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)

@Pandareus But did he mean no deaths or not game over with the crazy witch lady things?

@Pandareus
A yo-yo, eh? Wait until you try Goonies 2. Though it will probably never be licensed for the VC. They'd have to pay Ma Fratelli.

@Zero

He mentions dying in his post.

Quote my post in yours, will ya? I don't want it to suffer the curse-of-the-last-post-on-the-page-that-no-one-sees.

I haven't played this game since I was a kid and I have no memory of it being as cheap as this thread suggests. Weird! I remember the control jankiness pretty clearly. Then again, it could be that on a "NES Scale of Cheapness" it doesn't rank as highly as something like the original Ninja Gaiden.

Memories!

Pandareus said:

@TriforceBun

1) What do you find interesting specifically about the stage layout in the final "dungeon"?

2) I'll add StarTropics 2 to the poll options for the next retro club, we'll let the people decide.

3) Have you played Sin & Punisment: Star Successor? Do you really feel the new Kid Icarus could best it as the best rail shooter since SF64?

1) I thought it was kind of neat how it went into a pseudo side-scrolling mode, complete with enemies physically "above" Mike instead of just to the north of him (the turret guys). It kind of felt like Contra with worse controls, and made for a somewhat interesting change of pace.

2) Woo! I know what I'm voting for! Well, maybe. StarTropics 2 is decent and refines a few things (and has some nice variety plus a rather solid bit of nostalgia near the end, surprisingly), but I still prefer the first game for a few reasons. The first thing that comes to mind is that StarTropics 2 has THE MOST ANNOYING LOW-LIFE SOUND EFFECT EVER. You heard it here first!

3) I've played about 30 minutes of a friend's copy of SAP2. It seemed very solid, and I sort of forgot about it when talking about SF-esque games. I guess to clarify, Kid Icarus looks a lot better than every StarFox game since StarFox 64.

I beat the game without getting a Game Over (meeting the shaman), not dying. I'm not some kind of NUT.

I'd guess that I've probably played through this game six or seven times since it came out in 1990...? Interestingly, your lives get reset to 4 in every new dungeon. That definitely made things simpler. And the "instant death" rooms (where you die or may die right when you enter) are pretty few and far-between; I remembered a couple of them, while a couple others stole a life from me in various spots.

1) Oh yeah, that was neat. I totally thought it was a cool thing to introduce when I first went through it... but then I kept dying and dying and dying, and kind of forgot it was a novelty, somehow.

2) I wonder how long I should wait before starting a new poll? There are at least 2 people still early in the game. They haven't given up, life just kind of got in the way? Anyway, if you do give up, guys, let me know.

Oh, and you were right about the shaman: you can't unsee that banana. "Thanks".

Your no-game-over run is still a very impressive feat.

You can't start a new game yet! Oh, you just mean the poll. But yeah, we need some time to keep going here!

I was supposed to play this weekend but I rented Epic Mickey again! And Layton really drew my attention, too. Tonight I'll make some time for StarTropics, definitely.

Made it to chapter 6 last night. The dungeon of chapter 5 wasn't too bad, really. I died a handful of times, but I didn't even use the medicine and made it all the way through eventually. I expected to be destroyed by a boss, but thankfully there was none.

What about the rest of you dilly-dalliers? Any new insights? Still hanging in there?

Sorry, I got distracted by some other games I'll give it some more playtime tonight

Yeah, you talking about Game Room 2600 titles in the lettuce thread led to me bumping this, you unfaithful bastard!

Bwaha, not being serious. But I do look forward to the next retro game club. I think I need to set a deadline. I will put up the poll for it in two weeks.

I have been led astray! Forgive me!

Two weeks sounds doable. Now to get some more progress in

I finished chapter 6 without too much trouble. The dungeon is littered with hearts and a couple of potions, which helped.

Chapter 7 shit gets real. Fuck those green bastards, their range and health is insane! And the pink ones too! After a little frustration, I beat the first part of the stage by working out a path for myself. In the end I quite enjoyed the stage overall. Upgraded my weapon to the max and now I'm heading deeper into the spaceship.

Haha, is there anyone who didn't get that exact same reaction when they first got to chapter 7? Good to hear your worked through it.

I still haven't finished chapter 6. Haven't gotten back to it in a bit. Had a mini-vacation, went house sitting, etc.

Chapter 7 being insane kind of turns me off from wanting to keep going. But maybe I'll try to get back into the game soon.

It's not like there is much else to play on the Wii right now anyway.

Sorry I couldn't jump in this time. Things got busy in RL. Unfortunate too since I really wanted to play this one :(

I'm in the second dungeon of Chapter 3 now. I don't think I like this game. It's just so frustrating. It's one of the most frustrating games I've played since Legend of the Mystical Ninja. I'm constantly yelling and swearing at the game; usually because I'm wrestling with the controls. I've made it as far as the area in the tomb with stepping stones on the left and right sides of the screen, but because I lost a life from that asshole sign, I didn't get an extra try there, and had to try and redo all the previous stuff in the dungeon again. But I haven't been able to work my way back to that point, because I keep dying because I'm not used to the controls!

Yeah, the controls are the main hurdle to tackle in this game. You'll never get truly comfortable, but there's a threshold where you can manage well enough that it doesn't deter from the game, which has really good design.

I beat the game! The last two sections weren't as hard as the third-to-last, but still challenging and fun. The last boss (Zoda) was tough but there are some tricks to beating him (scroll off and on the screen while shooting him, so that he doesn't have a chance to attack you properly).

I quite enjoyed the game overall. Aside from the clunky controls, the game has a lot to offer. It's more linear than an old-school Zelda game, but that's kind of a good thing (to me). I believe StarTropics is a hidden gem in the NES library because I never would've heard about it if not for posting on a Nintendo message board. I'm glad I got the chance to play through it, and I'm curious about the sequel, though it doesn't seem to get as much praise or talk around here.