This is such a good idea! I’m a little late to the game (no pun intended) but I started playing StarTropics and I’m really enjoying it! I don’t have a Nintendo Switch so I’m playing it on an emulator site which is okay enough (omitting the name of the site because I’m not sure if it goes against the forum rules to post it). I’d rather buy it on the Switch but I’m more of a PC gamer so I never got one and right now they’re price gouged to hell on Amazon so I don’t have many options.
It’s a really cute and charming game and I like the combo of puzzle-solving, platforming and fighting, plus the whole adventure aspect with the creative quests along the way. I haven’t played that much yet (I just left Miracola to go on my next quest) but there seems to be a decent variety of enemies and bosses. I’m impressed! Especially since I’ve played so few games from before I was born so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m really spoiled though, I couldn’t stand having to start far back every time I died so I’m using the save feature on the emulator site liberally to spare me some agony lol. I’m so used to being pampered with an abundance of save points.
The emulator can be laggy at times, which can be really frustrating during challenging battles, and also this happened:
I can still actually play like this since I can see where my avatar is and have a vague idea where walls and buildings are, and it’s only in the overworld, the dungeons are fine. When I got to Miracola everything else actually looked fine except Mike became a rolling blob of glitch.
I’m powering through and hope it will fix itself at some point or at least be manageable. The dungeons are the fun part for me anyway so I don’t mind, after all I’m playing it for free and it’s better than having nothing at all lol.
I also didn’t realize you could use items until the dungeon with the flying monkeys (I think it’s like the third dungeon I went to but I haven’t encountered any invisible ghosts yet lol). And I very much agree about the cute dolphin
Great post! I don’t have my NES with me here and I prefer to play it on the real thing later on (aaaahhhh nostalgia!), but I’ll keep an eye on this thread and see if I can join with other games later on.
oof that is unfortunate. odds are that site is running a bad dump. those sites seem completely automated and aren’t exactly diligent with what they are hosting. its very easy to find the things that are frowned on linking to in forums just by using google. if you just to brave through this bug you’ll find that some of the overworld bits in the last half of the game get a bit maze like :o
I recently got the whole catalogue of nintendo power over at archive.org which is nice because now i just can use my nintendo power index to look them up instead of having magazines scattered everywhere.
also. i found this: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NAAZE.pdf the hilariously and quite weirdly written manual for Startropics! i’m curious if nintendo has a lot of manuals on their own website or if this is perhaps a one-off or something limited to stuff released on the nes mini.
All finished with StarTropics! For the most part I had a good time with it. I mainly just didn’t like how suddenly much more difficult those last couple chapters were… T_________T Super impressed with any kids back in the day who managed to beat this game without any help (e.g. from a Game Genie).
But setting that aside, I was pleasantly surprised by how much effort the game put into its ending. I won’t spoil anything here (I’ll wait a bit), but it’s always nice when older games like this have something more than a “Good job! The End” and that’s it.
Meanwhile in KiKi KaiKai… well, I’ll keep working on it. Seems the harder I try to work the optimal ability-gaining (and point-gaining) strategy I mess up and get such unneeded deaths right in the first stage. v__v Those lucky gods aren’t so lucky to be in this tough of an arcade game!
I been playing this today as well. I fired up the Arcade version in MAME and wow it’s a much cleaner, smoother and arguably better version the the TG-16 I had been practicing a few weeks ago. the only miniscule thing about the TG-16 I liked more was probably the music, and that’s personal preference really.
It’s a hard game I still can’t get past the third level. This is one of the few coin ops where feeding it more money doesn’t increase your odds of winning, as you get one playthrough per credit.
Oh my disappointment to realize when all those infinite emulated quarters got me nowhere!
I ended up throwing KiKi KaiKai onto MAME as well for the sake of seeing what lies beyond level 3 (thanks to save states). For that third boss, it’s best to shoot at it from a diagonal angle and be ready to run the moment it throws a wind gust at you.
Level 4 is even crazier stuff. It introduces a new enemy (it’s apparently a walking tombstone, but reminds me of the wall yokai from Nioh) that charges for you when you walk in its path. More annoying than those though are just the sheer number of swarms of ghosts and umbrellas and other little gremlins (including the ones that latch on to you). There are cliffs now too, which is a pain since you can be dragged right into the pits at the snap of a finger. Makes me wonder just how ridiculous the last three stages will be.
Oddly I managed to defeat the fourth boss on my first try, without needing any save states. Don’t know if it’s actually a pushover, or if I got extremely lucky. Was even easier than the first boss though, lol.
Gosh I feel so stupid, I thought I had made a breakthrough when I figured out how to use different weapons, but I just now realized (now that I got to the ghost part Reset_Tears was talking about) that I can also switch between weapons and magic items It took me getting completely trapped and not knowing what to do next to look it up lmao. I saw what you said about the magic rod but I was picking up things that looked like microphones and I was like what do I need a microphone for lmao but those were the magic rods I think.
omg wait you did spell exactly how to do it but I’m so stupid, since I’m playing in my browser with keyboard controls it didn’t translate to me. I thought it was the same thing to switch weapons At least I got it now.
Don’t feel too bad – it’s definitely not made clear how the menu works in this game, or what certain special items are intended for. A lot just wouldn’t be explained in-game for games of that era; the expectation was always that players would reference the manual if they got stuck on something like this. The devs certainly didn’t expect any of us to be playing the game on other consoles (or on PC or mobile phones) 30 years later, ha ha.
Thanks for sharing the screenshots so I can see what the game is actually supposed to look like lol. So the uncle’s assistant is actually a person lol, I thought he was a robot (despite the smoking comment) because on my screen he showed up first as a couple of gears, and then as one of those reflective weapon thingies (which you can see in my screenshot). I also did not see the coral underwater, just a bunch of glitchy blue mess. On the upside, it was really easy to figure out where to submerge and pass under things because those tiles all showed up as a very unsubtle brightly-colored fish.
Not sure what’s going on in the KiKi KaiKai video lol. Is she rapidly chopping watermelons? That’s what it looks like to me. I’m hoping to get Startropics finished sometime soon so I’ll at least get the chance to try KiKi KaiKai this month.
The truth is far stranger… So there’s a well there, and from it a bunch of bake uri (uh, ghost melons) are flying out. Sayo-chan (my character) happens to be standing at a spot where they apparently never stop shooting out, and I’m simply deflecting them continually with my short-range attack (swinging a gohei – or purification wand – back and forth).
Finally finished Startropics!! You all weren’t kidding about the difficulty spike in the last levels. I was so frustrated but then so satisfied when I finally finished it. I was really only able to do it because I saved so often like the privileged 21st-century-living person that I am lol. I couldn’t even imagine getting through it if I had to get thrown back several areas every time I died. Wondering if everyone playing on Switch is a better gamer than me and had to do it that way or if it has a saving feature kind of like the restore point feature on the 3DS for older games.
I really liked the slideshow at the end by the way, after the visual glitch disaster I had to power through for about 80% of the game (excluding the dungeons) it was nice to see a little album of the epic moments made throughout my journey.
That should totally be the alternate japanese title of this game!
kiki kaikai is a weird game. I mention in my review how its one of the few arcade games that only lets you use a single credit to playthrough, possibly the only one i’ve played i can recall (this seems like a bad business decision) there are so many little ‘gotchas’ in the game that you have to read a manual to understand how to play it. I liked how it was something I could practice and get better at (i enjoyed playing it without straight up cheeseballing through it with emulator tricks) but it gets pretty infuriating about halfway through. The introduction ofa new enemy pretty much means game over as you learn what it does and how to act. Not to be one of those people, but playing it and making progress in the game is a bit like dark souls.
I didnt play the MSX version but I was suprised at some of the differences between the TG-16 and arcade. Some of the enemies are easier in the arcade compared to the TG16, and vice versa. Those squid looking spear attacking flying things are a cinch to kill in the arcade, but i found them to be one of the more dangerous enemies in the TG-16 (they move faster and its harder to line up shots) Whereas the lil guys who spit a fireball at u introduced on the second stage, are actually quite dangerous to not pay attention to in the arcade, while their attack is fairly easy to dodge in the TG-16.
Bosses are also pretty different and I found them to be easier on the Arcade overall. For example the second level boss only seems to have one attack, wheras on TG-16 he actually has two, and they are faster, and he can attack you at different angles/more angles (the fuq?)
Thsoe ghost melons are so annoying , i just run past wells (and the huts the weird neck witch lives in) aint nobody got time for that. Especially not in the arcade version where the bonesman will come for you licketysplit. In the video you tweet you are stuck there shooting and its like no real reliable way to get away once that starts and you get that close
it was a good pick for the month, the better of the two imo. But damn if that isn’t a strange and somewhat frustrating game
the retro club is cool. i’ve been looking and going to pitch a few for next month. I’m looking at game boy games actually and maybe some genesis.
So for next month, i say everyone who wants make suggestions towards end of the month. like maybe a few suggestions for each of the categories. Maybe by the end of the month we will see games suggested that multiple people are interested in and those can be the ones for the month right off the bat.
Short game tier: NES - Felix the Cat (hudson soft adventurish game) GB - Rolan’s Curse (simple looking overhead JARPG stle action adventure, 2 hrs) N64 - Sin and Punishment (treasure rail shooter, 2-3 hrs)
mid/long tier: Sega/SegaCD - Ecco the Dolphin (2D adventure game. made the grouve bottom 100. looks beautiful on SegaCD, 7-8 hrs) Sega - Beyond Oasis (overhead JARPS style action adventure, 7-10 hrs N64, PSX, Dreamcast - Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (Arcade attack scoring sports simulation 4 hrs to forever)
I’m currently playing Tony Hawk actually and find it addictive as heck. hltb says the game takes anywhere from 5-24 hours but it actually took me like 4 hours just to get the hang of how the game works. lol. it’d be a fun pick for the retro game of the month but some of you guys would be incredibly good and others wouldn’t get into it maybe. Still, i’ll pitch it because its such a fun gem.
curious to see if anyone else is also interested in Ecco the Dolphin. I mean, surely a whole subgenre of internet music ｃａｎｎｏｔ ｂｅ ｗｒｏｎｇ
I don’t actually have that good of a knowledge base of retro games so I don’t know if I’ll have that many suggestions to make other than really well-known games or games I actually played as a little kid lol. But I’d definitely be down for Ecco the Dolphin, I have one of those Sega consoles they sell as Christmas gifts that has a ton of games on it and I believe Ecco the Dolphin is one of the ones on there. Maybe I’ll go through the library on it at some point and see if there’s anything else that catches my eye that I might want to recommend.
The only consoles I have that are on that list (other than the stocking stuffer Sega) are the N64 and Gameboy. My N64 library is pretty much all Pokemon plus some Power Puff girls game and Banjo Kazooie lol and other than my Pokemon games I have no idea where the rest of my GB games are. I’ll look through the DS eShop to see if there are some GB games I might be interested in. Recently I was playing Donkey Kong '94 on there but shoved it to my backlog because I got stuck somewhere and am too stubborn to look up how to get past the stage lol.
I have massive respect for that lol, I’m totally Lieutenant Cheeseball when it comes to saving at least, even in other games where you can manually save whenever, I save with a crazed frequency because I have a low patience level and tolerance for having to redo things I already did lol. But I like what you said about getting the practice and building up the skill level to do things in one run. When I start playing KiKi KaiKai maybe I’ll try that, I’ll just see how long I can make it without pulling my hair out lol.
