Postgame Wrap-up: StarTropics

Many years ago when I was but a wee lad, I bought an NES Atlas from a friend (a friend that removed the Mario 3 card matching game solutions before delivering, I may add). I used to just flip through it, even when not playing a game contained in its pages. The one that I looked at the most, but wouldn’t own until many years later, is the subject of today’s post. StarTropics for the NES.

The Set-up:

You are Mike Jones, a high schooler from Seattle on a trip to spend some time with your uncle (Dr. Steven Jones, Archaeologist) on C-Island in the South Seas. Upon arriving, however, you are informed that your uncle has gone missing. The tribal leader of the local village equips you with a magical yo-yo to defend yourself with, and you are sent off in search of your missing uncle.

I mean, a yo-yo is better than nothing

The Story:

In pursuit of your uncle, you initially journey underground into a cavern where you’ll face multiple monsters as well as some fairly easy jumping and button pressing puzzles. Ultimately, you’ll emerge from the cavern on another portion of the island and be able to take control of Dr. Jones Nav-Com Submersible. Once in the submarine, you’ll journey from island to island, exploring caverns and villages, all the while finding additional clues to your uncles whereabouts (including an alien abduction situation).

While I’ve made it seem very short here, the story of StarTropics is not far removed from RPG games of the time, and is very enjoyable to play through. Talking to side characters and completing tasks are a must. Many characters will give you crucial information, some of which, should you not seek it out, will make it literally impossible for you to proceed in your game (more on this below). StarTropics is also extremely unique in that a physical letter from your uncle is included with the game. At a specific point in game, you are directed to physically dip the letter in water. Doing so gives you a code that must be entered in game to proceed. This is Psycho Mantis level interaction long before Psycho Mantis was ever thought of.

I still haven’t seen anything like this in a game since

The Gameplay:

StarTropics is played from two viewpoints. The first is very reminiscent to Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior. In this viewpoint, you control Mike from an overhead view and guide him around the Island/Village. It is from this point of view that you will interact with other characters, gather information, and find permanent and/or important items. There is no combat while in this mode. At points in the game, you will also use the view to guide the Submersible to your next destination.

The second point of view you’ll have is very similar, but you are now zoomed in on Mike and can engage in combat and jump over short gaps. This viewpoint is similar to the original Legend of Zelda. Also like Zelda, Mike can only move in one of the four cardinal directions in a grid-like pattern (Mike moves from square to square, instead of stopping when you stop pressing the d-pad), which leads to my primary criticism of the gameplay of StarTropics. Mike is very stiff when it comes to movements, due almost completely the fact that he turns before he moves. The best explanation I can give for this is that it almost feels like there is input lag when you move Mike from a stationary position. While I appreciate this allows you to turn and attack an enemy without walking into said enemy, I’ve never played another game that controls this way and I could never get my mind to fully accept that this is how the game worked. Throughout the game I found myself being hit by attacks because, while I wanted to move one square over, Mike decided to simply turn and look at the safe square…only to then be smacked by a quick moving snake. This becomes much worse in later stages when you face some ridiculously fast enemies. It’s truly an example of NES difficulty in that you will almost have to try some areas first before being able to navigate them safely.

As mentioned above, Mike starts the game with a simply yo-yo as a weapon, but fear not. StarTropics has quite a few items that you can use to help Mike on his quest, as well as two permanent upgrades to the yo-yo. Weapon items such as bats, bolas, spike shoes, and a laser gun (among others) can be picked up in level. While they have limited ammo and are optional pickups, I only once encountered a situation in which I could not proceed due to the lack of an alternate weapon. Regarding this, there is a baseball weapon in one cavern that is required to defeat the boss, but I actually missed this my first time through and could not for the life of me determine what I was doing wrong with the boss. It was only after I became so flummoxed that I looked at my NES Atlas (yes, I still have it) that I realized the baseballs were the boss’s only weakness. I do find it an odd choice to make a required weapon a pickup that can be missed (in fairness though, the original Mega Man did this with the Magnet Beam, which is required for a Wily level).

Wizzrobes dropping in from Legend of Zelda to say hi

In addition to the weapons, there are also life potions which, oddly enough, refill your life, hearts which permanently increase your life, and a selection of magical items. These include a snowman that incinerates enemies on screen. No, wait. It freezes the enemies on screen. There’s also a rod that will reveal hidden enemies. This is a very important item as there are rooms that require you to kill a hidden enemy to proceed through the cavern. I had taken a break from the game to play Super Mario Wonder and forgotten about this aspect of the game. I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me to figure out how to proceed in one particular level, though that was entirely on me. I should have realized something was amiss when the game provided me with twenty rods.

Conclusions:

I waited a long, long time to do a full playthrough of StarTropics. Was it worth the wait? Mostly yes, but for a couple of reasons. First of all, this is not a perfect game, as I noted above, but it’s a very good game, and an extremely charming game. It’s full of personality, and is so much fun in so many areas that you are more than willing to accept the few shortcomings hiding within it. Secondly, I’m glad I waited because I don’t think I could have beaten this game as a kid. For one, I usually got games used or rented them, so I would almost certainly not have had the required letter and been forever stuck at the mid-point of the game. For two, even had I had the letter, there’s a very neat section of the game that would have stumped me forever.

On one particular island, you must speak to a parrot to get a clue to advance. The clue leads you to play piano keys in a certain order based on the musical scale which in turn opens up a passage. Understand again, you have to do this to advance the game. Now, while my son and wife are/were involved in music, I was not. Even now, I had to look this section up while playing the game to determine how to proceed. I would never have understood what to do in a world without the internet (though I guess I could have called the Nintendo hotline, which I did once for A Link to the Past). Again, the innovations this game introduced with a puzzle such as this and the physical letter were almost too ahead of their time. They are extremely forward thinking and StarTropics deserves a ton of credit for being so outside the box.

I know that I’ve been a little hard on StarTropics in a couple of areas but, again, don’t take that to mean I didn’t like the game. As stated above, it is a very good game, and a very unique game. While I’ve compared it to a Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest and Legend of Zelda, the gameplay and story are both very unique. It’s also unique in how much it demands of the player outside of the game world, again referring to the letter and the understanding of the musical scale as noted above. Though I had my issues and frustrations, I kept going back to StarTropics and can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. I’m now quite anxious to move onto the sequel, Zoda’s Revenge. A game that I understand addressed what few shortcomings this game had. To finish, I’ll just say that if you have not had the joy of playing StarTropics, you should remedy that as soon as possible. And as this game is available via Nintendo Switch Online (which is how I chose to play it), there’s no time like the present.