Negative World has spoken: 9 out of the 28 cool people who voted chose our first Retro Game Club game, easily obtainable on the Virtual Console for the low price of $5:


Background

1991. Things happened that year. Operation Desert Storm started in Iraq. An amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles, California police officers. But above all, people will remember 1991 as the year Nintendo released StarTropics on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Well, alright, maybe not.

StarTropics was made by a team of Japanese designers living in the United States (Nintendo Integrated Research & Development, the developers of Punch-Out!!), for the American and European markets. Not only was it not made for the Japanese market in mind, they had no plans to release it there at all.

The game is almost classic Zelda and wears its inspiration on its sleeve: the menu for starting a game or choosing a save file, the hearts, dungeons, puzzles... the game will be instantly familiar to most of you.

You play as Mike Jones, a typical American kid. Loves yo-yos. Plays baseball. Umm, wears a t-shirt? That's basically the extent of his "personality". Mike is visiting his uncle, an archeologist, on C-island, but upon arrival learns that his uncle has been kidnapped. From there, it's all dank caves, snakes, submarines and yo-yos.

Be warned: the game can be tricky. There are rooms that you will learn you should not have explored only once it's too late, and secret passages you need to push up against. Oh, and if you ever need a "code" for something, don't explore the map twice over. Instead, RTFM!

Progress Milestones

Here I'll try to give a rough idea of how long it takes to get to certain milestones, i.e. "Dungeon 2, about an hour into the game". I'd appreciate help from you guys too, for this!

Chapter 1
Takes no more than 20 minutes to complete. If you need help for this one...

Chapter 2 - Dolphins
To get to the bottle, go through the mountain.
To get the heart, same damn thing as above.
Takes about 25 minutes to go through depending on how much you die in the dungeon.

Chapter 3 - Storm and Calm
Tips from Triforcebun: Where there is a slug, don't forget to check for a wall passage right before one of the exit stairways.
In the tomb, you must navigate through a labyrinth of false walls and dark rooms. When you reach an area that looks like a dead end (lots of water on the north and south sides), head south, and Mike will jump to the next screen.
Takes about 2-3 hours to finish, but thankfully that is spread out over about 4 dungeons.

Chapter 4 - Confessions
Tip from Triforcebun: Listen to what NAV-COM says verrry closely. If you're playing this on the VC, you've got access to what you need to do. If not, you better hope you have more than just the cartridge available! If you really want to know the secret password, it is 747.
Done in about 15 minutes.

Chapter 5 - Captain Bell
If you hit a dead-end in those mountains, you missed a fork in the path.
Done in... I dunno, 1.5 hours?

Chapter 6 - Reunion
I did this one in two sittings, and lost track. About 2 hours?

Chapter 7 - Alien Spaceship
Tough, but don't get discouraged! Keep a cool head and don't rush at the enemies, and you will overcome.

Chapter 8 - Final Battle

The Players

Pandareus - Finished it!
Zero - Starting chapter 6
Anon_Mastermind - Starting chapter 5
X-pert74 - Mired in chapter 2
TriforceBun - Starting chapter 7
Paleo_Orca - In chapter 2? (give us updates!)
ShadowLink - In chapter 1? (give us updates!)

CPA Wei? Ploot? Orbital74?

Below: the discussion!

Feel free to discuss every aspect of this game or your experience with it! Music, graphics, gameplay, story, or your personal history with this game! Maybe try to be mindful of spoilers, though? Simply mention which dungeon or chapter you are at, and then use the spoiler tag appropriately.

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Mr_Mustache was right, the temptation to resort to a FAQ for this game is strong. I'm in the tomb and I can't even get to the dead end you mention, TriforceBun. I feel I've exhausted every possible route and am going in circles. Anyway, I will let others play up to where I am now, I suppose, before doing anything rash.

If you get stuck, just look up the solution. There are a few spots that will stymie you. Just FAQ past them. One of my big sticking points was not understanding how to use items. But I figured out most of the obscurity myself, which was honestly tremendously satisfying.

I like the combat, too. It's clunky, but the enemies are designed around that clunkiness, so it's challenging, but fair. You might have to replay sections a few times, but encounters and rooms that seem impossible at first become second nature over time. And I thought this game was a lot more puzzle-heavy than the original LoZ. Maybe a precursor to what the series would become. I wonder how many staff were shared. And have StarTropics I and II STILL not hit Japan?

I played some of the game last night. The controls are so awkward! It's like I slide my character along with each press of the d-pad. I don't feel like I'm actually him; I feel like I'm using a remote control to move a character along a square grid, rather than having true control. I died a few times, but that was due mainly to my stupidly jumping into water when I should have continued jumping along the stone path I was on. I came across a couple puzzles during my time, which were pretty easy. I reset the game after every time I died, since I'm not sure if the game gives you infinite continues or not. I'll try to make my way through the first stage the next time I play.

@X-pert74
You have infinite continues. When you run out of lives, you'll start at the beginning of the dungeon.

For the chapter 3 tomb, don't forget to check for a wall passage (you know, the ones where you walk through the wall) right before one of the exit stairways. I think a stationary slug sits on the spot where you're supposed to go through. Basically, when you're on a screen where the stairs are in the top right and a slug is there too, check for a shadowy spot hinting that you can walk through the wall.

Items! To use them, pause the game and press Select. I'm pretty sure you keep items from life to life, but you lose them if you get a Game Over, so use that medicine!

SNOWMAN: freezes all onscreen enemies. Works great on the Chapter 2 boss...but wait for him to get within attacking range first!

MEDICINE: fills up 5 (I think?) hearts.

STARS: Get five to fill up a heart.

TRY-YOUR-LUCK SIGN: Usually worth getting. It will randomly give or take away lives, but in my experience, it usually gives you them.

@TriforceBun

You do not keep the items when you lose a life, actually. Not the weapons, and not the items like potions or snowmen (which you use by pausing, then pressing DOWN). But you do restart at a checkpoint instead of at the beginning, so there is that.

Thanks for the tip, BTW. For some reason I told myself I would try to be observant and look for these kinds of signs, and then... I just don't notice.

@X-pert74

You're touching on something I wanted to bring up: the save system actually feels very... modern. It is entirely automatic, and saves after whenever you achieve something of importance. It's great!

@anandxxx

Oh, so YOU are smart enough to figure out the puzzles on your own and YOU deserver "tremendous satisfaction", and I don't?

I see how it is...

Well, finished chapter 3 at last, and then chapter 4 after it almost immediately. I will take a break and let you guys catch up.

I hope people will be playing, it's a fun game! I hope the people who voted for it aren't all people who played it before and wanted to "make" people play it. Even if you have played it before, play it again with us! And I hope the people who didn't vote for StarTropics still give it a shot.


Anyway...

I appreciate the enemy variety. In chapter 2, they almost all had a marine theme: small octopi, fish. In chapter three, you start out in a cave with a bird theme: dodos... winged monkeys? And the scariest take on ostriches ever, seriously these dudes areoh my god it's coming straight for me it's coming straight for me!

The only reoccuring enemies so far seem to be pretty basic ones like snakes and bats. But each new location has its new batch of enemies. I like that.

Alright, alright. Here come my notes WHILE I PLAY!

CHAPTER 1:

-"I have to hurry! I'm gonna roast a pig for your welcome party!" Let's go talk to the pig. "Oink! Oink!" Hey, that's cute. It's a...well, it's an 8-bit butt-hole. Charming.

-The "fishing boy" villager sprite always looked naked to me. At least from the side.

-The game tends to not use periods at the end of text boxes.

-"Listen Mike! I have some... bad news... last night... try not to be too upset... but... your uncle... Dr. Jones... has been.....abducted!"

-The shaman always looked like she was eating a banana. Look at her moving hand and picture her thumb and pinky as a banana. You can't unsee it! (plus it fits the theme of the game well)

-Now saving your data....refrain from turning power off or resetting!! (I think this was the first time I learned the word "refrain" in that usage)

-The doorways in the dungeon...is there a pit between them? It looks dark and Mike kinda jumps over them. Pretty weird.

-I think the reason the controls feel kinda sluggish is that Mike turns when you tap the D-pad in the opposite direction, but it takes him another moment to actually walk in that direction.

-I love the "victory" theme in this game! The song after you beat a boss, basically. In fact, the game as a whole has a lot of really good music.

-That medicine trap in the first dungeon is pretty deviously brilliant.

-Baboo looks like Gooma (palace 5 boss) from Zelda 2.


CHAPTER 2

-"Qui quy! Qui...k qui quy?"

-Awesomely silly NES-era dialogue by the lighthouse-dwelling islander: "So you're looking for a boy dolphin? Sorry, but I have not seen him."

-"You've got a big heart!" always sounded like a compliment to me.

-You get a limited number of "swings" with the bat. Hm.

-That snowman sure does a number on the boss. I remember trying to bat back his projectiles when I was a kid.


This game's still pretty good. I'm done for the night though.

Ha, this sounds like a lot of fun! If I wasn't busy with other games and school stuff, I'd totally be down. Sorry for being a little selfish, but my backlog is so close to completion! I do have StarTropics ready to play on my Wii though.

Jumpin on the bandwagon! Starting Chapter 1 now.

EDIT: Magic of the Southern Cross? Really? What an appropriate game for me .

The real reason that I voted for this game is because I played through most of it for the first time recently. I'll post my thoughts from my thread that nobody read (although I covered most of the salient points above):

I downloaded it from the VC, and started playing it for the first time. I'm on about... Chapter 6, I guess?

I always wondered if I could truly appreciate an NES game that I had no nostalgia for. Well, I've learned that I can!

StarTropics is a real tonic to today's hand-holding, cutscene-filled 'epics'. Even though the controls are a bit clunky, the game is designed around them very well. Even though the puzzle and map design are kind of obtuse at times, they still remain eminently figure-out-able, somehow (at least, once I realized that I had an item menu - the inventory system is genuinely shitty). And even though the combat can be balls-hard, every challenge can be consistently overcome with a bit of practice. It really feels rewarding to master each section of each cave (dungeon), and then successfully complete a run-through to emerge victorious. The dialogue and story are NES-chic, there are tons of little towns and caves to visit, and the game balances them very well.

StarTropics is just a bizarre, imaginative, challenging game. It's really refreshing to play through it, after sleepwalking through so many modern-day Disneyland rides. It's too bad that I slept on it, back in the day. I'm going to look up Genyo Takeda's other games. With this and Punch-Out! and Super Punch-Out! under his belt, I'm curious to see what other quirky, punishing games he's had his hands in.

@Octorockin
There is one word that always comes to mind when I think of you, and that word... is selfish. For shame.

I'm definitely going to get in on this, I'm just out of Wii points and scared to use my credit card right now due to being pretty much barely above 0 in my account and I had a bunch of overdraws last week. I have money, just have it in other accounts, so it is going to take a few days to get it in. And FLUX comes out tomorrow too! Blah.

Today would have been good to get started as well as I literally have no plans for the entire day. And I'm already up and have done the gym and it's still noon.

Guess I'll work on some music, or maybe finish up Trauma Team and/or Dead Space Extraction.

BUT I WILL HOP ON STARTROPICS SOON. I've always been curious about this game. I even remember renting it long, long ago. Although we didn't get very far into it, it was kind of confusing.

Did I say I was gonna take a break and let people catch up? I lied. Played some more today. I am not a... very busy individual.

Again, the dungeon was a bitch in chapter 5! Trap after trap after trap. Felt great to jump on that switch at the end, though. And I laughed out loud at God Save The Queen, which was a complete surprise and played for longer than expected.

I definitely got a The Goonies vibe from this chapter, what with the traps, the ship and the piano.

Oh, and one previous enemy I wanted to mention was the kappas! Creepy motherfuckers. Absolutely not as cute as the ones I usually associate with Nintendo.



Kind of strange to see them in a game intended for the American market, too.

Alright I lied, got it, playing it.

I started off in the overworld thinking "wow the controls are stiff" and then got into the first dungeon and they actually manage to be even stiffer somehow!? Man. The controls suck a dong.

Otherwise it seems pretty cool so far. Just finished the first dungeon. A bit too much jumping on random blocks to open doors for my tastes but there seems to be some potential for more.

To be totally honest, I don't think we even got past the first dungeon back when we rented this game.

@Pandareus Yeah, the save system is really nice. I just beat the first dungeon with the snake boss, and it saved my game! I mean I have access to the VC save state and all, but it's still a really nice feature. Plus saving only takes like a couple seconds. It's not a hassle at all.

@Pandareus
They're probably not as creepy as the 'real' kappas of Japanese mythology, playful tricksters who are prone to sucking out the life force of a human through their anus (I think the term for the spirit ball that they suck out is Shirikodama). Oh, the Japanese...

They also do... strange stuff with raccoons.

@Pandareus Damn I was doing the same thing you were, lol. I died on this bitch like 20 times or something. Should be easier now.

Anyway I gotta say, except for the controls and some issues with not knowing what to do (I've been on Gamefaqs a few times already), I'm having a lot of fun with this game. It's definitely a gem. I wonder why it didn't hook me back in the days?

I'm in the middle of chapter 3, BTW.

It kind of makes a poor first impression. Like Kid Icarus.

I haven't downloaded this yet, but I will rectify that tonight. didn't really get much gaming in over the weekend, besides some bedtime Castlevania.

@anandxxx I wonder if I was just more into action/platforming games at the time? I absolutely loved Zelda, but I can't recall playing much of anything else top down adventure-ish. And I wouldn't go near RPGs back then. There was also the fact that we rented it so I kind of had to make a flash judgment.

I think the Internet is a good and a bad thing in this respect. The bad is that it's too easy to let stuff like Gamerankings and other people's negative opinions keep you away from a game. The good is that between Gamefaqs and forums and the likes you can get a broader impression of things that might put some initial turn-offs (like stiff controls and some unclear progression) into a bigger context (especially if a game has a lot of positive opinions behind it.)

But how much of that is due to peer pressure and the power of (positive or negative) suggestion? Sometimes I hate looking for answers on the internet, because you will often get responses that totally conflict with each other, and you have to evaluate them.

It was kind of purer before, when we just rented whateverthefuck and gave each game equal shrift. It made for some nice surprises, as well as some terrible, terrible ones.

I never played StarTropics, because I always assumed that it was a traditional RPG. None of my friends had it, either, oddly enough. But I genuinely enjoyed it on VC, clunky though it is. Perhaps even that is partially due to my NES-nostalgia-addled brain, but still...