Even though we’ll review almost anything on CGR Undertow, new games, old games, consoles,
books, toys...
We are part of Classic Game room and my favorite games to share with you guys are the classics.
For me, in my late twenty's, classics means 8-bit NES games.
What you’re seeing now is one of my all time favorites from that era...
StarTropics!
StarTropics released in 1990 and by none other than Nintendo itself, is a top-down action-adventure
game that often gets compared to Legend of Zelda.
You play Mike who takes a trip to C Island to visit his uncle Dr. Jones an archaeologist
in the tropics.
When you arrive however, you discover that he’s been abducted by aliens and since you
are an ace pitcher it’s your job to rescue him... believe it or not that’s not the
most ridiculous event in the game...
You visit the chief of the island who gives you a yo-yo in which you’re to do battle
with... snakes, bats, mummys, flying monkeys, giant octopuses and obviously eventually aliens
and robots.
The game-play will switch between two perspectives, the overworld/town view and the dungeon view.
In town you interact with npcs and in fact you have to in order to progressive the story.
This a common complaint about the game, the forced story telling since most of what the
villagers say is completely useless and even if you know how to get past a certain part
of the game you can’t actually complete it until you’ve talked to everyone that
you can.
This never bothered me too much honestly, other than sometimes getting stuck because
I would talk to someone in the wrong order and not realize they wouldn’t let me pass
until this little girl informed me that she is miss coral from 1990....
Once you enter a dungeon the game will completely change with larger, more detailed sprites
and this is where the action happens.
You’ll explore each cave fending off baddies, solving puzzles and avoiding tricks and traps.
You have a heart meter, similar to Zelda, and you move along a grid so to speak only
in cardinal directions.
You’ll also be able to pick up temporary weapons and items to help you out.
Another common complaint about StarTropics is the difficulty and for the most part I
would agree, it’s pretty tough.
But I think it’s a good challenge.
The life and continue system is rather forgiving.
The game auto saves at every chapter and dungeon, so the furthest you’ll go back after loosing
all your lives is the beginning of a dungeon allowing you to eventually learn the enemy
movement paths and solutions to the puzzles.
Now for some StarTropics fun facts...
StarTropics, despite being developed by Nintendo and by Japanese developers that lived in the
US, was never released in Japan, only North America and Europe.
The original game manual came with a letter from Dr. Jones inviting you to visit him on
C-Island...
But it actually went further than that.
At one point in the game, after escaping the belly of a whale, Dr. J’s assist gives you
a message and says "Tell Mike to dip my letter in water...."
Submerging the letter in water would actually reveal a code that was needed in the game
to proceed.
In the days of Skylanders interacting with a game in the real world is a common thing,
but something like this was pretty uncommon in the early 90’s.
StarTropics has everything you want in an NES classic.
A fairly clever and interesting storyline that keeps the game moving and you motivated
to see what happens next.
Challenging puzzles and gameplay that keep fresh and throw something new at you each
chapter.
The music is some of my favorite from the era too, which is nice since you’ll be hearing
it a lot especially the dungeon music.
StarTropics isn’t hard to find either.
You can get it on the virtual console and certainly worth a buy if you’re into old
school cult classics.
There was sequel released in 1994 but unfortunately it didn’t live up to its predecessor and
killed the series off, which is a shame.
I think StarTropics needs to be added to the list of games getting some modern retro love.