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.

URL to share (right click and copy)

Finished chapter 5.

I'm trying not to rely on Gamefaqs too much, but some of the design choices are maddening. I feel like I have to use the fire rod thingy in every room now so I don't end up taking what appears to be the only door and find out it was actually a path backwards.

@Zero
Maybe exit the dungeon and go to the nearest town healer?

Sorry I haven't been up on this, guys. School has caught up to me. I've got a final project due in a week, and I can't get it nailed down.

I'll be ready for the next one for sure.

Good lord. If people haven't given up on chapter 3, I'm guessing the other choking point is chapter 7. Holy balls. The enemies deal so much damage, are so fast and have so much range, I no longer feel like the challenge is appropriate for the tools you have and Mike's movement set.

I've managed to get to the mid-boss(?) once, but too many times, the "speeder bike" guys ram into me and I can't do anything about it. It feels like the only way I can get through, is with luck.

As usual, what seems impossible at first is quite possible after a bunch of tries.

I'm taking a break from fighting Zoda right now, though. What a bitch of a boss!

I can't be the only one regularly flipping the bird or cursing at the TV while playing this game, right?

I've overused this pic lately, but:



Wow, what a fun but sometimes maddening game. But definitely satisfying once you get through it. And I am pretty happy at the ending, that it doesn't end on a screen that says "Congratulations" like many early NES games.

Nice job Pandareus! Congrats for beating the NES classic, StarTropics!

I'm just starting Chapter 7, myself. "Do me so far, do me" strikes me as a lot funnier nowadays than it did as a kid.

So far, no game overs yet! If anything will get me there, though, 7 certainly will.

I remember liking the ending a lot too. Quite good for the NES days.

Next up...StarTropics 2...?

EDIT: More Colas!

-Bellcola
-Howduyadu-Cola
-Rob Crusocola

TriforceBun said:

So far, no game overs yet!

...

So not only are you a platforming god, but a StarTropics master as well? Not to mention artistic and creative talent that translates into a hugely successful webcomic...

Unfair! Some people have everything!


As for the next game, I'll add it to the poll, but people may want to check out another franchise instead, at least for now. Personally, I wouldn't mind Faxanadu (even though no one voted for it last time), I just got it. In fact, I may start it right away anyway...

Chapter 2 is pretty tough. I've gotten two game overs so far in it. I think I figured out how to use the baseball bat (swing the balls back at enemies, right?), so I'll try that out this time around.

I recently beat this game. I had forgotten just how brutal it is. You have to memorize a lot of patterns just like in many old school games. One of my favorite things about the game was the hidden code that you had to get by putting the letter from Dr. Jones in water. I think it was pretty clever how they solved this in the Virtual Console version (I didn't embed it so as not to ruin it for those who haven't reached the puzzle) I wonder if this is where Kojima got the idea for Meryl's frequency in the back of the cd box.

@sirmastersephiroth Does Kojima play import games? I wonder if he would have had the opportunity to play StarTropics?

@Pandareus
The narrative elements were above the norm, in general, for an NES game, I thought.

So who all is actually playing this right now!? Maybe we should have a list in the OP with the members who are going through it. Possibly updated with current progress, although it is much shorter than Okami so that doesn't seem as necessary.

I just made it to chapter 5. I didn't realize chapter 3 dragged on for so long, and then chapter 4 was done quickly. The yoyo-upgrade is pretty slick. One of the enemies in the last dungeon looked like a bald-headed chicken-man, lol. Still really enjoying the game.

@Zero

Good idea!

Sweet my advice was taken!

I had a busy weekend so made no progress, but I intend to get back into this one soon.

I've been rather busy for the past week, but I've been trying to get through this game. I'm still on Chapter 2, in one of the dungeons.

@X-pert74

To answer your question earlier, no, you don't use the baseball bat to swing the balls back at the enemies. Really, its only use is that it's got a wider swing. I find that it kind of helps against the bats, at least when I remember that there is kind of a delay between when you press and when he swings.

@Pandareus Ah, okay; thank you That'll save some time.

Hmm, might as well put this bout of insomnia to good use...


I really wonder how difficult games like this "happened" on the NES? I mean, every single new dungeon in this game appears impossible at first (and often, appears impossible the second, third, fourth, etc. time you try it)... until you beat it. How did they do it? How did they ensure that the game was hard as balls on the first try, but possible to overcome despite Mike's lack of agility?

Did they have a team of testers? According to the credits, about 8 people worked on this game, so either credits back then didn't give recognition to as many people, or this game was made by a really, really small team (that handled the testing themselves).

Is the difficulty of the game the result of them cranking up the challenge as the testers got better and better at the game? Is the game this way because they lost sight of how tough the game is to a newcomer, or is it a deliberate design choice?

I want a StarTropics Iwata Asks!