You'll have access to a submarine in StarTropics, with a navigational robot inspired by the NES peripheral ROB.
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Whether it's going from island to island, village to mountain, or earth to space, traveling and seeing all sorts of interesting things was an idea StarTropics made me fall in love with.” “The sense of adventure the game has made me love going great distances. “The combination of the tropical ocean setting, with elements of space and science-fiction is such a unique blend,” he explains. He also points out that StarTropics had a massive influence on his taste in visual design and the games he enjoyed. “I love this idea that a radical 90s kid who goes around with a yo-yo shouting "THIS IS RADICAL" gets to be the one to travel through time and save the world from aliens,” Lewell says. It also influenced Nitro Rad’s self-prescribed “laid back” tone in many of his videos. StarTropics’ weird and sarcastic sense of humor is also similar to my own, so this game probably influenced my comedic taste as well. It was one of the first games I deeply researched, playing a role in the early stages of my life that would eventually inspire me to write about games for a living. I learned about the game, its lore, and development history right as I was beginning to get interested in thinking about games on a deeper level. The mysterious way it entered my life also encouraged me to research it more. While I initially didn’t want to like StarTropics because of how it had gotten on my Wii in the first place, when I took the time to play it I was thoroughly impressed. StarTropics is available through Nintendo Switch Online or the Wii U Virtual Console. For me though, these controls only add to StarTropics’ mystique and charm. Dungeons see players occasionally tile-hopping to move around, which are the bulky controls Nitro Rad is referring to. Still, it isn’t afraid to embrace its fantasy side, asking players to fight a hydra and venture to space.įrom a gameplay standpoint, StarTropics switches between overworld exploration and Zelda-like dungeon crawling. This Japanese take on a Western aesthetic gives StarTropics a similar feeling to that of Earthbound. It was specifically created with a Western audience in mind, so its protagonist is named Mike Jones and the game has a western sense of humor that puts players in wacky situations. StarTropics was an unusual game for Nintendo to produce during the 8-bit era. “It's a great adventure game, and once you get around the bulky controls it still holds up.” “When I was super young, I would play my Dad's NES, and StarTropics was the one game that stuck out to me most,” he explains.
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Lewell, whose YouTube channel boasts more than 260,000 subscribers, tells Inverse his family already owned StarTropics when he was born.
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While this might be Nintendo’s most obscure franchise, that doesn’t dilute its importance. It inspired my love of analyzing games on a deeper level, and even gaming YouTubers like Nitro Rad (aka James Lewell), who tells Inverse the 8-bit classic was a major influence on their channel’s tone. While the likes of Kid Icarus, Punch-Out, and even Duck Hunt have enjoyed nostalgic nods from Nintendo in recent years, StarTropics hasn’t seen more than muted Virtual Console and Nintendo Switch Online digital re-releases.ĭespite that, its impacts can be felt across many creative people today.
#Best unknown nes games series#
Unfortunately, the series ever received two games, both of which released on the NES in the early 1990s in just North America. StarTropics is an oddity among Nintendo’s franchises, feeling like a mix between the top-down adventure style of early Zelda games and the intriguing characters and worlds of Earthbound. While I was initially angry at this series of events, StarTropics ended up being a very important game to me - and numerous online content creators - despite its obscurity. My brother had spent Wii Points behind my back on an obscure game that we had never heard of on Virtual Console: StarTropics. When I returned to my Wii the next day, some of my Wii Points were spent, making it impossible to buy Majora’s Mask. I purchased Pokemon Rumble, but waited until the next day to get Majora’s Mask because I was a kid with a short attention span. When I was 10, I spent the little allowance money I had on enough Wii Points to get both Pokemon Rumble and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask on the now-defunct Wii Shop channel.