyday video gaming girl named Zoe, who gets transported to the fantasy land of Alwa and charged with taking down Vicar, an evil being who’s harnessed the power of four stolen magic ornaments to conquer and subjugate the populace. In other words, it’s your typical “retrieve the shiny MacGuffins to save the world” setup. While that’s generally good enough for any NES game, it seems like a missed opportunity to also have Zoe be a silent protagonist. The fish-out-of-water element could have been played up in dialog to fine effect.

Thankfully, the mechanics and level design here more than make up for the lackluster storytelling. Awakening’s main method of differentiating itself from the bog standard Metroid clone is to lean into puzzle-platforming. If you’ve played the likes of Solomon’s Key or Solstice, you know what I’m getting at. Heck, Zoe’s signature block creation power and her purple cloak come across as obvious callbacks to those two games specifically. There’s even a location in Alwa called Solstice Mountain, in case you didn’t get the reference already. What all this translates to is a heavy emphasis on using Zoe’s small selection of movement tools (mainly temporary bubble platforms and the aforementioned blocks) in clever and skillful ways to traverse a series of increasingly hazardous screen layouts. Combat is downplayed in favor of this movement mastery, with most non-boss enemies being slow and easily dispatched by one or two swipes of Zoe’s staff.

The majority of the baddies may be pushovers, but that doesn’t mean the game itself is. Quite the opposite! The single most common issue this type of exploration-based action title suffers from in my opinion is a lack of moment-to-moment challenge. My avatar is often highly resilient, with little to fear from either foes or the environment. This leads to a lot of lazily drifting about the map with no underlying tension to keep me engaged. It’s the major reason I rarely revisit the Castlevania franchise’s RPG entries, for example, despite their massive popular acclaim. Alwa’s Awakening keeps you on your toes throughout with its three-hit life bar and abundance of water pits and spikes, both of which spell instant death. Daunting as that may sound, the design as a whole is eminently fair. Unlimited lives, frequent checkpoints, and spot-on controls take much of the sting out of individual failures, freeing you to hone your technique without fuming over unjust punishments. I was pushing a hundred deaths by the end of my first playthrough and still loving every minute of it.

Alwa’s Awakening very nearly has it all, including stellar pixel art and animation, a stirring soundtrack courtesy of Robert Kreese, and a handy auto-map feature. Apart from its routine plot and a shabby bonus ending that honestly isn’t worth the extra time to unlock, it stands as one of the finest action-adventure experiences available for the NES, be it now or in the platform’s heyday. It has a sequel, Alwa’s Legacy, that utilizes a 16-bit visual aesthetic. If Elden Pixels should ever decide to give Legacy the same treatment as its predecessor by porting it to the Super Nintendo or Genesis, I’ll be first in line to give it a go.

Deadeus (Game Boy)

October is back! How excited am I? Well, I’m currently sitting next to my lit jack-‘o-lantern, sipping a pumpkin crème tea blend in my pumpkin pajamas. This isn’t just a month for me, folks, it’s an entire state of being. In keeping with the tradition around here, I’ll be bringing you another set of five spooky game reviews for five classic consoles, starting this week with Deadeus.

This 2019 Game Boy homebrew title is the brainchild of Welsh artist Adam Birch, better known online as -IZMA-, and also features music by Stuart Busby. Promotional material for Deadeus bills it as “authentic horror,” an enticing promise indeed. Nintendo’s iconic handheld was famous for many things, but scaring you wasn’t one of them. Unless you were keeping tabs on your AA battery expenditures, I suppose.

Long-time readers may note that this is my first time covering a true homebrew release. I’ve looked at several ROM hacks before, fan-made games built on the foundation of popular releases like Castlevania or Super Mario Bros. 3. Deadeus, by contrast, was created from the ground up with a programming tool called GB Studio. Befitting this origin, it plays like nothing else on the system. Broadly speaking, it’s an adventure game. You assume the role of an average small town kid who awakens one morning from a nightmare in which a hideous being claiming to be a god promises to destroy the world in three day’s time. Not long after, it’s revealed that your school friends all experienced the exact same dream. Adults are initially dismissive, yet an aura of secrecy and unease shrouds the village. Something is obviously amiss. Who (or what) is Deadeus, and can anything be done to stave off the coming apocalypse?

The three day structure obviously recalls The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. I don’t believe that’s a coincidence, although direct comparisons will only get you so far. For one thing, there’s no way to “turn back the clock” in Deadeus, other than to reload your latest save file or start a fresh one from scratch. Secondly, there’s no actual timer ticking away as you go about your investigation. Each day lasts until you choose to end it by returning home and climbing into bed. The main similarity lies in the way that solving the game’s riddles depends largely on you memorizing NPC schedules, since many key items and events are tied to the villagers’ locations and actions on specific days. Regardless of the path you take, you’ll typically reach one of the eleven possible endings in well under an hour. The Groundhog Day dynamic that manifests across multiple playthroughs was sufficient to keep me playing long enough to see them all. Around three solid hours, all told.

Deadeus is almost exclusively a story-driven affair. Mechanically, it may be easier to define it in terms of what it doesn’t include than what it does. There’s no combat of any kind, no stats or character progression, and exploration is limited by the extremely compact design of the town itself. It thus falls on the unnerving atmosphere and unorthodox narrative to carry the entire production. Fortunately, they’re more than up to the task. -IZMA- struck green and grey gold in the juxtaposition of sprites and environments that wouldn’t look out of place in Link’s Awakening or Pokémon with shadowy cults, bloody murder, and a flesh-reaping eldritch god. Busby’s soundtrack is phenomenal as well, hitting notes of melancholy, despair, and creeping madness you’d never have otherwise associated with the innocuous plastic brick you play Tetris on. Does the whole of it make for a genuinely harrowing time? I wouldn’t go quite that far. Of course, one really shouldn’t expect a degree of immersive terror on par with the top Silent Hill entries from even the best indie Game Boy effort. Deadeus is pervasively creepy, however, and the way it forces you to put yourself in the lead character’s shoes and consider what atrocities and sacrifices might be justified to save the world certainly hooked me. Best of all, it lingers. The way all good horror should.

If any of this sounds promising to you, I encourage you to download the latest version directly from -IZMA- for use with emulators and flash cartridges. Sadly, the physical release by Incube8 Games appears to be mostly sold out as of this writing. Deadeus’ payload of bleak existential dread in a nostalgic 8-bit wrapper is a fine example of the potential for homebrew developers to grow an old system’s library in entirely new and fascinating directions.

Zelda II – Amida’s Curse (NES)

I’ve long wanted to showcase a quality ROM hack of one of my favorite NES classics, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Problem was, I couldn’t find one. Now, unlike some, I’ve never considered the regular game to be overly challenging or unfair. That said, it teeters right on the edge at times, and most hackers are all too eager to nudge it off into the abyss of obnoxiousness. After years of being let down by grueling Kaizo style gauntlets clearly geared toward expert speedrunners, I had almost given up. Enter Ok Impala!, who just earlier this Fall partnered with bentglasstube, Trax, and ShadowOne333 to bring us Zelda II: Amida’s Curse. What a breath of fresh air this one is! It’s less difficult than before, yet not to the degree that veterans will be bored. More importantly, it switches up the world and level design just enough to provide a new perspective on what can be accomplished within the confines of the familiar Zelda II engine.

You may be wondering who Amida is. Well, it’s a matter of where, not who. Amida is the strange world Link finds himself trapped in when he passes through an unexplained one-way portal. That’s the extent of the storyline: Explore Amida to find a way back to Hyrule. Hey, it beats another princess to save.

Given how unlikely it is that you’re reading this without knowing what Zelda II is and how it plays, you’ll forgive me if I cut to the chase. What makes Amida’s Curse such an interesting hack is its emphasis on thoughtful exploration over endless combat. It wastes no time differentiating itself with the removal of the vanilla game’s random overworld encounters. You have all the time in the world to poke around the wilds of Amida without fear of unwanted interruption.

This same approach carries over to the dungeons (or temples, as they’re called here), which have fewer monsters and a correspondingly greater focus on ferreting out hidden paths. These passages are usually hinted at in some way, either via oddities in the architecture or clues from NPCs. Later temples in particular have an entirely different feel than their base game counterparts. Think extended brain teasers as opposed to simple tests of survival. Some of the tricks they employ can throw you for a loop in the nicest way. A boss might appear at an unexpected place or time to effectively ambush you, for example.

Major changes to the baseline mechanics are few, but impactful. The extra life dolls Link acquires are now added to his starting pool of lives on every subsequent continue, turning them from one of the least essential prizes to one of the most. Further, the range of his sword beam has been doubled, although it can still only be fired off when at full health and is as useless as ever against larger foes. Oh, and the Fairy spell can now be canceled with a tap of the jump button. No more flying up to an item you can’t grab in fairy form!

I also have to mention the pleasing facelift Amida’s Curse benefits from. Link and many of his antagonists are sporting excellent revamped sprites and the overworld now includes animated water and swamp tiles. As great as these additions look, it’s the soundtrack by bentglasstube that steals the show. The adventurous tone that characterized Akito Nakatsuka’s Zelda II score gives way to one of brooding mystery, neatly mirroring the game’s overall shift from action to exploration.

In terms of negatives, Zelda II was already a significantly less freeform experience than its predecessor, and Amida’s Curse leans even harder into linearity. There’s relatively little wiggle room to complete dungeons or obtain critical items and powers out of their intended order. The quest is so enthralling that you likely won’t be put off by how strictly regimented it is the first time around. It doesn’t exactly bode well for the hack’s replay value, though.

Curse’s second problem (if you can call it that) is its lack of any truly new gameplay elements. The absolute best NES fan works all go the extra mile by including things like unique player abilities or enemies with no equivalents in the source material. This is what sets my current Holy Trinity of NES Hacks (Castlevania: The Holy Relics, Metroid: Rogue Dawn, and Super Mario Bros. 3Mix) apart from the crowd. You won’t find anything comparable to that here. Link, his gear, his spells, and his opponents are all fundamentally their old familiar selves, albeit gussied up and rearranged in novel fashion.

Make no mistake, however: Amida’s Curse is far and away the finest Zelda II ROM hack I’ve come across as of this writing. Its unparalleled inventiveness, attention to detail, and willingness to embrace a design philosophy other than “more of the same, but harder” put it in a class by itself. If you have any love for the original—hell, even if you’ve only wanted to love it—you’re in for a rare treat. May there be more like it.

Super Mario Bros. 3Mix (NES)

Nintendo’s own Super Mario Bros. 3 is the perennial people’s choice for the greatest NES game of all time. Regardless of whether it’s your own personal favorite, no one can deny the brilliant design, epic scope, and massive cultural impact of this instant platforming classic.

That said, it’s one I rarely revisit these days. Not because there’s anything wrong with it per se. No, I simply poured so many hours into the game back in the early ’90s that playing it now feels as natural as breathing. You know what’s not very exciting? Breathing.

Enter ROM hacker Southbird with his 2014 magnum opus, Super Mario Bros. 3Mix! While amateur edits of SMB3 have been popular for decades, 3Mix here is in a class all by itself. Southbird actually disassembled the game’s code in order to gain the deep understanding required to implement hundreds of changes and additions that wouldn’t have been possible if he’d been restricted to run-of-the-mill level editing utilities. The result is…well, the Super Mario Bros. 3 of ROM hacks.

3Mix is one big love letter to the entire franchise. It showcases characters and locations drawn from the first two Super Mario Bros. titles, Super Mario World, the Mario Land series on Game Boy, and even some of the later 3-D entries like Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy. These aren’t mere cosmetic tweaks to sprites and backgrounds, either. The Shy Guys in 3Mix’s SMB2 world can be picked up and thrown. The SMW stages include a fully functioning Yoshi. The asteroids in the Galaxy zone have their own simulated gravity. New boss fights pit you against the likes of Birdo, Wart, and Bowser Jr. Novel power-ups like the Penguin Suit, bunny ears, and Boomerang Suit replace old standbys. Though I could easily go on, I won’t. Even a bare bones list of every meaningful deviation from the standard SMB3 experience would take up an absurd amount of space. It’s almost unrecognizable at times, and I mean that in the best possible way.

The innovation extends beyond the level design proper. Toad appears as a playable character (although he controls identically to Mario and Luigi). Mid-level checkpoints have been added to every stage. A Star Road map serves as a hub to let you transition between any world you’ve already visited. Best of all, 3Mix patches one of vanilla SMB3’s few holes by allowing you to save your game at any time. No more leaving the system powered on for days at a time or relying on hidden warp whistles to make up for lost progress.

This save feature, along with those mid-stage checkpoints, makes this one of the rare ROM hacks that’s arguably a little easier than the game it’s based on. I’m always on the lookout for well made fan games you don’t need to be an ace speedrunner to appreciate. 3Mix definitely fits the bill. It feels like it was carefully tailored for everyday gamers with fond memories of Mario 3. Thank God.

As much as I admire and enjoy what Southbird accomplished here, 3Mix isn’t without its flaws. Most are relatively minor. A few of the new power-ups aren’t quite as fun as the ones they replace, for example. The bunny ears (borrowed from Super Mario Land 2) are really just a severely hobbled version of the Tanooki Suit. Similarly, the Boomerang Suit’s attack doesn’t seem to be as fast or powerful as that of the Hammer Suit. On the bright side, the Penguin Suit is a winner, superior to the Frog Suit in every conceivable way. Enhanced swimming and ice projectiles that freeze enemies into temporary platforms? Sign me up!

There’s also more slowdown here than in the unmodified game. A lot of the new enemies and level gimmicks seem to be pushing the humble NES CPU pretty hard. One boss encounter in particular, faithfully recreated from Super Mario World, brings the action to a virtual standstill. That’s an extreme example, of course, but you can generally expect more dropped frames than usual throughout.

My most significant gripe is probably the excessive time needed to access 3Mix’s bonus world and true final boss. Get a load of this: First, you need to collect three out-of-the-way Star Coins in every one of the normal levels. Then, you acquire four keys by winning hidden mini-games. After that, you defeat Bowser like normal in world eight, which causes a few dozen previously completed stages to become highlighted with comet icons. Conquering these comet challenges involves either finishing the level again with no power-ups allowed or scouring it to grab a set number of special purple coins. Only after you’ve jumped through all these hoops are you permitted to see the end of “world zero.” This is the worst sort of padding, as much of the it amounts to retreading familiar ground. If you’re not doing it to hunt down the one Star Coin you missed the first time, you’re doing it to satisfy the arbitrary comet challenge requirement. It’s major overkill. Collecting all the Star Coins, finding the four keys, or beating Bowser would have each been quite sufficient on its own to unlock this extra content.

In fairness, the bonus world is optional, and rescuing the princess in world eight still makes for a perfectly satisfying climax in itself. Playing through Super Mario Bros. 3Mix with this more reasonable goal in mind as you soak in its non-stop deluge of clever surprises is a resounding joy, one I heartily recommend to all fans of the original. If ignorance, choice paralysis, or their intimidating reputation have been keeping you away from Mario ROM hacks, I can assure that there’s no better place to start than here.

The Guardian Legend: Secret Edition (NES)

Compile’s 1988 action RPG/shooter hybrid The Guardian Legend is the quintessential NES sleeper hit. A brilliantly crafted tour-de-force by any measure, its relative complexity and the sheer audacity of its genre-bending antics prevented its titular robot heroine (also known as Miria in the Japanese release) from attaining household name status alongside the likes of Mario and Mega Man. It never received an official sequel and, given the dissolution of Compile in 2003, it likely never will.

Regardless, this once forgotten title has managed to constantly grow in stature over the years. Like Technōs’ River City Ransom, it gradually transitioned from a niche oddity to a mainstay on many enthusiasts’ top ten lists. It’s certainly an important game for me, seeing as my first playthrough back in 2017 ignited a love affair with old-school shooters that burns brightly to this day. So when I heard there was an unofficial ROM hack of the game available called The Guardian Legend: Secret Edition that includes all-new level layouts, bosses, and other surprises for veteran players, I was instantly intrigued. Better still, it was made by my personal favorite creator of NES fan games, Chris “Optomon” Lincoln, who took his online handle from one of TGL’s boss enemies. This sucker has got to be amazing, right? Well, yes and no.

As the name implies, Secret Edition frames itself as a sort of remixed version of the original game. The plot here is the same as it ever was: Naju, an artificial planetoid loaded with vicious alien life forms, is discovered to be moving through deep space on course to Earth. It falls on the Guardian, a “highly sophisticated aerobot transformer” in a red bikini, to save Earth by infiltrating Naju and activating a sequence of ten self-destruct fail-safes. And yes, they straight-up called her a Transformer in the manual. Pretty gutsy. Nobody tell Hasbro, eh?

Gameplay is split more or less evenly into two distinct modes. One is a sprawling Legend of Zelda-inspired maze dubbed “the labyrinth,” where the Guardian roams about on foot fighting enemies, collecting items, and searching for clues on how to access the various sealed self-destruct mechanisms. The other is a series of 22 vertically scrolling “corridor” sections. The corridors serve the same general purpose as Zelda’s dungeons, except they play out similarly to other Compile-made spaceship shooters of the time. Think Zanac, Gun-Nac, Aleste, etc. Unlike the protagonists of those games, however, the transforming Guardian can serve as her own spaceship!

Now that we all know what Secret Edition is based on, we can consider how well it fares as its own experience. Let’s start out positive. Optomon absolutely delivered everything he set out to. Secret Edition features a completely new labyrinth layout, new enemy arrangements in the corridors, new boss fights, new puzzles, and even a handful of genuine surprise moments. Fighting some formerly corridor-exclusive enemies in the labyrinth, for example. What a trip that was! All these modifications are undoubtedly well implemented on a technical level, too.

On to the buzzkill. Despite seemingly checking off every box a quality Guardian Legend ROM hack should, Secret Edition is hobbled by its own overarching design philosophy. To wit, it is oppressively difficult for much of its runtime. Powerful enemies fill the screen at all times, bosses dish out insane damage, and key upgrades to the Guardian’s defense and offense are withheld until much later than usual. This iteration of Naju is basically a madhouse. The fact that I, a guy who regularly whips through the vanilla game in an evening without breaking a sweat, still found Secret Edition’s approach too obnoxiously brutal to enjoy really says it all. Optomon’s intention here was to create “a challenge for those who had mastered the original game.” Mission accomplished, I guess. I was challenged. That doesn’t mean I’ll be back for more. There’s stimulating and then there’s just overbearing.

Hell, this hack wants you dead so badly that it can actually have unintended side-effects. See, The Guardian Legend includes a little-known programming bug that will trigger a crash the instant the player’s score would exceed 9,999,999. Fortunately, it isn’t an exceptionally tough game by NES standards. It’s not exactly easy, mind you, but most players should be able to eventually complete it with a score well under this maximum if they’re patient and willing to put in the practice. Secret Edition is a whole other story. More frequent deaths coupled with an overall increase in high point value foes makes hitting the cap a real possibility for many. If that happens, you’re looking at either reverting to a much earlier password save (assuming you have one recorded) or starting over altogether. Nice.

On the whole, The Guardian Legend: Secret Edition is simply one big missed opportunity. It’s carefully crafted, technically sound, and totally inaccessible to the vast majority of people who might stumble across it. I can only imagine how many more players a work like this could satisfy if it hadn’t been custom tailored for a vanishingly small cadre of shooting game savants. Perhaps saddest of all, it remains the closest thing we have to a true Guardian Legend follow-up on the system. There are no other hacks out there I’m aware of that so much as attempt to rework the game on this scale.

If there’s a silver lining to all this, it would have to be that Optomon clearly learned a lot from this early experiment in ROM hacking. Later notable NES projects he contributed to, such as Castlevania: The Holy Relics, Metroid: Rogue Dawn, and the original homebrew platformer Rollie, all present their players with a much more reasonable challenge and are better for it. After all, if you’re going to channel all that hard work and talent into a piece of entertainment, it should probably be one your audience can stomach.

Castlevania: The Holy Relics (NES)

Whew! I’m back from another Portland Retro Gaming Expo! The biggest classic video gaming event on the planet makes for an intense weekend, to say the least. It’s always well worth it, though. I actually took the plunge this year and tried dressing up in costume for the first time as my favorite NES hero, Simon Belmont. I went with the grotesque, buffoonish interpretation of Simon from the Captain N: The Game Master cartoon because that’s just the way my sense of humor works. I’m only interested in embodying the most despised versions of beloved characters. Good times.

While the Expo is over, the show must go on. In my case, that means a weekly game review. What better choice under these circumstances than an underexposed gem starring my boy Simon? And one I played for the first time at a past PRGE, no less? I’m talking about Castlevania: The Holy Relics, a notably ambitious 2017 ROM hack of Castlevania by Optomon , with additional graphics work by Setz, Bit-Blade, Dr. Mario, and Boneless Ivar. You may recognize the Optomon name from other first class fan projects I’ve covered, such as Castlevania: Chorus of Mysteries and Metroid: Rogue Dawn. If so, you already know this is going to be something special.

In order to to understand why Holy Relics is a such a fascinating take on the standard hack, it helps to think of it as some parallel universe’s Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. What if, rather than infusing open level design and RPG elements into Castlevania’s divisive 1987 sequel, Konami had kept it a traditional action-platformer and incorporated elements of their arch-rival Capcom’s Mega Man instead? The result is a style of Castlevania play which simply doesn’t exist in any official form. If that doesn’t do a better job piquing your curiosity than yet another set of super challenging remixed stages, I don’t know what would.

The events of Holy Relics are set in 1693, two years after Dracula’s defeat in the first Castlevania. A set of powerful relics looted from the Holy Land by avaricious crusaders four hundred years prior has fallen into the hands of a necromancer named Lord Ghulash, who’s used them to plunge the land into darkness once more. It falls on Simon Belmont, champion of Transylvania, to recover the relics from their demonic guardians and vanquish Ghulash.

There are a six stages on offer, as per normal. Before the action even begins, however, the game hits you with its first major alteration in the form of a level select screen! Yes, you’re free to play through the first five areas in any order you choose before moving on to the final confrontation. You’re also allowed to choose a single relic to take with you whenever you begin a stage. You start with the cross already in your possession and gain another option with every boss you defeat.

These relics are no mere plot MacGuffins or symbolic tokens of success like the glowing orbs bosses drop in the base game. On the contrary, they’re mighty tools that each break the fundamental rules of 8-bit Castlevania in their own way. The mug, for example, allows you to replenish Simon’s health on demand. The crown temporarily supercharges his whip to an absurd degree, enough to take out bosses with just three hits. The bag awards massive bonus points for killing enemies, making it easy to rack up loads of extra lives. Relic activation is mapped to the Select button and is limited by the number of special blue hearts you can manage to acquire in a given stage. Usage restrictions aside, the overwhelming power of the relics makes them as vital to Simon’s success as his familiar whip and sub-weapons. So many ROM hacks are about cranking the difficulty up so high that experienced players feel like newbies again. It’s rare to find one that’s more about upgrading the protagonist into a complete beast.

Speaking of the sub-weapons, a couple of them have received potent tweaks, too. The axe now travels at a shallower angle which covers more space horizontally at the expense of some arc height. This boosts its versatility greatly. The throwing dagger has also been given a huge shot in the arm. It’s now an oak stake that deals a hefty triple the damage with only the minor drawback of slower flight speed to compensate. The enhanced axe and stake so clearly outclass the other options for me that I found myself cursing whenever I accidentally picked up the boomerang or holy water. How’s that for a shakeup?

The levels themselves are completely divorced from anything seen in the source game. The vast majority of hacks still take place in recognizable remodels of Dracula’s castle. You have the familiar entryway, underground waterway, clock tower, etc. Holy Relics tosses this all out the window in favor of diverse outdoor and indoor locations populated with a blend of reskinned and functionally new enemies. It throws its players yet another curve ball by transplanting the idea of locked doors from Vampire Killer, the obscure Castlevania entry for Japanese MSX computers. Every stage has a pair of doors obstructing Simon’s progress which require keys to open. These keys are never too far away or tricky to find, though the search often forces you to take a slightly more circuitous route than you might otherwise have.

Collectively, such sweeping changes to the structure and mechanics of vanilla Castlevania are a lot to take in. The redrawn graphics and a soundtrack featuring a mix of original tunes and covers of songs from later games also adds to the surreality. Fortunately, for all its radical reinvention, Holy Relics still comes across as Castlevania through and through. Simon’s short, stiff jumps are unchanged, as is his whip’s characteristic delay. Skillful play remains a matter of patience, timing, and grace under pressure, so veteran players won’t be left floundering.

Of course, any experiment this daring is likely to have its rough edges. In terms of negatives, I’ve already touched on the obvious one: The insane strength of most of the relic powers. Although it’s fun to play Superman on occasion, you shouldn’t need me to tell you why the ability to hoard dozens of lives, turn invincible at a moment’s notice, or slay the most fearsome opponents with three whip cracks can be a tad much. Simply put, smart relic use breaks the game. It’s technically optional, sure, but that’s cold comfort when these items serve as the game’s namesake and primary draw. In addition, the locked doors add little to the experience. The levels here aren’t long or complex enough for key hunting to blossom into a proper puzzle solving exercise, so it’s really a trifle at best. Finally, the visual design of the final boss is quite goofy. He doesn’t look like he could successfully intimidate the average Animal Crossing resident, let alone a Belmont. Bit of an anticlimax there.

If you’re of a mind to forgive its glaring balance issues and the occasional strange aesthetic choice, I think there’s a very good chance you’ll agree with me that Castlevania: The Holy Relics is the single best fan-made twist on Konami’s legendary classic to date. Nothing else comes close to matching its scope, inventiveness, and replay value, not even Optomon’s own excellent Chorus of Mysteries. It’s hearty wall meat for the old school Castlevania lover’s soul; a digital holy relic that’s earned itself a permanent spot on my NES altar.

Simon Belmont, vampire hunter extraordinaire!

Metroid: Rogue Dawn (NES)

As I made abundantly clear last week, I quite enjoyed my most recent playthroughs of Nintendo’s immortal Metroid. So much so that I was left craving more NES Metroid goodness. The only problem? There isn’t any! Unlike fellow iconic heroes Link, Mega Man, and Simon Belmont, sci-fi badass Samus Aran never saw another outing on the system of her “birth.” The second and third Metroid adventures were reserved for the Game Boy and Super Nintendo, respectively, leaving NES fans to wonder for decades what might have been.

Until 2017, that is, when a large team of talented collaborators (Grimlock, Optomon, snarfblam, Parasyte, Kenta Kurodani, DemickXII, M-Tee, MrRichard999, RealRed) released Metroid: Rogue Dawn, by far the most ambitious ROM hack of the original game to date. The bullet points here should pique the interest of any veteran space hunter: Entirely new art, sound, and story elements, added power-ups, a save feature, a Super Metroid style auto-map, and more. I’m pleased to say that while it’s not without its minor hiccups, the end result is tremendous fun and does indeed feel like a genuine lost sequel.

I say sequel, but Rogue Dawn actually goes the prequel route and bases its events on the backstory detailed in the first Metroid’s instruction manual. The player controls the mysterious Dawn Aran, a figure the developers hint has some close connection to Samus. Whether she’s supposed to be a long-lost relative, a clone, or something else entirely is left deliberately obscure. A good call, if I do say so myself. Ambiguity is highly underrated. What we do know for sure about Dawn is that she’s no angel. She’s a space pirate operative acting on orders from none other than recurring series antagonist Ridley. Her mission: To acquire a Metroid specimen from the Galactic Federation research team on planet SR388 by any means necessary. This “play as the villain” angle holds much appeal for me. It goes places no official release from Nintendo ever would while still remaining true to the established narrative.

Experienced players should be able to dive right in and start plumbing the depths of SR388 with ease, as Dawn runs, jumps, and shoots just like Samus. Mostly. One notable difference is that she starts out equipped with the Maru Mari (Morph Ball) and Long Beam. No more having to make due with a pathetic stream of gunfire that hardly extends more than an arm’s length in front of you. The total number of additional power-ups you can eventually attain through exploration remains the same, however, as the Morph Ball and Long Beam pickups have been replaced by Metroid II’s Spring Ball and Super Metroid’s Wall Jump! These two new movement abilities alone have massive implications for the overall flow of the action. Being able to rebound off any wall in particular makes negotiating vertical passages a cinch. A final inventory tweak I really love: You’re no longer forced to choose between the Ice Beam and Wave Beam. You can now equip both simultaneously and their effects stack.

Rogue Dawn’s level design has also been infused with fresh ideas. There’s a much larger number of unique screens here than in Metroid proper and they tend to connect in more intricate ways. It’s common for a given screen to be divided up by walls, creating two or more distinct routes through the same section of map, a technique almost never seen in the original. SR388’s environments aren’t all cramped underground tunnels linked by doors, either. You’ll traverse portions of the planet’s surface (some of which sport gorgeous weather effects), underwater areas with modified movement physics, the interiors of your own pirate spaceship and the Federation research vessel, a Metroid hive, and possibly even some downright strange hidden zones if you’re fortunate enough to stumble onto them.

In profiling Metroid, I repeatedly stressed that, for better or worse, the game has a rather stern 1986 vintage mindset and eschews any sort of overt player guidance. Rogue Dawn opts for a more modern approach. Your general goal is still the same: Defeat two sub-bosses in order to open the way to the final area and boss. The difference is that the presence of an in-game map with major equipment upgrades and boss encounters already pre-marked makes it borderline impossible to get yourself lost for any significant period of time. I’m already on record as being no fan of such developer hand-holding. I prefer to figure things out on my own. That said, even I can’t claim to have found all of Rogue Dawn’s “quality of life” updates so unwelcome. Being able to save your game at any time through a menu is much less cumbersome than relying on a password system, for example. Better still, you start each new play session here with full energy and the recharging stations seen in most official sequels that top off your health and missile supply are scattered liberally about the map. Endless enemy farming to refill your reserves is now a thing of the past.

I found the new graphics and music to  be superb across the board. The high degree of visual detail reminds me more of Super Metroid than its 8-bit ancestor and the neon-like effect produced when splashes of bright color pop out out from the stark black backdrops recalls Sunsoft’s first NES Batman game. High praise indeed. The score by Optomon really took me by surprise in the best possible way. I came down against his compositions in Castlevania: Chorus of Mysteries, judging them too dainty for the furious on-screen action, but there’s no denying that he gets what makes a Metroid game tick. These tracks are tense, eerie, and, above all, atmospheric. Eat your heart out, “Hip” Tanaka!

What about those “hiccups” I mentioned above? Well, I have two primary issues with Rogue Dawn. One relates to an especially quirky aspect of its level design and the other to its boss battles. While I adore the layout of the game world in general and even consider it an improvement on the source material in some respects (like the larger, more exciting final area), there are several locations where passages inexplicably wrap around themselves in an endless loop if you don’t pass through them in just the right way. The effect is similar to The Legend of Zelda’s Lost Woods or the escape tunnels on either side of a Pac-Man maze. While this sort of surreal navigation gimmick can work just fine in the context of a fantasy world with magic or an abstract single-screen arcade game, it’s fundamentally at odds with the more grounded feel and sense of place vital to a Metroid title. It’s so jarringly video gamey, in fact, that it instantly shatters any sense of immersion I’ve managed to cultivate each and every time it crops up.

My disappointment with the boss fights stems simply from the realization that they’re same as they ever were, for the most part. Sprites have been re-drawn, of course, but the distinctive attacks and behaviors of Kraid, Ridley, and Mother Brain are unmistakable. There is a fourth boss unique to Rogue Dawn and I certainly commend the team for that. It’s just a shame that the enemies you face are the one aspect of the base game that’s seen the fewest changes.

Leaving aside those few out-of-place warp corridors and recyled bosses, it should be clear by now that Rogue Dawn is a most extraordinary fan game. It’s easily the current high water mark for NES Metroid hacks in general and seems likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. If you’re the type that considers the game it’s based on to be too difficult or confusing, you may well find it superior to Nintendo’s own work. While I wouldn’t go that far, I can’t deny that this is one case where going rogue paid off big. Make like Dawn Aran and pirate yourself a copy today.

Final Fantasy IV: Namingway Edition (Super Nintendo)

I’ve covered several fan-made hacks of existing games over the past few years. Not only do these labors of love by talented hobbyists fascinate me on a conceptual level, the best of them are just as fun to kick back and play through as the classics they’re built upon. The other hacks I’ve examined to date, such as The Legend of Zelda: Outlands and Castlevania: Chorus of Mysteries, have all sought to deliver entirely new adventures rooted in the time-tested core mechanics (the “engines,” if you will) of their source titles. The so-called Namingway Edition of Square’s celebrated 1991 RPG Final Fantasy IV is something else entirely. What we have here amounts to a complete fan re-localization intended to replace the game’s deeply flawed original English version.

The tumultuous saga of FFIV’s initial North American localization is widely known, so I’ll keep this as brief as I can. For starters, it wasn’t even called Final Fantasy IV here back in 1991, but rather Final Fantasy II. The second and third games in the series wouldn’t see official release outside Japan until 2002 and 2006, respectively, so Square opted to rename this fourth entry in order to avoid confusion. Ironically, it would have opposite effect once the Internet became commonplace later in the decade and Western gamers started trying to read up on all the Japanese exclusives they missed out on. Don’t even get me started on the decision to skip over the fifth game and then call the sixth Final Fantasy III. Oy.

This name change was only the beginning. The gameplay itself was simplified for the North American audience to an almost insulting degree. Nearly every character lost at least one unique special ability, numerous inventory items were omitted, and enemies were given weaker stats across the board, rendering combat a cinch. Square would eventually release this iteration of the game in Japan as Final Fantasy IV Easy Type.

Finally, the translation was mediocre at best. This isn’t the translators’ fault per se. They had to contend with a perfect storm of insane deadlines, tight cartridge memory limits, and Nintendo of America’s Puritanical content restrictions. All considered, the work is commendable. It’s also awkward, dry, and corny by turns. While this occasionally led to iconic moments like sage Tellah’s immortal “spoony bard” diatribe (which all future re-translations to date, including this one, have wisely left intact), the naturalness and nuance of the source material largely failed to shine through.

The first question before us is simple: Has the six person team behind the Namingway Edition (Rodimus Primal, vivify93, chillyfeez, Grimoire LD, Justin3009, Bahamut Zero) succeeded in delivering the pristine, unbutchered English version of Final Fantasy IV that I and so many others were denied back in the day? In a word: Absolutely! The missing battle commands like Rosa’s Pray, Edward’s Salve, and Yang’s Brace and Focus are all present and fully functional, as are all the previously cut items. You’ll need them, too, as your enemies actually put up a fight here. The new translation is all-around more functional and pleasing. Even minor elements dummied out of the official release (the disrobing dancing girl in Baron town, the hidden developer room) are enabled once more. Hell, the team actually went above and beyond by adding one very welcome new feature: A run button for getting around towns and dungeons faster! There’s no doubt in my mind that the Namingway Edition is currently the definitive way to enjoy Final Fantasy IV on the Super Nintendo.

This raises a second, much thornier dilemma, however: Should you bother? In order to determine how well Final Fantasy IV proper has withstood the test of time, I’m going to focus on the trio of vital elements that really set it apart from its JRPG predecessors for me nearly three decades ago:  The innovative Active Time Battle combat system, composer Nobuo Uematsu’s lush score, and the dynamic story that drives the main quest.

The Active Time Battle (ATB) system introduced here will be familiar to any Final Fantasy fan, given that iterations of it comprise an integral part of no less than eight main series entries, including all-time critical and fan favorites like VI and VII. Designer Hiroyuki Ito derived the idea from Formula One racing, believe it or not, envisioning the combatants as cars of varying speeds completing laps around a track at different intervals. Instead of inputting commands for all of your party members at once, a speed statistic regulates how much downtime individual fighters have between their command prompts. More interesting still, when it is time to enter a command, you need to be quick about it. The computer-controlled combatants each have their own speed stats and will continue to execute their attacks regardless of whether or not you’re ready for them. In other words, simply having a command menu open doesn’t freeze time. The enemy design compliments this real time dynamic expertly. Some adversaries transition in and out of defensive postures as the battle progresses. Attacking these foes at an inopportune moment can result in reduced damage, devastating counterattacks, or both. Other fights effectively impose a time limit on the player, as in the case of the huge animated stone wall boss that slowly advances across the screen, threatening to crush the heroes if it should survive long enough to reach their side. I can’t emphasize enough what shot in the arm ATB was to traditional JRPG combat. The need to swiftly determine your optimal strategy and then punch in the necessary commands accurately and without hesitation adds an element of skillful execution that almost bridges the gap between a turn-based and action RPG at times. It’s as tense and exhilarating today as it ever was. So far, so good.

Uematsu’s soundtrack also hasn’t aged a day in 28 years. I can still remember my middle school self being blown away by just how real the instruments sounded. While this wasn’t my first exposure to the Super Nintendo’s unique sample-based audio chip, it was the first release I encountered for the system that went all-in on a grand pseudo-symphonic style. The very notion that these soaring strings and rumbling kettle drums were reaching my ears courtesy of a common cartridge and not one of those cutting edge CD-ROMs was just staggering. Although that sense of naive amazement is long gone, the compositions themselves are still marvelous. Final Fantasy IV’s main overworld theme in particular never fails to leave me enraptured, evoking a sense of intrigue, wonder, and a long, perilous journey ahead. In some cases, these tracks verge on being too good for the material they support. The famous love theme of Cecil and Rosa is easily the most compelling thing about their otherwise tepid on-screen romance.

Unfortunately, it’s on that last note that I have to start dialing back the effusive praise some. Final Fantasy IV’s epic, genre-redefining story is…way less cool than I remembered. Now, try not to bust out the pitchforks and torches just yet. I’m not saying the plot here is bad, just that it’s not nearly as substantial as it seemed to me at age thirteen. The quest of knight Cecil Harvey and his dozen or so colorful companions to stop some pretty underdeveloped evil dudes from collecting the many magic crystals they need to take over the world is akin to a Saturday morning cartoon or melodramatic anime/manga series aimed at adolescents. Motivations are simplistic, lone exaggerated personality traits stand in for characterization, the heroes routinely make maudlin gestures of self-sacrifice that most often have no long-term consequences at all. It’s all still charming and enjoyable in its superficial, pulpy way, but don’t come expecting any of the more somber or thoughtful beats that later entries in the series leaned so heavily on. There’s just very little in the way of dramatic weight being thrown around here.

Take Cecil’s famous transformation scene on Mt. Ordeals, for example, where he renounces his past as a dark knight to take up the holy mantle of a paladin. It should be a real turning point for him as character. The problem is that we’ve never really experienced Cecil as a villain prior to this. He wouldn’t have even qualified as an anti-hero. When we’re introduced to him in the game’s very first scene, he’s already wracked with guilt over obeying an immoral order from his king to steal one of the magic crystals from some innocent townsfolk. Almost immediately after that, he renounces his fealty to the wicked monarch and devotes himself entirely to protecting the victims of his former liege at any cost. From a dramatic standpoint, then, all he really does at Mt. Ordeals is transition from being a good guy in black armor to a good guy in gold armor. You never see him do anything thereafter that you couldn’t imagine the “old Cecil” doing. Square could have done so much more in terms of spinning a real arc out of material like this, as almost every subsequent Final Fantasy entry would prove.

One thing I can applaud Final Fantasy IV’s storyline for is its pacing. Like the best serialized adventure fiction, it knows how to sink its hooks into you and keep the stakes feeling high throughout as it ushers you briskly from crisis to crisis. Slight as it is, this sucker really moves. That, in conjunction with the gripping battle system and some truly majestic tunes have kept it a cut above most of its genre peers to this day. It’s been officially remade multiple times for the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and more, but if you’re like me and harbor a nostalgic attachment to the look, sound, and feel of the Super Nintendo original, you should strongly consider giving the Namingway Edition hack a go on your next playthrough. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the final Final Fantasy IV.