Wanderer makes it just under the wire to cover this week's Virtual Console release, Star Tropics II: Zoda's Revenge. I'm not a fan of this game, but Wanderer seems to like it a little more than I do... and I have to admit, the sheer levels of dementia attained by the plot get kind of impressive once you're past the awful caveman level.
StarTropics II was made by somebody with a deep and abiding fear of bears. That's my main impression of the game. Bears in StarTropics II are terrifying engines of death, capable of turning you into an angelic cherub in seconds if they get you within their grasp, and they want you dead. They will work in packs to get you dead. Bears are the true enemy.
The StarTropics games are just weird like that. It's a first-party Nintendo series that they haven't been driving into the ground like a railroad spike for the last fifteen years. Part of it's pure bad timing; StarTropics II is the second-to-last game ever released for the NES, coming out in 1994, and like the original game, was only released in North America. A lot of people who are otherwise die-hard Nintendo fanatics haven't even heard of this game, let alone played it to completion. (Of course, then there are people who are working on their own sequel.)
StarTropics II plays a lot better than the original did, as it adds the ability to move and shoot on a diagonal plane. The VC release also allows you to quick-save, which is nice to have.
The game itself hasn't aged very well. It plays a lot like the original Legend of Zelda, but doesn't have the same sense of exploration or style. About the only reason to play it is to check out the blatantly incoherent storyline. You get to time-travel to save aliens, Cleopatra wants a pizza, Sherlock Holmes is apparently a real historical figure, you fight rock-throwing cyclops in the Wild West, and your overarching mission is to collect all the blocks from Tetris. For 500 Wii Points, it's almost worth picking up StarTropics II just for its inadvertent humor value.
