StarTropics is great, especially if you don't have to pay for it. When I was a kid, I borrowed StarTropics from a friend, who then moved away before I could return it. I guess most kids would've been sad by this, but man, you didn't know how hard it was to come by new games back then. Considering my parents only bought me two or three NES cartridges a year at most, it was easy to move past my grief and reframe my friend's move as "All right, free StarTropics!"
Fifteen years or so later, I found out that paying five dollars for StarTropics isn't nearly as thrilling as getting it for free. The game itself isn't as great as I remember, either, though fans of Nintendo's early first-party games and The Legend of Zelda in particular will still want to take a look.
Created by a U.S.-based "away team" of Japanese developers at Nintendo, StarTropics nevertheless feels very much like a first-party Nintendo game, despite never being released in Japan. It shares many elements with Nintendo's early NES titles, and everything from the game's font to its music and graphical style should seem immediately familiar. Even the gameplay is fairly Nintendoey for the most part. Gameplay progresses much as it does in The Legend of Zelda -- complete with room-based dungeons, bosses, and heart containers -- and some enemy designs are directly cribbed from Zelda as well.
Whereas Zelda is more about exploration and puzzle-solving, though, StarTropics is fairly straightforward. Often, dungeons play out in a straight line from start to finish, and most puzzles begin and end in the same room. It's also a lot more challenging than any Zelda, and combat requires greater skill and faster reflexes, since enemies are tough and deal a lot of damage.
StarTropics' stodgy controls also contribute to the difficulty. There's a brief pause between pressing a direction on the D-pad and your character responding, which grants the benefit of being able to turn without moving, but it also hampers your ability to react quickly when monsters swarm you. You'll die many deaths simply because you couldn't escape fast enough from an enemy who stood on top of you until your life drained away.
Other deaths can be cheap and downright mean. Take the first dungeon, for example. At one point, you find a path to a hidden room with health inside. In this room, you find a switch that leads to a second room with more health. In this room, you find a hidden path that leads to INSTANT DEATH. Afterward, all the hidden items you've collected are gone, and you're taken back to the last checkpoint. The instant death gag happens several times more throughout the game, and it never becomes less frustrating.
It's a shame that the frustration sets in so often, because StarTropics features a few genuinely interesting puzzles that play on things that are rarely exploited in games. You might have to watch enemy movement patterns to find a safe path through a dark room, for example. The storyline is also very silly and lighthearted, and all the dumb jokes and bizarre non-sequiturs will make you want to keep playing through to the end.
When it's not killing you without warning, StarTropics is a fun, charming little game that pushes all the same pleasure buttons in your brain that Zelda does. It's worth five bucks, but be prepared to suffer between the good parts. Here's a video of the first chapter, which gives a decent overview of both the town segments and the dungeons.
And if you hate yourself, here's a fan-made music video. I'm so glad that someone finally decided to capitalize on the natural connection between StarTropics and Disturbed.
