Arcana (Super Nintendo)

Having previously covered all of the big name Super Nintendo RPGs, your Chrono Triggers and EarthBounds and Final Fantasy VIs, I may as well dip back into some more obscure titles. Such a one is Arcana, HAL Laboratory’s largely forgotten 1992 stab at a Wizardry style first-person dungeon crawl with an intriguing visual aesthetic, a brilliant soundtrack, and…not much else.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Arcana follows Rooks, a young warrior tasked with saving the mystical land of Elemen from a wizard who’s overthrown the rightful king and now plots to revive an ancient evil deity in order to attain ultimate power. Yeah, you’ve almost certainly heard this exact setup before, and I wish I could say HAL put a clever spin on it, or at least tossed in a respectable plot twist or two. Alas, no. Instead, it’s fantasy world saving business as usual, with Rooks and his rotating cast of generic companions charting their way through various mazes on the hunt for magic MacGuffins.

We may not get a very interesting story, but we are treated to Arcana’s unique artistic choice to depict every character and monster in Elemen (except the shopkeepers) as a stylized playing card. I’m 99% sure this is meant to be a metaphorical creative flourish for the player’s enjoyment, and that none of these beings are really intended to be walking, talking cards. It is quite striking, however, and even serves a gameplay function, as the color of a monster’s card border indicates its affiliation with the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. There’s a rock-paper-scissors dynamic between the four elements that should be familiar to any Pokémon fan. Against a fire monster, for example, it behooves you to break out the water attacks and exploit its innate defensive weakness to that element.

This elemental angle also ties into Rooks’ ability to call on four spirit companions to fill out the party roster. He starts out with access to Sylph, the air spirit, and unlocks the remaining three at preset points in the story. Only one spirit can be active at time, though Rooks can freely toggle between any of the available ones at will. Generally speaking, spirits have weak defense and physical attacks due to their inability to equip weapons and armor. They compensate for this with their broad range of potent spells. That, and the fact that they automatically regenerate health and magic power with each step, unlike human characters.

The moment-to-moment experience of exploring mazes and engaging in random turn-based battles with the monsters therein works well enough, I guess, with the caveat that it’s all extremely basic. There are no traps, secret doors, or memorable landmarks in any of these dungeons, only open corridors dotted with the occasional treasure chest. It’s actually a step below the first Phantasy Star in this respect, if you can believe that. On the plus side, Arcana does include a handy auto-map feature, which is more than I can say for many games in this sub-genre.

Taken purely as a simple, repetitive dungeon crawler with some cool art and an excellent score by veteran Kirby composers Jun Ishikawa and Hirokazu Ando, Arcana might well merit a tepid recommendation. Unfortunately, its poor localization and serious design flaws need to be accounted for, too, and together they prevent it from rising to the level of mediocre.

How bad is this translation? Let’s just say that there are numerous points where you’ll find yourself staring at a string of text and wondering what the speaker is even attempting to convey. At one point, a villain burst in and seized one of my party members, proclaiming “Wait, don’t move. The Princess is dying. I wonder, Rooks!” He then ran off with said princess in tow. Eventually, I pieced together that he was meant to be saying something along the lines of “Don’t move or the Princess dies.” I still have no clue what he was wondering about. This isn’t an exception, either. The majority of the dialog reads like people nursing major head injuries yelling past each other. It’s a mess, and rarely in the funny Zero Wing sort of way that might redeem it a tad.

In addition to a mutilated script, Arcana incorporates several distinctly player-hostile design choices. Oddly enough, one of them was shared by the last RPG I reviewed, Tengai Makyō: Ziria. That is, any time one of your human allies is defeated in combat, you’re hit with an instant game over. It’s worse here than it was in Ziria, in fact, since you don’t just get sent back to town and docked a bit of gold when it happens. You have no choice but to load your last save, potentially losing significant progress. Two RPGs in a row pulling this exact nonsense on me! What are the odds?

Similarly rude is Arcana’s tendency to have new characters join your party deep inside dungeons without a shred of gear on their persons. Of course, they’re practically useless in this state, forcing you to choose between warping back to town for a trip to the weapon shop or pressing on and hoping you can survive the remainder of the challenges ahead with one of your allies effectively naked. You could theoretically prepare for this and bring a few spare items along with you, yet how would you know when to do so and what to bring on an initial playthrough without consulting a guide? The cynic in me suspects the designers knew you’d be caught off guard by this and feel compelled to backtrack, thereby lengthening the total play time.

Arcana makes a strong first impression with its singular presentation. Sadly, the creative visual theming and sweet music ultimately weren’t enough to salvage the whole production for me. This is a surprisingly poor effort from the typically reliable HAL. If they’d opted for a less obnoxious approach to character death, given new recruits some no-frills starting equipment, and put in the extra effort to polish up the English text, it still wouldn’t be an exceptional example of the form, merely a tolerable one. Oh, well. I suppose every pack has its joker.

EarthBound (Super Nintendo)

EarthBound confounds me. I don’t mean that it frustrates me. Not usually, anyway. Only that I’ve struggled for years, decades really, to understand why I find it as wonderful as I do. Lacking the ability to string the necessary words together in my own head, it’s no wonder getting them down in writing has been a greater challenge still. In any case, here I go!

Despite having gradually ensconced itself as one of the Super Nintendo’s quintessential classics, this 1994 sleeper hit RPG does have its detractors. They typically point first and foremost to its simplistic and highly derivative mechanics, which are obviously lifted wholesale from genre trailblazer Dragon Quest. These include the mix of overhead exploration with first-person turn-based combat, the basic “fight, magic, item, run” nature of said combat, and the cumbersome, claustrophobic inventory system. EarthBound’s presentation doesn’t escape criticism, either. In contrast to the lush landscapes and painterly monster art of other acclaimed 16-bit RPGs, the graphics here employ a flat, naive style reminiscent of children’s drawings. Instead of sweeping faux-orchestras, our ears are treated to a chaotic soundscape cobbled together out of disconnected pop samples, off-kilter Americana, and ’50s monster movies. To the uninitiated, it can be baffling how such a title could belong in the same conversation as slick SNES showpieces like Chrono Trigger and Secrets of Mana at all, let alone how it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

I can sympathize to an extent. EarthBound’s onerous inventory management in particular is a sore spot for me. It invariably takes up a much larger chunk of any playthrough than I reckon anyone would prefer. That said, attempts to dismiss it as merely wacky Dragon Quest with weird music and sub-par visuals is anything but fair to the vision of prolific writer and part time game designer Shigesato Itoi of Ape Inc. (now Creatures Inc.) and the stellar teams at HAL Laboratory and Nintendo that united to make that vision a reality.

What appears on the surface to be a straightforward story about four tweens with psychic powers uniting to stave off an alien invasion of Earth ultimately taps into something I believe to be significantly more fundamental, indeed powerful: Nostalgia for childhood. I mean that in the broadest sense possible. The recognition and longing EarthBound evokes throughout is for the condition of being a child itself, carefree within a seemingly boundless existence, as opposed to a sequence of comparatively lazy callbacks to the fashion or popular culture of any given generation of kids. This is especially obvious, of course, when you consider that it’s the second installment in a series named Mother in its native Japan. The connection between main protagonist Ness and his mother is heavily emphasized, to the extent that he’s periodically subject to a unique homesickness status effect that hampers him in battle and is incurable except by phoning or visiting her. In light of this, I doubt there was anything accidental about the decision to model the game’s systems so closely on Dragon Quest’s. As the definitive Japanese RPG franchise, it’s the electronic equivalent of comfort food for millions of gamers in that region. In other words, it feels like home.

If all that sounds a little too esoteric or high concept for you to swallow, I can only point out that I was sixteen when EarthBound was released. Unlike many, I was fortunate enough to have played it at launch. I can assure you that thread of wistfulness, that gentle reminder of how much my outlook had changed in just the last handful of years, was absolutely present from the get-go. To see the world through a child’s eyes is something unspeakably precious we’re all doomed to lose, with that very loss being paradoxically beautiful in its ability to unite and ground us in a universal human experience.

Oh, and let’s not forget that it’s funny. Legitimately laugh-out-loud funny from beginning to end. This is no small prize. Good comedy is tough under ideal conditions. Delivering mountains of it in an early ’90s console game that needed its entire massive script translated verges on a miracle. There’s a case to be made that it was the single funniest game yet made in 1994 and virtually all its gags hold up admirably today.

If none of what I’ve said has connected with you and the game remains crude, shallow, and overrated in your eyes, that’s fine. Whether or not there’s truly some deeper layer to the absurdist antics of Ness and his pals, EarthBound remains special; a singular joyous creation that’s destined to continue growing in stature for the foreseeable future. So perhaps the meaning it apparently supplies for itself as part of its famous mid-game “coffee break” interlude works as well as any: “There are many difficult times ahead, but you must keep your sense of humor, work through the tough situations and enjoy yourself.” Makes sense to me.

Super Punch-Out!! (Super Nintendo)

Every other contender in Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! series has an unfortunate tendency to fall under the shadow of 1987’s Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! Not that there’s been all that many of them in total, despite their almost universally positive reception among critics and fans alike. In any case, I can understand why the NES version became the definitive one in the hearts of many. Even today, over three decades past his pugilistic prime, Tyson himself remains the biggest celebrity athlete the sport has produced since Muhammad Ali. The entry bearing his name also debuted at the height of Nintendomania, a period when their 8-bit hardware thoroughly dominated the world’s most lucrative gaming markets.

All that is to say that its lower profile successor, Super Punch-Out!!, is well worth your time. I’m specifically referring to the 1994 Super Nintendo release Super Punch-Out!! here, by the way, not the 1984 arcade cabinet of the same name. Confusing future generations by giving sequels identical titles to their predecessors? I wish I could go back and advise Nintendo that not all trails are worth blazing.

Still, I suppose the callback to Punch-Out!!’s early arcade roots wasn’t entirely unjustified. Super Punch-Out!!’s presentation style and rules have more in common with the games from that era than with the subsequent NES one. The upgrade to 16-bit hardware made it possible to have a transparent player character sprite again, meaning that protagonist Little Mac doesn’t have to be quite so little anymore for you to spot and avoid incoming attacks. We also see the return of the single round format, a change I can honestly take or leave. While having no breaks does make the fisticuffs feel more intense at times, I miss the silly corner commentary from both opponents and Mac’s coach, Doc Louis, who sadly doesn’t appear at all.

Arguably the biggest difference from the previous game is the presence of the arcade’s power meter. Landing a string of punches without taking any in return will gradually fill up the meter along the bottom edge of the screen. Once it’s full, you can throw devastating super punches to your heart’s content. Unless you get hit, that is, which drains the meter to an extent corresponding to the amount of damage received. This mechanic effectively replaces the stock of expendable star punch icons you would earn from precise counter hits in NES Punch-Out!!, and I happen to prefer it. It rewards aggressive, proactive play, as opposed to waiting around patiently for preset vulnerability windows in which to hopefully nab stars. At the same time, you can’t afford to neglect your defense or you’ll never be able to properly capitalize on a full meter.

Beyond these few key differences, what you have here is the classic Punch-Out!! formula coming through in fine form. Sixteen eccentric fighters from across the world are evenly arranged into four increasingly brutal circuits. Study their special moves, learn their tells, then pair that knowledge with quick reactions and skillful timing to make them kiss canvas. A handful of established stalwarts like Bald Bull and Piston Hurricane are back, but the lion’s share of the cast consists of new faces. I’m especially fond of the Italian circus reject Mad Clown, Mexican luchador Masked Muscle, and Bob Charlie, who is literally Bob Marley in boxing gear for some insane reason. Aged kung fu master Hoy Quarlow can go straight to hell, though. As the game’s single steepest difficulty spike by far, he’s responsible for around 75% of my total losses. Thank goodness for the built-in battery save feature.

Super Punch-Out!! stands tall as an exemplary piece of work. The action manages to be impressively deep and refined without compromising on basic accessibility. Art and sound are top-shelf by the standards of the platform. That franchise signature wacky humor is firing on all cylinders. It’s all balanced fairly well, too, apart from that one hiccup I mentioned. Although the final three matches (starting with the hated Hoy) definitely represent a formidable challenge, they pale before the hellish gauntlet that was the NES’ Mr. Sandman, Super Macho Man, and Tyson run. This is one of the definitive SNES experiences for me. Shame it took Nintendo fifteen years to deliver another Punch-Out!! to the Wii in 2009, and that it remains the most recent installment as of this writing. Why does this company seem to hate beating up on broad ethnic stereotypes so much, huh?

Final Fantasy VI (Super Nintendo)

Where have I been, you ask? Well, fear not. The lack of a review last week wasn’t a sign of problems on my end. On the contrary, I was simply having too much fun with one of the crown jewels of the Super Nintendo library. The only reason I’ve put Square’s immortal Final Fantasy VI off this long, in fact, is that I knew from experience it would pull me in and end up dominating my free time for an inordinate period. True to form, I dumped in excess of fifty hours into this latest playthrough and still didn’t come close to maximizing every character in my massive party of fourteen playable heroes. Sorry, Strago.

Yes, FF6 (which I’ll refer to by its correct numbering for clarity’s sake, despite having played the version released as Final Fantasy III in North America) is a whopper of an RPG. So big, in fact, that I can occasionally forget large portions of it exist. I made it all the way through this latest run before I remembered that I could summon espers in battle, for instance. Whoops. The perennial question of whether it or Chrono Trigger is the best Square-published game for the system is often decided by whether one prefers  FF6’s “everything plus the kitchen sink” design philosophy or Chrono Trigger’s tighter, more focused approach. I lean toward the Chrono camp most days, though it’s close. No matter which way you skew, it’s clear from the outset that the development team at Square knew they had something special on their hands here. Not many ’90s console games had the confidence to trumpet the scope of their ambitions with a lengthy opening credit scroll.

Though admittedly presumptuous, that gravitas turned out to be entirely earned. From the first Bach-inspired blast of Nobuo Uematsu’s now legendary score to the last soaring shot of its 20+ minute ending sequence, FF6 is a product only the best console RPG makers on Earth circa 1994 could have brought us. It’s so obviously head-and-shoulders above the majority of the field as to be a legitimate contender for both the greatest Super Nintendo release and greatest Final Fantasy installment of all time. In other words, the hype is real and this is no contrarian hit piece. I’m still going to proceed to offer up my own personal gripes with its design, but they shouldn’t prevent any gamer with the slightest interest in the genre from playing this one.

Broadly speaking, FF6 presents an archetypal Final Fantasy story about an evil empire’s efforts to dominate the world by abusing some facet of nature (magic, in this case) and the diverse group of heroes who gradually unite to stop it. The specific implementation of this concept is noteworthy for two reasons. One is a famous plot twist around the halfway mark that I won’t spoil for you here. The other is the way the story is set up to not have any one obvious protagonist. Of all your party members sufficiently developed as to have proper character arcs, one could make a case for Terra, Locke, or Celes as the “main” hero, and only one of the three, Celes, is actually required to finish the game. It’s a true ensemble cast to an extent few other RPGs in this vein are.

In terms of baseline mechanics, FF6 is built on the same Active Time Battle engine introduced in 1991’s Final Fantasy IV. This is fine by me, as it no doubt freed its creators up to concentrate on honing the characters, world building, and production values. The closest we get to a major gameplay innovation are the handful of multi-party scenarios that see you divvying your team members up into multiple squads and then swapping between them on the fly, usually in order to solve some particularly complex dungeon puzzles. It’s a neat idea and used to decent effect, even if it doesn’t drastically alter the core exploration and monster bashing loop. That loop remains as polished and addicting as anything, however, and combining it with some of the most sublime music and drop-dead gorgeous pixel art imaginable on Nintendo’s 16-bit machine results in the very model of a masterpiece.

As for those gripes I mentioned, we can start with pointing out that not every character is a Terra, Locke, or Celes. Implementing a cast of fourteen was certainly ambitious and makes those multi-party set pieces possible. That said, there’s not enough spotlight to go around and it can be awfully tough to care about a good third of these guys. The minimal effort invested in the late game “jobber” characters would have been much better spent doubling down to make the members of the cast who already matter that much more memorable.

A second sticking point is the 100+ known glitches present in the game code. Some of these, such as item duplication, can benefit the player. Others, like Relm’s dreaded Sketch bug, can destroy a save file outright. A few of these programmer oversights are downright hilarious. Gau has a Rage ability, Nightshade, that allows him to charm enemies. Charmed foes will exclusively attack themselves and their allies instead of your crew. The funny part comes in when you realize that no target in the game resists this charm power. Not even bosses. Not even the final boss, who never laid a finger on me during the climactic battle. I got a charm off as the first move and proceeded to set the controller down and sit there giggling while the ultimate adversary pounded himself to a pulp. Amusing as that is, the mere potential for soft locks and save corruption forces me to consider FF6’s sloppy coding a strike against it. Some bugs present in the original SNES release were patched in subsequent revisions and remakes. Many were not.

Finally, and perhaps most subjectively, I’m no fan of how FF6 implements its magic. In short, any character has the potential to learn any spell by equipping a class of special items called magicite. It’s functionally quite similar to Final Fantasy VII’s use of materia or Final Fantasy VIII’s junction system in this respect. The downside to this freedom for me is that the raw power of high level magic eventually comes to outstrip the unique battle commands of many characters. Take Sabin, whose martial arts-based Blitz abilities cleverly require you to enter fighting game style special move inputs to activate them. It’s a charming and extremely effective gimmick during the first half of your quest, but once he can be healing the entire party with Cure 3 or annihilating a whole screen full of baddies with Ultima, there’s little reason to ever go back to Blitzing. Edgar’s Tools, Cyan’s Bushido (aka SwdTech), Mog’s Dance, and others suffer the same sad fate of being largely sub-optimal once you gain access to the top-tier magicite. Thankfully, the magic system is rolled out fairly slowly, so at least these abilities get some time to shine. I suppose I prefer my RPG characters to have stronger “niche protection,” with powerful magic being a strength reserved for specific individuals. If you favor the blank slate approach, more power to you.

In closing, I can’t emphasize enough that my few issues with FF6 are rooted in nearly thirty years of deep and abiding love for it. As one of the medium’s defining epics, it deserves every sentence of the praise heaped upon it. Is it truly the best of the best? Maybe! I struggle to think of another Super Nintendo title or game bearing the Final Fantasy name I’d consider indisputably superior. Regardless, it’s a train suplexing tour de force by any measure. If you don’t believe me, fire it up and see for yourself. Just be sure to clear your calendar first, you son of a submariner.

Lagoon (Super Nintendo)

Oh, Lagoon. This humble 1991 release from Kemco has served as one of the Super Nintendo fan base’s go-to whipping boys for ages now. I’ve heard it called the system’s worst action RPG, its worst “Zelda clone,” and even one of its worst games overall. I’ve long had a soft spot for infamous stinkers. Look no further than my charitable review of the NES’ Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for proof of that. I relish discovering for myself whether such a pilloried piece of software is really as terrible as I’ve been told or if it has unsung virtues gleaming away beneath its tarnished surface. I’m definitely in my element with this one.

First off, Lagoon is no Zelda clone. Anyone familiar with Nihon Falcom’s flagship RPG series will immediately recognize it as an Ys clone instead. From the look of the character sprites, to the music, to the menu layout, to the ever-present “player” and “enemy” health bars that dominate the lower portion of the screen, the resemblance is so uncanny as to be shameless. In fact, Lagoon’s many shortcomings can be encapsulated simply by describing it as Ys II if it had been dropped on its head as an infant. Not everyone will get that reference, but the ones who do will then know all they need to. This Super Nintendo iteration of Lagoon is a port of the original 1990 Sharp X68000 home computer version, which went so far as to use the signature old school Ys “bump combat” mechanic as well.

The makers of SNES Lagoon apparently decided that bump combat wouldn’t satisfy the average console gamer’s primal urge to pound buttons, since they gave hero Nasir an active sword swing this time out. Not a terrible idea, necessarily. Pity they proceeded to make it one of the most comically feeble attacks in the history of video games. Nasir’s so-called sword resembles nothing less than a banana or wet noodle that he relentlessly slaps against his own chest with every press of the button. It has to be seen to be believed. All the while, it projects a mere handful of pixels ahead of his body, forcing him to get so close to his targets that taking on loads of cheap damage becomes inevitable. If he didn’t have the ability to regenerate health by standing still (another Ys staple), clearing any of the game’s dungeons would be next to impossible. This one legendary design failure alone is sufficient to remove Lagoon from consideration as a traditionally good game.

Sword combat is such an awkward drag that it spills over to sabotage the one genuinely promising idea present alongside it. Lagoon’s magic system involves mixing and matching between a set of four magic staffs and four magic stones to create a total of sixteen elemental attack spells. It all seems quite cool, until you realize that the majority of non-boss enemies are trivial to kill or avoid and against the ones that will give you real trouble, the bosses, you’re only allowed to use the stubby sword for some insane reason. Magic spells straight up stop working in boss rooms. Attempting to close in on a fast-moving boss and land repeated hits without taking damage yourself is a pure crapshoot, so the only sensible strategy is to grind enough experience to remain over-leveled throughout your playthrough and then just bum-rush them while hammering the sword button as fast as you can. Whee!

Lagoon also has precious little to offer beyond the absurd and fundamentally unsatisfying core gameplay loop described above. The plot is no great shakes (restore Lakeland’s polluted water supply by killing a load of monsters and saving a tacked-on princess) and neither is the stilted dialog driving it. Graphics are basic even by early 16-bit standards. There are no optional locations or side quests to tackle. The only aspect I can find it in me to praise is Hideki Suzuki’s phenomenal score. It utterly nails the same mix of driving synth-rock and ethereal fantasy ambience Ys fans know and love, with plenty of that gloriously cheesy SNES slap bass to boot. I could listen to this stuff all day.

Flawed as it is, I’m surprised to report that I didn’t end up actually hating Lagoon. It’s bad by any measure, sure, yet I didn’t come away nearly as aggravated as I’d expected to. It’s short at around six hours, simple enough that you shouldn’t get lost or confused, and relatively easy as long as you’re not going into boss fights under-leveled. It thus never commits the cardinal lousy game sins of demanding too much or overstaying its welcome. I’m not sorry I played it. As what amounts to a shambling cluster of boneheaded decisions with an epic soundtrack crudely draped over it, it may well be the worst action RPG on the Super Nintendo. If so, however, that’s as much a commentary on the awesome strength of the platform’s library as on the failings of Kemco’s misbegotten but ultimately innocuous Ys wannabe.

The 7th Saga (Super Nintendo)

Here’s a question for you: What makes a traditional turn-based RPG stand out as more difficult than the norm? Or easier, for that matter? If you think about it, such games generally unfold in menus, proceeding at whatever pace the player is comfortable with. There’s no ticking clock, no need to hone one’s reflexes or timing. No permanent game overs, either, outside the roguelike sub-genre. Furthermore, they’re essentially numbers games. So long as you have the patience to pad your stats out sufficiently, you’ll plow through the opposition pretty much automatically. That’s the nature of the beast, right?

Apparently not, since The 7th Saga always seems to get singled out as the most difficult Super Nintendo RPG. Developed by Produce! and published by Enix in 1993, 7th Saga doesn’t initially appear to be all that unusual by the standard of the period and platform. It’s yet another game where you explore a generic fantasy world from an overhead perspective hunting down magical MacGuffins (seven runes, in this case) while racking up cash and experience points via a constant stream of random monster brawls.

So what gives? 7th Saga’s original Japanese version, the unfortunately titled Elnard, isn’t regarded as particularly challenging. Turns out it’s all in the localization. You may have heard how some older action games like Castlevania III were modified to be harder for an American audience due to the prominence of the rental market here (as opposed to in Japan, where businesses successfully lobbied the government to have game rentals made illegal). Well, 7th Saga is what results when the same process is applied to an RPG. Monster stats got bumped up, player character stats got bumped down. The result is a grim struggle of a quest where many common encounters are on par with the boss fights of your typical RPG. You have to plan every move out carefully and make effective use of buff and debuff spells simply to survive against standard enemies. Even then, you can expect to periodically hit a run of bad luck and get wiped out anyway. It doesn’t need to be a long run, either, considering how hard everything that isn’t you hits.

Leveling up helps, of course, but since your party members’ stats grow at a much slower rate than initially intended, each level effectively counts less. Making up that difference requires some serious extra grinding, piling mountains of repetition onto what’s already a fairly long playthrough and extending it from what should rightfully be no more than 20-30 hours to nearer the 40 hour mark in my case.

It’s as egregiously unfair and frustrating as it sounds. To my surprise, however, it didn’t quite manage to ruin 7th Saga for me. There are still enough good ideas present to just barely compensate for the cruelty baked into the localization. Foremost among them is your choice of seven characters to function as main protagonist, a mechanic noteworthy enough to reference in the English title. Esuna the elf, Valsu the priest, and Lejes the demon are dedicated spellcasters with little in the way of martial might. Wilme the alien and Lux the robot are almost exclusively geared toward physical combat. Kamil the warrior and Olvan the dwarf attempt to split the difference. Your initial choice of hero is very important, since you can only ever recruit one of the remaining six at a time to accompany you, and their willingness to do so isn’t guaranteed. They may also snub or even attack you hoping to steal your coveted runes. In rare cases, there are unique story events only accessible to specific characters. Olvan is needed to access an optional treasure-filled dungeon called the Tower of Grime, for instance. While it would have been nice if the developers had been able to include more of these branching paths, I’m grateful for the few that did make it in.

7th Saga boasts a fine presentation as well, the soundtrack from Norihiko Yamanuki being the true standout. I count it as a loss to the games industry that he left it after this in favor of other musical pursuits. Credit is owed to the art staff, too, for their host of intimidating enemy designs. There are no affable grinning slimes in the world of Ticondera. These critters look as nightmarish as they are to fight and I love it.

In a perverse way, 7th Saga’s blatant unfairness actually grew on me over time. It’s not that I ever liked it per se. Rather, it succeeded in goading me into a “don’t get mad, get even” mindset. The need to focus so intently on every battle meant that I could never zone out and button mash my way through the opposition. It kept me engaged, in other words, if also on edge and periodically angry. There was a palpable tension to making my way through a dungeon or across a vast stretch of overworld to the next town, all the while knowing that the next step could spell disaster. At least you don’t lose progress when you die, instead being docked half your gold and sent back to the last inn you visited à la Dragon Quest. Forcing you to load a previous save from scratch every time would have been a bridge too far. Spite is a strange motivation for gaming, but my desire to throw all of 7th Saga’s nonsense back in its smarmy face is ultimately what carried me to the end credits.

Would I revisit The 7th Sage? I’m certainly curious to see how other character combinations will differ from my initial Esuna/Lux run. That said, I’ll likely opt to cut down on the time and aggravation required by using one of the fan-made patches that revert all the stats to their Elnard values. I beat this one on its default bastard mode once to prove a point. I feel I’ve more than earned myself the right to relax a bit with it in the future.

Joe & Mac (Super Nintendo)

Ninja and Flintstones style cartoon cavemen were two of the most common choices for video game protagonists throughout the 8 and 16-bit eras. Leave it to the madmen at Data East to give us the chocolate-peanut butter combination we’d clearly been craving when they unleashed Caveman Ninja into arcades in 1991. Later that same year, they ported it to the Super Nintendo under the decidedly less magnificent moniker Joe & Mac. Why they had to go and undersell a genius concept like that is beyond me.

Regardless of what you call it, this side-scrolling run-and-gun (run-and-throw, technically) sees one or two players take on the role of a titular neolithic shinobi and set out to rescue a gaggle of “cave babes” who’ve been stolen away by “a bogus bunch of neanderthal nerds.” A trite setup, sure, but I do at least have to award a point or two for serving up some of that aggressively ’90s faux-surfer slang middle-aged marketers all assumed we loved for some reason.

Joe & Mac consists of twelve main action stages. New to the SNES adaptation is a navigable overhead map reminiscent of Super Mario World’s linking them, although you’re still required to tackle each one in the prescribed order. Another, more substantial way of rendering the game console-friendly was lengthening every level considerably. Stages in Joe & Mac are generally at least twice as long as their Caveman Ninja counterparts. Factor in the addition of hidden areas and bonus games scattered around the map and you can expect a complete playthrough to clock in at 45 minutes or so, double the play time you’d get out of the arcade cabinet.

Whether more truly is better is a matter for debate, however. Joe & Mac’s moment-to-moment gameplay is fun enough. A tad stiff and floaty, I suppose, but not bad at all. The presence of four distinct throwing weapons, ranging from the faster, weaker bone and boomerang to the slow moving, high damage wheel and fire, allows for a little strategizing, even if the wheel’s ability to hug the terrain and clear paths ahead of you makes it the obvious choice for the majority of the platforming segments. Colorful, expressive graphics and a lively soundtrack round out a laundry list of solid fundamentals.

The one major hiccup that hinders this version of Joe & Mac for me isn’t one of its additions, but rather a tragic omission: The removal of Caveman Ninja’s weapon charging mechanic. Holding down the attack button to charge your next throw up to full power was vital for defeating bosses in a reasonable time. Restricting our heroes to feeble uncharged shots slows these otherwise thrilling giant dinosaur brawls to a crawl, especially late in the adventure. Such a brutal hit to the pacing is hardly worth the extra few minutes of running time, and some players prefer the arcade original and later Sega Genesis port for this reason alone.

On the whole, Joe & Mac amounts to a lightweight, middle-of-the-road sort of gaming experience. Generally pleasing, it would have made for a satisfying weekend rental around the time of its release, if not a particularly desirable full-price purchase. The world and characters are appealing, the difficulty is manageable despite the three continue limit, and you’re able to engage in simultaneous dino-bashing with a friend. Plus, those cave babes can knap my flint any day! More like pre-HER-storic, amirite?

Star Fox (Super Nintendo)

It’s not often that I attempt to synch my reviews up with specific major anniversaries. Mostly I play whatever I happen to feel like in the moment. When it was brought to my attention that Star Fox was celebrating its thirtieth birthday last week, however, I simply couldn’t resist taking advantage of an excuse to revisit an old favorite.

The Super Nintendo platform was riding high when Star Fox released in March of 1993, having been on the market less than three years at that point. Despite this, the writing was already on the wall. NEC and Sega were busy showcasing the possibilities of the burgeoning CD-ROM format. Meanwhile, it was clear that the age of the sprite was drawing to a close. The next wave of consoles would inevitably be 3-D powerhouses relative to their 16-bit ancestors. So when U.K.-based Argonaut Software approached Nintendo with the idea for a proprietary graphics accelerator chip that could be incorporated into game cartridges to enable eye-catching 3-D polygon visuals on the SNES, their proposal was met with considerable enthusiasm. Why wouldn’t it be? Nintendo had a long-standing tradition of extending the shelf life of its flagship system via liberal use of such chips. Often referred to as memory mappers, they’re what allowed the NES, a machine engineered in 1983 to run Donkey Kong, to stay commercially relevant for over a decade and play host to 8-bit technical wonders like Kirby’s Adventure.

Argonaut and Nintendo thus set to work on what would ultimately be dubbed the Super FX chip. Naturally, they needed not just the tech itself, but a real killer app of a debut game to put it over with the public. What they settled on was a 3-D rail shooter based on Argonaut’s hit 1986 PC title Starglider, a game that was itself originally intended to be a licensed Star Wars tie-in (Get it? TIE-in?) and was clearly inspired by Atari’s seminal 1983 Star Wars arcade cabinet. At this stage, the concept was missing but one thing: That trademark Nintendo charm. Star designer Shigeru Miyamoto remedied that with the decision to set the action in a galaxy of anthropomorphic animals. Hence, our titular fighter pilot hero Fox McCloud is a literal fox leading his rabbit, toad, and bird wingmen on a mission to save the Lylat System from Planet of the Apes reject Andross and his unreasonably huge space armada. Brand identity assured!

In retrospect, the choice of Star Fox as poster child for the Super FX chip was inspired. The combination of Starglider’s proven fundamentals and Miyamoto’s character design Midas touch do a more than adequate job of smoothing over the game’s technical rough edges. For instance, it’s a lot easier to accept playfields constructed from a modest number of flat-shaded polygons when they’re meant to represent various spaceships and trippy alien planets, as opposed to living beings or objects and locations we’re familiar with from real life. Look no further than the largely forgotten Stunt Race FX or Dirt Trax FX for proof of that. Even the dismal framerate, which maxes out at a paltry twenty refreshes per second and routinely struggles to reach that, is a price worth paying for the sheer inventiveness and scope of Star Fox’s 21 stages. The number of unique enemies and environmental hazards seen throughout is impressive, with the bevy of truly intimidating giant boss ships being the best of a great lot. Capping it all off is composer Hajime Hirasawa’s magnificent John Williams-esque score. Hard to believe he worked on a mere four games during his short tenure in the industry.

This isn’t to say that every gripe one might have with Star Fox is down to it being a first experiment with new hardware. Those three wingmen I mentioned, Peppy Hare, Slippy Toad, and Falco Lombardi, add little to the experience apart from the occasional nugget of expository dialog and the flimsiest illusion of camaraderie. In fact, they can be quite annoying, constantly begging you to swoop in and save their bacon from bad guys that are invariably getting the best of them. I know Fox is supposed to be the designated protagonist and all, but it makes you wonder why he doesn’t leave these clumsy dorks to chill back at home base so he can take care of business unimpeded.

So, with the massive strides in 3-D graphics over the past three decades and a number of more advanced Star Fox sequels to pick from, can I still recommend playing the original now? Absolutely! Its readily accessible arcade style shoot-and-dodge mechanics are timeless, as are its top-notch level and enemy design, stirring soundtrack, and endearing (if endearingly useless) cast of characters. Heck, I’d go so far as to say that Star Fox’s union of bright, flat colors with ultra-basic polygon geometry constitutes a sort of retro-cool visual aesthetic that holds up today in much the same way it does in Tron, The Last Starfighter, and other beloved sci-fi films of the ’80s. While it may not look “good” anymore, it remains compelling as a nostalgic paradox; a bold, naive vision of a future past.

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 Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (Super Nintendo)

Speak the words “Square” and “Dream Time” and many gamers’ thoughts will instantly turn to the seminal Square-Enix collaboration Chrono Trigger. With good reason, of course. It’s not considered one of the finest RPGs of all time for nothing. A year later in 1996, however, Square partnered up again. This time it was with none other than Nintendo themselves to bring us the brilliant Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, a title every bit as enjoyable as Chrono Trigger and arguably more influential as well.

Influential? Sure! Mario RPG marks the first instance of characters from the ongoing Super Mario franchise being given any substantial in-game dialog or characterization. Unless you’re inclined to count such sideshow ephemera as Mario Teaches Typing or Hotel Mario, that is, and I’m afraid we simply can’t be friends in that case. Sorry. Anyway, seeing such series staples as Bowser and Princess Toadstool (she wouldn’t be called Peach here in North America until Mario 64) acting out cute little scenes together was a delight at the time of this game’s release and set the tone for all of the comedic RPG Mario outings to follow. More on that later, though.

Mario RPG immediately sets the mood by brazenly subverting the saga’s default narrative. It begins where the typical platforming installments ends: With Mario storming Bowser’s lair to rescue the Princess, a feat he easily accomplishes mere minutes later. That’s when a titanic living sword, harbinger of the real villains, the Smithy Gang, plunges out of the sky and into Bowser’s stronghold, stealing away Mario’s moment of triumph and signifying that the true quest has only begun. The road to recovering the seven enchanted stars dislodged from the sky by Smithy and company is a long one and Mario can’t walk it alone. Fighting at his side are Mallow, a young “tadpole” who curiously resembles nothing of the sort, and Geno, a mysterious emissary from the stars, along with a few familiar faces. All told, this setup amounts to a fairly straightforward scavenger hunt plot. You shouldn’t expect anything in the way of hard-hitting drama or shocking twists, just twenty hours or so of agreeable cartoon mayhem, give or take.

While Mario RPG’s storytelling is in no way deep, bear in mind that this was never the point. The point was to keep players smiling and here Square really knocked it out of the park. Gags like silent protagonist Mario furiously pantomiming in an effort to recap important plot points or Bowser becoming so apoplectic that he lapses into haiku almost always pay off. In terms of humor that consistently works, I don’t hesitate to champion Mario RPG alongside EarthBound and The Legend of the Mystical Ninja as one of the funniest console games of its generation.

The core gameplay is similarly short on complexity and long on personality. Battles are turn-based and menu-driven, although they’re not random. Enemies are visible during exploration and can usually be avoided with a well-timed dash or jump. Yes, jump! It wouldn’t be Mario without a little platforming, would it? Fortunately, the developers were smart enough to not punish missed jumps via death pits or other serious hazards. The most common application of the move is to reveal hidden treasure boxes hanging invisibly overhead. Thank goodness, because the isometric viewpoint the game employs can sometimes make precision leaps more difficult than they appear at first glance. It could have gotten real frustrating real quick if the stakes were higher.

Once you do get into a fight, victory is mainly a matter of using physical and special attacks to whittle down the enemy’s hit points before they can do the same to you. Special moves draw on the party’s limited supply of FP, Flower Points, which stand in for the Magic Points seen in other fantasy RPGs. The sole innovation is the timed hit system. Basically, you have a split-second window during the windup animation of a character’s attack where you can tap the button a second time and cause a more damaging version of that attack to come out. It also works when you’re on defense. By synchronizing your button press with the foe’s swing, damage can be reduced significantly. Once you get the feel of it, it becomes second nature. It would be an exaggeration to claim that the jumping and timed hits alone are sufficient to make this a true action RPG. That said, they do achieve their intended goal of keeping players actively engaged during even the most routine exploration and combat segments.

As with Chrono Trigger, I could all too easily drone on for paragraph after paragraph detailing the myriad large and small flourishes that collectively make this one singularly charming experience. The combined effect of the spot-on humor, brisk pacing, and simple, yet robust mechanics is pure joyous elegance. It’s gorgeous, too, owing to the use of Donkey Kong Country-esque pre-rendered assets. This low-fi downscaling process endows characters and backgrounds alike with an almost tactile claymation-like texture that ironically holds up far better than actual real-time 3-D graphics of the period. Did I mention a soundtrack by the incomparable Yoko Shimomura? Super Mario RPG is one of those rare works that goes from strength to strength in a manner I can’t bring myself to so much as feign objectivity around. Play it.

Loathe as I am to end on a sad note, we can’t overlook that 1996 also marked the acrimonious end of Nintendo and Square’s roughly decade-long alliance. The fallout over Nintendo’s decision to stick with archaic and pricey low-capacity ROM cartridges for their upcoming Nintendo 64 prompted Square to jump ship and embrace the CD-ROM future as exemplified by Sony’s PlayStation. Frankly, who could blame them? It’s nigh-impossible to imagine the enduring critical and commercial phenomenon that is 1997’s Final Fantasy VII originating on any other contemporary format, after all. Business is business and Square ultimately returned to the fold in order to capitalize on the popularity of the Game Boy Advance in the early 2000s. Still, this low point in relations between the two companies is what led Nintendo to turn development on Mario RPG’s successor, Paper Mario, over to Intelligent Systems instead. Paper Mario was a success in its own right, but as Square (now Square Enix) still retains ownership of Mallow, Geno, Smithy, and every other character created expressly for Mario RPG, none of them have ever resurfaced in any official capacity. There are certainly fans out there who would give their eyeteeth for a direct Mario RPG sequel. I know because I’m one of them. Are there enough of us to make the required payouts good sense from a corporate finance perspective? Let’s just say I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.