Star Fox 64 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/9/2026)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Star Fox 64

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Rail Shooter

Platforms: N64

Release Date: April 27, 1997

How many video game franchises hold the uncommon designation of a “one-game wonder?" Typically, this label applies to musicians or music groups whose commercial spotlight was prematurely powered off by their respective industry magnates, which then results in their legacy being narrowly defined by their single sparkling moment in the sun despite offering more material to indulge in. I suppose the term could be applicable to the film world as well, pertaining to an actor or director who has failed to recapture the magic of the one noteworthy performance or instance of filmcrafting with which they are associated. M. Night Shamalamadingdong immediately comes to mind as someone who fits this bill, and I probably wouldn’t be referring to his surname as flippantly if he stopped failing time and time again to seize the same lightning that electrified the world with The Sixth Sense all the way back at the turn of the 21st century. If stringently fixating on one piece of an artist’s entire portfolio is a phenomenon that does indeed exist in gaming, then it’s probably more akin to film, where their full deck is at least on display, but only one is an ace that towers over all of the assortment of single-digit cards. Maybe gaming franchises aren’t as fated to peak so swiftly because there are perks and advancements that come with producing a new title for every subsequent console generation. Perhaps the objective refinement of the increasingly capable hardware masks a game’s lack of conceptual competence or artistic integrity sufficiently that gamers remain blissfully unaware of its issues. Alas, even though a slew of Star Fox sequels were blessed with better graphics and mechanical performance, Star Fox 64 has retained its status as the absolute pinnacle of the series–undoubtedly the Alec Baldwin amongst its unexceptional series brethren. While I should maintain my stance of commending Star Fox 64 on its outstanding quality and its unwavering ability to persevere in a medium that seems to evolve in extreme increments like a pubescent child, perhaps I should hold it culpable for admittedly dooming its successors to die by its all-too-shining example. Still, the crime that it's guilty of committing is an incidental one of practically perfecting the on-rails space shooter formula.

Of course, I’m also including Star Fox’s SNES debut in the collective of series titles that suck out loud compared to 64’s magnificence. Lest we all forget, in me showering Star Fox 64 in undiluted adulation, that the framework it was adapting was shaky at best and barely perceptive at worst, as the game asthmatically coughed at the brink of total collapse every step of the way like a weiner kid jogging laps in gym class. In this case, Star Fox 64 is an example of a pitiful dork sprouting their latent physical prowess during the span of summer break and then flaunting their physique upon graduating to the next grade–which is the realm of the third dimension in this instance. Furthering this analogy, the once-whimpy kid didn’t need any fancy-shmancy surgical procedures to cultivate their peak physical potential, just as the Star Fox series didn’t need a considerable overhaul to make its direct sequel palatable. Similar to its equally precocious SNES colleague, Super Mario Kart, simply transitioning to the evolved realm of the third dimension made a world of difference in blossoming what was once far too ambitious for a 16-bit console to sufficiently support. You’d be amazed how naturally a 3D console renders rounded shapes and how clearly their spatial placement between them and the player is compared to having them spontaneously materialize on a pixelated console as it slowly processes everything on screen bit by bit like an old printer inking text on paper line by line (sarcasm can be difficult to translate into text sometimes). In terms of how the third dimension affects the graphics, fleshing out the visuals with the rounded nuance that comes with 3D does admittedly forsake the aesthetic minimalism of the first game. It's the one aspect that I genuinely appreciated that effectively depicted space and a futuristic society in their coldest, most abstractly barren states. Now, the advent of proper 3D has made the esoteric elements of a hyperfuture we can only still hypothesize through our art more accessible and inviting, as if we should be envious that our descendants get to exist in a period where interplanetary travel is a feasible, common convenience. The 3D on display admittedly doesn’t transcend the rudimentary blotches of the N64’s general graphical appearance, but I find the unpolished look to strike a balance between the diminished first game and the portentous portrayal of space that would become a mainstay when gaming graphics reached a glossier standard. It still fulfills my niche illustration of a charmingly frumpier final frontier quite nicely.

Actually, I can’t justifiably string this connection between Mario Kart and Star Fox’s inaugural 3D launches because the plumber’s kart racer franchise, while leaping from pixels to polygons still made for an inherent fundamental improvement, still retained a clumsy jaggedness in its vehicular gameplay that I wouldn’t describe as entirely revolutionary. Star Fox 64, on the other hand, is smoother than silk-woven satin lathered in butter. Soaring through the skies or the blackened, oxygenless cosmos in Fox’s trusty Arwing will immediately feel as second nature to the player as a beaver’s biological inclination to clog a babbling brook with wood. Because the game will instill the sensation that the player automatically acquired the proficiency of a licensed pilot during the subconsciousness of their last sleep session, it will quickly present to them the full roster of maneuvers that Fox can newly perform as soon as he’s scouting through the charred destruction of the first planet, Corneria. If members of the enemy fleet are striking Fox from his ship’s rudder, braking will cease his continual, on-rails momentum to flip the tables and blow them out of the air from the angle of their blind spots. On the opposite end of the spaceship’s gear-shift spectrum, Fox can also engage a boost that briefly hastens his acceleration. A graceful somersault can also be executed with a conjunctive coordination of a specific button press and directional positioning of the analog stick to gain the same advantageous placement behind an enemy. Flicking either the left or right bumper, which typically places the ship on its side twice in swift unison, will cause Fox to perform a “barrel roll,” which will deflect enemy fire with precise timing in addition to lubricating the awkward turns the player will be forced to contend with during the boxy arena sections. Its multifaceted utility is the reason why the name of this maneuver was repeated ad nauseam on the internet to the point of becoming a quintessential, golden-era meme, right? As far as the offensive side of space-age dogfighting is concerned, I sincerely can’t think of anything that could top the serviceability of the green targeting reticle they’ve introduced, or the charged blast that emanates from the Arwing’s frontal laser cannon that can lock onto multiple enemies using the aforementioned targeting reticle. Maybe a lager dispenser that releases with the press of a button into the ship’s cup holder like a gas station coffee machine? Then again, from the perspective of how such a feature would augment the player’s enjoyment to its fullest, I could just pound some brewskis while I play the game. Anyways, what I’m trying to illustrate here is how every quality-of-life inclusion to the series’ space shooter foundation satisfies so many unchecked aspects from its paltry SNES predecessor that anything featured beyond what is already available would seem excessive. Star Fox 64’s gameplay is impeccably airtight in its streamlined simplicity, yet the intended mastery of all of the Arwing’s acrobatics across a plethora of applicable scenarios still fosters a fairly stacked skill ceiling.

Okay, I’ll admit that I was playing dumb in the previous paragraph when I was wondering how the line, “do a barrel roll!” transcended its source material to the ironic echelons of memetic glory. It should be readily apparent to everyone that the line’s appeal stems from Peppy Hare’s emphatic commanding of the flashy gambit, which could only be achieved with a human voice actor supplying their vocal chops to the character. Beyond the directions that Fox’s long-eared crew member exclaims on the field, every single character, whether they be the main characters with an all-encompassing screen presence, an ally making a momentary appearance, to a foe whose adversarial threats are curt due to our heroes silencing them in a duel, they are all treated to the presentational luxury of voice acting that is now functionally facilitated by the cinematic advancements of the third dimension. Even though every actor in the recording booth, whether their character is major or minuscule, gives a performance that is a few notches above the stereotypical shoddiness associated with this early, experimental era of video game voicework, I’d like to focus on how verbalization greatly enhances the relationship between Fox and his friends. Without the indistinct jabbering suppressing the full extent of their personalities, the group dynamic exhibited between the series seminal space-pilot quartet is shown to be as systematically diverse as the four humor temperaments.

Since we’ve already mentioned his indelible catchphrase, it should be noted that Peppy suggests these types of flying techniques to Fox to pronounce his sagely wisdom as the established elder of the foursome. Apparently, a southern accent was deemed a complimentary quirk to the vocal rasp of Peppy’s advanced age, further emphasizing his rank as a seasoned ol’ timer. Whilst the purpose of Peppy’s input is to guide his less experienced squadron leader to the blaze of victory, every sticky scenario that Fox successfully overcomes will be undermined by the sarcasm of the caustic, fiery Falco Lombardi. It seems evident to me that this blue bird of prey wishes he were positioned at the top of this food chain caste above his fellow predatory superior, and the one-sidedness of this rivalry makes his impertinent comments come off as obnoxious, if anything. While his sauciness can be entertaining when it’s not directed at the player, my appreciation of Falco comes with his greater flight resilience and passionate seeking and destroying of enemies in the skies–aspects that are no doubt products of his innate animalistic predisposition. Slippy Toad, on the other hand, should’ve stayed behind on the Great Fox mothership to work with a wrench and to serve caffeinated beverages to his peers. God bless him, but the developers really went out of their way to make this airborne amphibian a grating liability. Sure, Falco and Peppy both plead for the aid of their leader to scratch their backs off the bogies targeting their tails, but I’ll bet that the state of Oklahoma has had longer stretches of time without a tornado sighting compared to how often Slippy wails in a frenzied panic that he’s about to get clipped. Add to the fact that his cries for help are in the high-pitched frequency of a castrato, and Slippy’s intended endearingness as the bright-eyed, inexperienced kid of the group becomes incredibly overbearing. His constant propensity for overestimating his piloting skills even becomes the focal point of a subplot in the game where he’s swatted down by a boss and the rest of the team have to retrieve him from the sandstorming planet that sucked him into its gravitational pull. If I were in charge, I’d interpret his impulsive mistake as a sacrificial gesture and count our losses. Relax, I’m only kidding (sort of) because the hidden strength of Slippy’s inclusion amongst these more proficient pilots is to round out the eclectic arrangement of personalities that complement Fox’s bland, boy scout persona that comes with his typical leader position. Whenever a fraction of this solid dynamic is compromised outside of the sole instance of plot direction, fortunately, Fox’s co-pilots are only out of commission for the following level and then return to the skies fresh as a daisy thanks to the mechanical efforts of ROB, the robotic pilot of the Great Fox aircraft carrier who coincidentally shares the name of the creepily kinetic NES peripheral. In my review of the SNES Star Fox, I stated that permanently losing your partners per campaign made for a depressingly lonely and sterile experience. In Star Fox 64, the same can be said even if one member of the Star Fox fleet skips a level due to their ship being in critical condition, even if the absence of one particular member of this team feels like we’ve shed some dead weight. That’s the extent of how much the game’s buoyancy and charm is carried by these characters and the voice work that supplies them.

More than likely, the player won’t even be faced with the dilemma of having to reluctantly save Slippy from the consequences of his incompetence because they might not fly over the Sector X space section where this scene occurs. In the first Star Fox, the entirety of the Lylat System was segmented into three distinct paths, with each route correlating with a solidified difficulty setting. Star Fox 64 also adopts this method of encouraging replayability, but with a wonkier trajectory at play that is triggered by far cleverer conditions. Immediately as Star Fox & Company set foot (not literally) onto the bombed-out fallout of Corneria, the game will present some stipulations for the player to engage with that will affect the course of the campaign. If the player achieves both the combined conditions of saving Falco from the nasty buggers riding his backside and flying through seven earthy arches along the water’s surface, the blue bird will lead Fox through an upcoming waterfall and omit the level boss at Corneria’s climax. If the player was absentmindedly trusting the linear course and left Falco to the buzzards for being a wiseass, the automatic trajectory will send Fox to the Meteos Asteroid Belt. Still, the player will have the opportunity to alter the linear course again if they failed to do so previously. Provided they can swiftly swim through a series of boost rings, the planet of Katina will welcome Fox on the other side of the psychedelic portal instead of the frigid Fortuna. Even when the player isn’t satisfying all of the conditions that will keep their position of traveling to every planet on the “hard route,” the game will still offer enough divergence to make the player’s campaign as sinuous as a spider’s web. Outside of the obvious replayability factor facilitated by the bisecting routes, there’s another element at play that should further motivate the player to seek out the planets located on the left side of the Lylat Galaxy outside of the automated path. Admittedly, I doubt the player would ever figure out the correct sequence of tasks involved in exploring the Lylat System’s entirety without flipping through a tips and tricks page in an issue of Nintendo Power (because internet connection at the time was slower than a drunken donkey). Still, in the fair likelihood of the player biffing the condition even after they’ve discovered its secret, there is a subtle suggestion in the air that the player is not prepared to face the steeper challenges ahead, like a student failing to test into the gifted classes. Once the player can perform the condition with their eyes closed on subsequent playthroughs, that feeling of personal progress is truly sensational. Fox’s crew constantly even spells out that their leader is becoming a stronger pilot if the player manages to cross over into the steeper sections of the game, providing direct affirmation for the player’s sense of pride.

Honestly, once I committed to the outlined “hard course” to put a period on Star Fox 64 after filling my travel log of everywhere else in the Lylat System, I found this specific sequence of planets to only be marginally more difficult than any other assortment of zigzagging around the galaxy. Sure, some of the levels made me appreciate the respective talents of my crewmen to uncover hidden health rings, offer advice on the situation at hand, and expose a boss’s health bar whereas the ones on the smoother pathway made me take them for granted, and meeting the requirements to keep unlocking every planetary increment of this course instilled an anxiety within me that wasn’t applicable elsewhere. Somehow, the elevated state of affairs was balanced out by enemies harassing my team members less frequently, and the addition of a guest pilot named Kat performing a good chunk of the legwork while protecting Great Fox from a mass of deadly missiles. Can I make a proposition to General Pepper to officially absorb this flirty, pink space kitty into the Star Fox family and demote Slippy to cleaning the headquarters latrines? I need a strong feminine presence in my squadron, sir! Anyways, what I learned from feeling a tad underwhelmed by the so-called “hard route” is that Star Fox 64’s difficulty curve is a spotty situational one that is contingent on the environmental context of the areas across all potential playthroughs.

During every casual playthrough of Star Fox 64 that I embarked on in my younger years, I always ended up passing through Solar, an ill-conceived idea for a level if there ever was one. Given that this radiantly red star is situated smack dab in the center of this solar system like a certain real-life daystar that shines so brightly that you’ll be rendered blind with only a few seconds of eye contact, how do you think hovering above its surface will transpire in an interactive interpretation? Sure, Fox can stave off complete disintegration by continually collecting health rings, but the fact that his crew members can’t be afforded the same source of relief guarantees that he’ll have enough fried chicken, rabbit, and frog to open a French restaurant by the end of the escapade. Great idea, Fox! Instances where Fox himself feels handicapped mostly involve any vehicle intended to be driven elsewhere beyond or below the skies. I appreciate the Landmaster Tank for its contribution in expanding the scope of the series’ on-rails vehicular gameplay, but I’d be lying if I said that the gravity element didn’t tack on an unhealthy, sickening amount of weight while chasing a train on Macbeth and saving Slippy on Titania. I can’t tell if the submarine itself is also inherently hindered by the restrained physical boundaries, or if the intergalactic Atlantis of Aquas is just suffocatingly congested on its own merits. Gee whiz, the water level kinda blows. Traditional boss encounters rarely gave me the business, but the surprise invasion of Star Wolf managed to critically crush me and my teammates, depending on where the game deployed them. Gaze and gawk at this anti-Star Fox troupe with pleasure on Fortuna, but on routes where they appear on the satellite station of Bolse, be prepared to have your entire team scream for help in unison while they refuse to return the favor when Wolf is hunting you like, well, a wolf hunting a caribou. This is the thanks I get from keeping your sorry asses afloat around the clock?

A particularly challenging confrontation with Wolf and his droogs, Leon, Pigma, and Andrew, is also the introductory boss to Venom on the “hard route” before Fox faces his mortal enemy kept in confinement at its core. Either due to the evolution of game graphics or a deliberate effort by the development team, the almighty, evil Andross has thankfully undergone a drastic redesign. His new simian visage is still sinister and is nicely assimilated into the thematic series overtone of anthropomorphic characters interacting in the cosmos. Maybe I’d find any gigantic face with detached hands amongst a hazy, hallucinogenic backdrop to be unnerving by its design alone, even though its appendages prominently spell out a conspicuous weak point that trivializes the encounter. While Andross here doesn’t carry the technical weight of a final boss, even in his true form where he’s shed his skin and brags about the immense size of his exposed brain, there is, however, a hefty hint of narrative substance behind Fox facing off against his final foe. Before General Pepper even gives Fox the order to explore Corneria, the game opens its curtains to a log of expositional lore text like the opening of a Star Wars film. In it, we learn that Peppy is the original remaining member of the Star Fox squadron and that it used to be commanded by James McCloud, aka Fox’s father. Unfortunately, former Star Fox member Pigma sold out his team to Andross by leading them into a trap in which James didn’t survive. Why are pigs portrayed so poorly across several of Nintendo’s IPs? Because of the lore context, Fox is seeking retribution from Andross like a fictional Spanish swordsman beyond following the orders of his superior officers. Yet, Fox doesn’t seem fazed by any reminders of his father’s tragic passing, whether they be sentimental ones from Peppy or callously cruel comments from Wolf and that Judas, Pigma. That is, until we see its impact firsthand when an apparition of his father aids in a dire moment by directing him out of the blast radius from Andross’ chamber on Venom. When Fox exits the ordeal unscathed, and Peppy notices he’s rather stunned, Fox shakes off his concerns. Truthfully, Fox’s reaction to what he just witnessed and his denial of it left me surprisingly chilled.

How, I ask, can a Star Fox sequel surpass the series standard when Star Fox 64 is this rock solid? Naturally, its on-rails gameplay wasn’t going to suffer anymore from a frame rate conceivably in negative numbers on a console that could facilitate its third-person perspective. Still, Star Fox 64 achieves something above and beyond the cliched classification of a “soft reboot” that happens so often when Nintendo’s franchises leap to superior, subsequent hardware. I doubt that the original Star Fox was going to inherently have such charismatic character writing, an energetic, frictionless control scheme, an abundantly varied replay value, and a substantial, unobtrusive narrative underpinning just by banking on the third dimension alone. Nintendo truly did its best to make Star Fox’s 3D debut as triumphant as any of the other titles on the N64 and, in doing so, set such a colossal standard not only for the series, but for every other game in its genre. It just isn’t fair!

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/6/2026)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time

Developer: Toys for Bob

Publisher: Activision

Genre(s): 3D Platformer

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, PC

Release Date: October 2, 2020

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. As in, it’s about fucking time that we were treated to some bona fide Crash Bandicoot cooking as opposed to the slop the gaming industry has been serving us for decades now. Well, at least that’s how I personally interpreted the faintly hinted message behind the game’s title, considering how Toys for Bob ignited the Crash Bandicoot renaissance when their high-definition repackaging of the orange marsupial’s glory days sparked positive reactions from gamers instead of the normal revulsion that he’d been accustomed to after Naughty Dog knocked its baby bird out of the nest to fend for itself at the turn of the 21st century. One aspect of the title that leaves less up to interpretation is the number “four,” carrying the implications that this is Crash’s subsequent canonical outing after the N-Sane trilogy introduced us all to the hopping, shirtless wonder in 2017. How amusing it is that Toys for Bob are subtly retconning Crash’s sordid post-PS1 history and trying to repress it so deeply into our collective subconsciousnesses that not even the exceptional memories of a sub-Saharan elephant herd or Pepperidge Farms could recall its existence. However, I, and likely several other gamers of a certain age, cannot have Crash’s directionless, washed-up period erased from our recollections because those titles were fundamental in forming our young gaming prime that we now hold a nostalgic fondness towards. Besides, I still genuinely enjoy the boisterous comedic overtones of Crash Twinsanity, a title that is certainly a mark of Crash’s long-running span of career instability. Given that the only example of original Crash-oriented output that Toys for Bob conjured up was a single level tacked onto their repainted version of Crash 3, the notion that they had the skill and talent to baptize the bandicoot to total rebirth was a tad presumptuous on their part. However, after experiencing what Crash content they crafted in the broader expanse of an entirely original game in Crash 4, feigning amnesia to the fact of Crash ever having an Akuma-like rival in Crunch, using Cortex as a sentient sledgehammer, or partaking in piggyback rides with a bestiary of beefy monsters is something I’m willing to entertain.

Beyond my interpretations, Crash 4’s full title is actually a play-on-words that alludes to the game’s overall narrative conceit. Since time is still literally of the essence, as it was in the previous title that Toys for Bob put their mitts all over, veteran Crash players can make an educated guess as to which returning Crash villain is pulling the strings of this plot premise. The cerulean conductor of the clock, N. Trophy, has been trapped in the same timeless void that Crash condemned Cortex and Uka Uka to at the completionist (and now canonical) ending of Warped. Finally, after apparently a decade of struggling to escape, Uka Uka ruptures the rocks that kept them imprisoned to unveil one of N. Trophy’s time vortices. Immediately as the gang of familiar Crash villains exits their idle existences, Aku Aku’s clairvoyance for universal imbalance starts tingling and nags Crash to get off his lazy, narrow ass and act on his sudden intimation of dread. Well, I suppose that reworking all of Crash’s classic adventures has given the developers a clear idea of how to craft a typical conflict premise for the series. Am I implying that this run-of-the-mill introduction fails to break the mold of the franchise’s narrative constructs? Yes, but I realize that a Crash Bandicoot game isn’t going to feature the gravitas of a grave scenario akin to the epic scale of starting a world war. An inkling of evil-doing somewhere in the distance from Crash’s disembodied spiritual advisor is still a splendid way of starting the game.

Not that I’m intentionally piling on more criticisms onto Crash 4 to make a point of its unoriginality or anything, but I must comment on how the whole liberally traversing throughout the space-time continuum as a thematic motif is stripped directly from the previous (or at least in this conveniently contrived canon they're establishing) title. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Crash and Coco were ever intended to be the interactive answer to Mr. Peabody and Sherman (you’ll never guess who is who). Fortunately, ripping through the fabric of time and space with impunity makes for an incredibly strong thematic construct because of the variegated iconography that comes with the smattering of period-specific settings. In my book, Crash 4 can also be granted clemency for blatantly recycling an overarching theme because the game improves upon it with one essential ingredient: organization. Something that slightly irked me when Warped first tested the time travel concept is that the individual levels within the six warp chambers rarely ever maintained the general theme that was alluded to by the architectural design of each warp chamber’s background. Establishing a concise theme with a chamber backdrop just to feature levels that blatantly deviated from it within the same selection of six levels and then randomly encountering a level in a subsequent chamber that would’ve sensibly fit the previous one was a confusing, asinine habit that Warped continually kept committing. I think the developers here recognized that thematic continuity hasn’t exactly been enforced since the very first Crash Bandicoot game, which is probably why Crash 4 has adopted its more rigid, sequential world map menu in lieu of the chamber hub with more open parameters we had become accustomed to since Crash 2. Crash 4 may not showcase the same seamless journey from Crash’s wild jungle domicile to the precarious, mechanical cliffs of Cortex Castle, but at least every level that resides in each world sticks to the cohesive theme we can clearly discern from the world map.

Crash 4 walks down memory lane once again with two tutorial levels on Crash and Coco’s tribal home residency of N. Sanity Island, and the following world where N. Gin has inflicted his crude, mechanical sensibilities onto an arid canyon setting in a relatively distant future does not digress from its stark desert punk aesthetic at any given point. “Salty Wharf” maintains its pirate-centric atmosphere with its fragile rusty plank platforms and cutlass-carrying sea creature enemies, “Tranquility Falls” is heavily Asian-oriented throughout with lilypads littering its zen gardens and roaming dragons as airborne obstacles, and “The Eggipus Dimension” takes the recurring prehistoric level theme from Warped and elongates its presence to the span of an entire world without any interruptions. One could argue that the vibrant, jazzy city streets of “Off Beat” explicitly contrast with the desolate bayou at the forefront of the other levels in the present-day realm of “Mosquito Marsh,” but those people would be ignorant of the all-encompassing culture associated with the southern US state of Louisiana that the developers are tributing in all of its humid, voodoo-infused, Mardi-Gras glory. There are four other worlds featured in Crash 4 that also keep its thematic consistency just as resolutely as the ones I’ve mentioned, but my limiting of their descriptiveness for the sake of brevity is also indicative of another underwhelming aspect of the Crash franchise that this “fourth” title has promptly improved upon. Given that I was accustomed to the rules of sixes that Crash 2 and Warped were evidently exhibiting, I thought that ending the game with another tour through the Cretaceous Period was rather anticlimactic. To my surprise, Crash 4 augmented the typical bandicoot experience with FOUR whole worlds succeeding the usual six, all of which were equally as thematically consistent as the worlds that preceded them. Adding the longer lengths of each level into the equation that we also haven’t seen since the orange marsupial’s debut, Crash 4 is a splendor of riches more sumptuous than any title we still revere from his PS1 youth.

But what is the most decadent thing a 3D platformer can provide to spoil its audience? For my money, it's the ability to play as multiple colorful characters, an effective selling point that stimulated my gaming sensibilities as a child ever since Battle for Bikini Bottom allowed me to swap between SpongeBob and two of his undersea chums. The Crash Bandicoot franchise has indeed incorporated player interactivity for characters outside of the titular bandicoot in his mainline platformer adventures, but up until this very entry, Crash Twinsanity was the only game that afforded the player the luxury of this feature outside of pretending that Coco isn’t just a clone of her brother with more clothes and a blonde ponytail (another exemplary aspect of Twinsanity that should be considered in favor of not extinguishing it in this Crash Bandicoot revisionist campaign). Similar to the dynamic that defined Twinsanity, Crash’s comical creator and principal archnemesis of Neo Cortex once again begrudgingly collaborates with Crash. Eventually in the narrative, N. Tropy severs his working relationship with Cortex to instead enact his sinister plan of erasing billions of years off the universe’s archives with a female version of himself that he’s disturbingly infatuated with. After telling N. Tropy to go fuck himself (and he hilariously obliges), Cortex will transform enemies into platforms of three different variations of matter and execute a speedy dash maneuver to compensate for his lack of vertical aerodynamicism the bandicoots possess. I’m just relieved that he no longer controls as if Crash lodged a wumpa fruit up his rectal cavity, as he unnaturally did in Twinsanity. The more surprising Crash Bandicoot villain to newly cross over into a prestigious playable character status is the series’ resident chimera Dingodile. Living a tranquil, retired life in the remote Louisiana bayou after a career of petrifying penguins, Dingodile springs into action after Cortex and N. Tropy’s time shenanigans have inadvertently demolished Dingodile’s retirement venture of diner entrepreneurship. Hopping into a time rift to give his former cohorts a piece of his mind, Dingodile then becomes so hopelessly lost in the infinite stretches of space and time that all he wishes to do is make like Dorothy and find his way home. In the meantime, Dingodile will travel throughout a plethora of distinct periods using his trusty vacuum cannon to suction TNT barrels and crates and launch them as explosive projectiles onto enemies and hefty obstacles in what is definitely the slowest-paced gameplay variation that Crash 4 offers.

Dingodile’s newfound elevation of importance as a playable character might seem random to even the most devout Crash Bandicoot fans, considering his precedence amongst the various series bosses was not any higher than, say, for example, Tiny Tiger or Pinstripe Potoroo. However, the appearance of the last playable character in Crash 4’s roster that I’ve yet to mention should drop the jaws of every series veteran right to the floorboards. That is, if you fail to consider an outlying context behind the reemergence of Crash’s old squeeze Tawna. Debating whether or not sexual objectification or failing to pass the Bechdel Test because Coco is the sole female voice as the more severe social faux pas for the franchise to commit is ultimately irrelevant, for Toys for Bob have managed to hatch a plan to kill both of those unsavory birds with one stone. Arguably the most dominant plot device in science fiction today is the multiverse trope, and the limitless possibilities that come with such a concept have conjured up an “alt Tawna,” a fierce, independent, combat-capable chick who wouldn’t be caught dead being a damsel in distress. She’s also completely unrecognizable from a design standpoint, trading in her flirty tight T-shirt and jorts combo for tattered jeans and a spike-studded vest jacket to signify this Tawna’s defiant, “punk-rock” attitude. She looks as if she hails from a universe where the male gaze is no longer an oppressive, domineering force for women to tackle…because they’ve all gouged the men’s eyes right out of their skulls. If punk rock was what inspired Tawna’s new style and demeanor, it seems like bands such as Team Dresch and Huggy Bear were the ones responsible for this transformation, if you catch my drift. I don’t know; is it a coincidence that Alt Tawna aggressively strikes Crash on the noggin for simply expressing a natural curiosity about her radically different design when they first meet her and then doesn’t speak to any of the characters in a friendly manner except for Coco for the remaining duration she’s on screen? Look, man, all I’m doing is giving you the relevant pieces of evidence so you can form your own conclusions. Still, regardless if Toys for Bob is actually blowing this sociopolitical dog whistle in my face, I can excuse the peculiar design choices of this resurrected Crash relic because her spin kick and unique grappling hook gadget makes her the most aerodynamic character in the roster. In fact, the gameplay diversity that each of these secondary guest characters fosters is exactly why each of them is such a refreshing inclusion integrated into the mix of Crash/Coco’s typical dance routine of hopping, spinning, and the occasional aerial ground pound.

Don’t think just because Crash and Coco are the older dogs in this heterogeneous arrangement of playable characters that the developers assumed they couldn’t learn any new tricks. In addition to the player acclimating themselves to the particular quirks of their allies, the player must also contend with a slew of unfamiliar platforming properties that are mostly only applicable to the two gender-swapped skins of the main protagonist. Ironically enough, every single foreground asset debuting in Crash 4 is evocative of the earliest practices of the franchise, similar to the linear world map menu and the appearance of “Tawna” (technically). What is this practice, you may ask? Well, considering how Crash and his sister both often swing from ropes like a certain tie-wearing ape on jungle vines and abrade the rubbery soles of their sneakers while grinding on a series of mechanical rails like Sega’s blue bundle of joy (who might also be in dire need of this rewound rejuvenation treatment), the developers are dipping back into the influence pool of the same older platformer icons that conceptually sculpted Sony’s original mascot candidate. Wall running is also another staple platformer attribute that Crash 4 decides to implement, but I can’t quite determine which IP within the genre originated or popularized it to the point of an obvious association. Mirror’s Edge, maybe? I’m also not entirely certain which game could’ve convinced the developers to deem it necessary for Crash/Coco to roll through a cracked concrete road away from N. Gin’s tanky, fiery Mad Max mobile in a life-sized hamster ball because such a contraption has never been utilized throughout the genre’s storied history. Yeah…that’s the ticket.

My peculiar sense of deja vu also certainly didn’t begin to tingle when I was introduced to Crash 4’s other major gameplay component in the Elemental Quantum Masks. If Aku Aku’s presence in every Crash game is any indication, the festive, ritualistic face obscurers have always been a key ingredient to the Crash franchise’s identity. Outside of Aku-Aku still providing Crash/Coco his protection once he’s freed from a wooden encasement, a quartet of the sage’s sacred brethren have been implemented in Crash 4 to extend their services to the primary playable protagonists (and only them). Also, similar to the series steadfast sagely presence, each mask that is introduced once per every other world pronounces a prominent personality trait that correlates with the innate ability they possess. The first mask we become acquainted with is the electrically blue ball of nerves Lani-Loli, whose flaring neuroses might cause the indecisiveness of which platforms on the field are corporeal and which ones will cause Crash/Coco to fall into oblivion with their physical transparency. The strikingly purple Akano is a brooding beast of a mask that speaks very few words, incorporating the bluntness of his nature to heighten Crash/Coco’s spin maneuver into a raging tornado that elevates them upward into the skies. Kupuna-Wa is essentially everyone’s childless aunt who adopted a bohemian attitude that fit her lenient lifestyle, which anyone who could manipulate time to slow at their command probably would. Finally, the theatrical disposition of Ika-Ika between comedy and tragedy exemplifies the contrasting realm between gravity and anti-gravity. If you’ve been paying attention, you’d notice that all of these magical masks accomplish is augmenting the already-overflowing gamut of platformer abilities to an exorbitant extent. Still, I welcome this foursome of abilities they foster into the flooded foray of moves because they all complement the diversification of the platforming at play without meandering into disruptive, gimmicky territory that the unmentionable games of series past have been guilty of injecting into the Crash formula.

The instances of using any of the Quantum Masks are arguably also the most challenging bouts of platforming on display. For the duration of time playing through the world where they are initially encountered, the subsequent levels implement the mask ubiquitously enough that the player will receive a hearty amount of practice with their unique mechanics. Once all of the Quantum Masks have been accounted for and the game assumes the player has honed their elements down to science, every level across the frou-frou, Futurama foody world and Crash 4’s high-definition reimagining of Cortex Castle at the game’s final stretches incorporates all of them as an ensemble. In some cases, like in the last primary stage of Cortex Castle, the shuffling between every mask is an instantaneous process, demanding the player react acutely to the hazard at hand in the blink of an eye. After finally conquering this strenuous challenge, I swore that I heard each mask utter “RUDABAGA” upon rewinding failure after failure more than I heard Aku-Aku speak this unintelligible catchphrase throughout the entire series. Of course, the overwhelming moments with the Quantum Masks are emblematic of a greater topic regarding Crash 4’s steep difficulty curve. Like with the world map and Crash’s estranged former belle, Crash 4 again finds it pertinent to revert to the oldest of Crash Bandicoot outings and rekindle the most rigorous test of the player’s tenacity that was unparalleled until this entry unearthed this unforgiving difficulty demon from its tomb to inflict suffering on 21st-century gamers. However, unlike the first Crash game that expected the player to withstand outstandingly unreasonable odds, Crash 4 at least grants the player a myriad of accommodations to stave off any fatal “game overs” that are likely to occur. Chiefly, the player is given the option of an infinite death toll as opposed to the traditional life counter that triggers a “game over” if it reaches zero. I decided to stick with protocol not to uphold my questionable gamer credibility, but because I had assumed that the more attuned sensitivities of modern gaming would’ve placed it at least on par with Warped in terms of difficulty. The fact that I was accumulating lives by the barrelful as if I was playing DKC: Tropical Freeze affirmed my preconceived notions, until I desperately needed every life I stocked after N. Tropy was out of the picture. Strangely enough, before the climactic portion when my life counter started to nose-dive, it impressively dwindled during a number of the world-finishing boss segments. Matching the rhythm of weaponized sonic waves erupting out of N. Gin’s concert sound system was difficult to detect, and I fell between the speeding asteroid platforms in N. Tropy’s twin battle too many times than I'm willing to admit. Another reason why it’s disappointing that he couldn’t have retained his cardinal villain status throughout the narrative!

Admittedly, my life counter did tend to drop a few units whenever I attempted to satisfy a level’s completionist conditions, which is a whole other Pandora’s Box the player can open if they’re feeling masochistic. As per Crash Bandicoot customs, the player must meticulously scrounge up every box found in the level and break them like Ivan Drago, which will warrant the rewarding of a crystal gem. Apparently, every time period across Crash 4 is afflicted by an inflated gem economy because the game will give away two gems for reaching a certain percentage of broken boxes as a consolation prize, along with a couple of others if their death counter doesn’t exceed three or five and if they manage to spot a gem hidden outside the peripheral boundaries of the immediate pathway. I’d decry this adjustment to Crash’s completionist system as pathetic appeasement, only if there weren’t several other stifling conditions factored into mastering Crash 4 that have never been considered before. Once N. Brio is defeated, an “N. Verted” version will be attached to every previously finished level and every level beaten onward. The stylized, MacBook photo filters applied to every level are more grating than anything, but the player should realize that their integration implies that they’ll be obligated to complete the game to its entirety AGAIN under the same completionist stipulations. The segregated “test subject” sections, elongated bonus stages framed as Cortex recording Crash as his box-breaking guinea pig in his laboratory before the bandicoot defied him, are exacting enough as is. Add on the stern caveat of keeping Crash’s death counter empty to retain the tape’s availability on the field, and retrieving the tapes is an excruciating escapade in and of itself. Did I mention that untainted perfection is an entirely separate condition factored into cleaning the completionist slate? Oh, and we can’t forget the notorious time relics, where the lack of the running shoes that were granted to Crash/Coco in the N. Sane trilogy might require them to take up juicing another substance beyond the sweet nectar of the wumpa fruits to satisfy the platinum conditions. SOUNDS LIKE A HOOT, DOESN’T IT. Players might be accustomed to pulling out a few hairs in frustration during any previous Crash Bandicoot completionist endeavors, but Crash 4 will turn them bald as Mr. Magoo and probably as blind as the geriatric cartoon character due to an anger-induced rupturing of the blood vessels in one’s corneas. Scientists say that stress is the silent killer, and life is too precious to have one’s cortisol threshold tested to the extremes while trying to tangle with the sadistically comprehensive checklist that Crash 4 insists upon. A health warning should be printed on every physical copy of Crash 4 like a carton of cigarettes.

Typically, tackling the completionist route across any title in the franchise is the only way of satiating the dismayed feeling I get after playing the skimpy, surface-level conditions of reaching the end of a Crash Bandicoot title. In the case of Crash 4, I’m happy to report that for the first time, my hunger pangs have been quelled because this return to form for the hyperactive, tanned rat is a feast most bountiful. Its levels are richly lengthy, exquisitely designed, marvelously multifaceted with its various mechanics, and the worlds that encircle them are capped off with bosses that don’t bullshit around like their previous incarnations. Just by performing the bare minimum of foiling Cortex’s plan to eradicate Crash, I actually felt as if I ate a full course meal. Eating anything beyond that in the 100% route would’ve given me the gaming equivalent of “the itis.” We get it, Toys for Bob, you’ve achieved your Eagle Scout standing in crafting Crash Bandicoot levels. Still, that doesn’t give you the right to become a desert eagle scout and snipe every player with completionist overkill. As hostile as they seem to be to us gamer visitors, it’s beautiful that the Crash franchise has finally settled in a loving household after being passed around by a bunch of abusive foster parents for so long. In this enriching environment, the series has healthily produced what is undoubtedly its greatest entry to date, nostalgia be damned. Welcome home, Crash Bandicoot!

The Last Guardian Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/28/2026)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

The Last Guardian

Developer: Japan Studio/Team Ico

Publisher: SCE

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: PS4

Release Date: December 6, 2018

I can still recall a time when I was super-duper jazzed about the release of The Last Guardian. Once I unearthed my PS2 copy of Shadow of the Colossus from the musty depths of my extensive back catalog, I was absolutely enraptured by its inventiveness regarding its boss battle methodology, its monastic approach to exhibiting its gameplay without diminishing the epic presentational scope surrounding it, and its unorthodox narrative conclusion that involuntarily dropped my mouth open wide enough that a shoebill could’ve flown in it. The lasting result of playing Team Ico’s magnum opus was setting a lofty standard for the games that I would play moving forward, ones that I deemed worthy enough to exemplify gaming’s strengths as an artistic medium that often shared the same stripped-down similarities as Team Ico’s output (ie., Limbo/Inside, Silent Hill to some extent). In a way, this practice was almost an act of rebelling against the bloated, microtransaction-mired modern gaming landscape. I would’ve been content with the older hardware I already owned if not for the fact that Team Ico had emerged from their decade-long hiatus to craft another one of their artistically-inclined titles that was exclusive to Sony’s then-current system, so I then proceeded to shell out enough money to purchase it. Ironically enough, it was the console’s other exclusives such as Bloodborne and Persona 5 that would catapult me out of this mindset that SotC engendered, for I was treated to modern games that provided the substance of an artistic gaming experience without having to espouse Team Ico’s idiosyncratic, “addition by subtraction” ethos. This is probably why when I finished all of these glitzy distractions and finally attempted to play The Last Guardian almost three years into owning a PS4, I found myself surprisingly repelled by it, unable to stomach more than twenty minutes of it, like when my college roommate tasked me with finishing off a bucket of this bourbon slushie concoction that he made a week before to free up space in our freezer. Seven years and with almost 350 game reviews in my wake, it became increasingly apparent to me that my inability to finish The Last Guardian was not due to being spoiled in the moment by newer games that placed themselves into my personal canon alongside its Team Ico, PS2 predecessor. People often express that The Last Guardian is a “mixed bag,” and I can wholeheartedly attest to this sentiment.

Incidentally, even though it’s arguably the forefather of the “video games as art” credo that I devoutly practiced for a brief period of my life, Ico was not a game that I incorporated into this personal repertoire. Only now, after playing it to review it three years ago, do I notice some stark similarities between its plot premise and The Last Guardian’s. Speak up if this sounds vaguely familiar: a young boy finds himself in a sticky scenario situated in an alien environment where he can at least determine is far from the comfort of his home. Instead of a dark dungeon inside of a towering fortress, the boy’s entry position is a damp cavern where the only source of light is produced by a crack in its ceiling. Also, instead of sharing the space with a ghostly white, demure girl trapped in a cage, the boy is alarmingly close to a wild beast that acts homicidally hostile towards him when it awakens from its own comatose stupor. However, like the mouse who generously plucked the thorn from the lion’s foot in Aesop’s classic fable, the beast begins to trust the boy when he extracts the painful spears lodged in its body. Instead of using the sharp, stabbing weapons to pierce the beast in a more vital area of its anatomy like SotC, this interaction sparks a mutual trust between the boy and the beast where they must collaborate to help the boy find his way home. Obviously, there are a few relevant components to this plot premise that distinguish it from Ico. Still, anyone can contest that the foundational core of this premise and the overall mission that happens subsequently rings eerily similar to Team Ico’s first interactive outing. I believe the unappetizing aspect of this was due to the colossal standard that SotC had set in its artistic sensibilities. Sure, it shared Ico’s atmosphere and a deliberate dialing-down of gaming’s cluttered excessiveness, but both games were completely dissimilar in their respective approach to action-adventure games. Repurposing the general gameplay concept of an already established Team Ico property sort of disillusions me, knocking me down into the reality that they aren’t truly visionaries and they can't execute the idea well like any other developer. Am I being unreasonable, or was SotC THAT extraordinarily transformative?

This isn’t to say that SotC was the peak of gaming perfection, especially in its presentation. Specifically, I think that even the biggest SotC enthusiasts, myself included, concede that the lethargic framerate was definitely not one of its more flattering aspects–even though I defended it on the stance that it elevated the grandiose scope of every colossus encounter. Ico may have also been plagued by this presentational snag given that it existed on the same hardware, but it was far more noticeable when playing SotC. However, two gaming generations onward, well into the era of glossy, high-definition, The Last Guardian had no excuse not to buck this unfortunate trend. Alas, chugging along through every bit of movement is apparently a recessive gene that The Last Guardian has inherited from its PS2 ancestors. Is this seriously an intentional aspect of this game’s presentation, a requisite ingredient of regression to stick it to mainstream conventions? Tis’ a shame that they’re so stubborn, for the breathtaking beauty that is sluggishly being rendered at a sub-30 FPS is equally as evocative of its predecessors as well. The derelict ruins of a deceased, motionless society still retain their ability to marvel and awe after Team Ico’s third time using this particular iconography for another of its title’s settings. This time, however, the developers saw how the unending graphical progress of the medium pruned both Ico and SotC several years onward and accounted for this inevitability by dabbing a cel-shaded tint over the visuals. Trust me, it doesn’t look as cartoonish as The Wind Waker infamously did; the air of dejection and uncertainty is equally as palpable here as Team Ico’s other IPs, despite the comparatively radiant glow gleaming off of various set pieces in between the corroded crust of an ancient civilization.

Or, perhaps the subtle graphical luminosity that The Last Guardian displays was incorporated to make the environmental elements found across the game more prominently discernible from a gameplay standpoint. The more substantial connection between The Last Guardian and Ico beyond its similar premises is its emphasis on platforming in its predominantly action-adventure genre designation. Under chief director Ueda’s decree of dogmatic minimalism, progression in Ico was intended to subvert that of a Zelda dungeon. Whereas Nintendo’s iconic fantasy series typically features both elements of platforming and puzzles that tend to be delegated to individual rooms of its dungeons as stark progression impediments, the constant platforming performed all across Ico was a puzzle in and of itself; a fusion of Zelda’s key gameplay components coalescing so as not to fracture the seamless environment with manufactured, video gamey sequences. Automatically, The Last Guardian’s recycling of Ico’s foundation diminishes the subversive nature of such an ingenious blending of gameplay elements, for its repeated utilization cements it as its own established foundation for others to appropriate, just like the common tropes borrowed heavily from the older innovators of the medium. However, what The Last Guardian contributes to the ascetic formula founded by its predecessor is broadening the scale and scope of its immediate gameplay environment. While nothing in Ico’s environment was apparent as a trinket of traversal, the isometric angle from the player’s perspective sort of honed in on which ledges, ladders, or other protuberant environmental pieces were readily available in the moment. The immediate surroundings in The Last Guardian, on the other hand, never minimize the astonishing breadth of its world for the player’s convenience. Even when the player isn’t situated in an expansive outdoor environment, the enclosed areas they’ll find themselves in from time to time remain as spacious as the ceiling of a cathedral. With such a vast perimeter of area to explore on their expedition, who knows how long it’ll take before the player finds the intended path that leads The Boy closer to his destination? Once you find yourself exasperated after checking every conceivable crevice to no avail, you’ll learn that the trophy that requires you to finish the game in under thirty hours isn’t as lenient a condition as it initially seems.

The player’s overall time taken in leading The Boy away from this desolate pit is also heavily protracted by the collaborative element of The Last Guardian’s gameplay. Even though more comparisons to Ico can be reasonably made due to the playable protagonist sharing the majority of screen time with an NPC, I’d be hard-pressed to refer to the dynamic featured in Team Ico’s namesake game as a “collaboration.” If anything, Yorda was a glorified key that Ico had to painstakingly accommodate to ensure she’d be present when faced with a sealed gate that could only open with her magic, a textbook example of an escort quest with the developer’s veneer of artistry draped over it. Luckily, the different sizes and species of The Boy and Trico, a non-descript title for the playable protagonist and the canon creature name of the ten-ton-sized beast accompanying him, respectively, naturally foster a symbiosis between them as mutually beneficial as an oxpecker cleaning the mouth of a hippopotamus. The Boy here is easily Team Ico’s most delicate protagonist to date, feeling the gravity of every leap onto a ledge or a precariously situated platform and having to momentarily either readjust himself or recuperate as anyone realistically would outside the realm of a video game. It also never occurs to him that he should fashion a sizable stick or one of the spears he plucked out of Trico’s torso into a tool for self-defense, leaving himself helpless to any active adversity he might face on his perilous journey home. While I’d personally prefer to feel at least moderately equipped to deal with any threats found on the field, The Boy’s vulnerability is admittedly accounted for by the whopping, animalistic aggression of his colossal companion–hence the “guardian” portion of the game’s title. Trico is also quite the advantageous tool for traversal, crawling on his backside and carrying The Boy up steep vertical ledges using his limited flight capabilities. Trico’s tail can also conduct a surge of red lightning if The Boy shines a circular beacon of light reflecting off of a shield he finds to clear debris or demolish any wooden obstacle. Conversely, The Boy’s miniature stature allows him to navigate through the more cramped corners of the world to activate switches and to dispose of the stained-glass eye mirrors that Trico harbors an inexplicable, paralyzing aversion towards. The Boy also seems to be the only one capable of finding food to fuel Trico, even though I’m certain that all the wood he’s ingesting in those barrels is harming his digestive system in the long run. Needless to say, it’s evident that neither of them would cover much ground in this isolated setting without utilizing their set of skills that come with their polar physicalities.

Complications, however, often arise with Trico’s portion of the platforming duties because the beast’s brain is approximately the size of a Werther’s Original. Granted, commanding Yorda to aid Ico during the few sections where more than just her magic was needed to progress wasn’t exactly smooth and uneventful. Still, I’m giving the poor girl a pardon because she’s as diligent as a worker bee compared to Trico. Because the line between escorter and escortee in The Last Guardian is blurred between the playable protagonist and the NPC, the reliance on Trico to engage in both puzzles as well as platforming is far more prevalent. What this connotes is that the player must ride Trico’s ass (both figuratively and literally) in regards to commanding specific actions for him to perform. Otherwise, when left to his own devices, Trico will either absentmindedly wander around or lie down as if he’s ready to catch forty winks. Hell, he tends to do this even when The Boy attempts to guide him towards their nearest goal that only Trico can feasibly reach. Sure, there is a small selection of specific commands that The Boy can vocalize, but since when do the characters of Team Ico’s games speak English? It’s like training a dog that only responds to commands in a language you don’t speak by converting him to follow another language that you ALSO can’t understand. I’ve been told that Trico’s overall aloofness was intentional to emulate the behaviors of a flesh-and-blood animal in the real world. While I admire this level of immersion on paper, in execution, having Trico constantly hinder the player for the sake of realism is counterintuitive to the acute reactivity of puzzle solving. Other times, Trico’s detached attitude matched with the game’s widened platforming parameters made some sections extremely oblique. Pray for the divine intervention of RNGsus whenever water is a relevant environmental factor, for it takes a miracle to both figure out how to navigate around the drink and then communicate to Trico how to sufficiently enact the solution. The times when I was red-faced, screaming at Trico for his borderline insubordination were too numerous to count, and I found myself despairing hard enough to leave this game unattended for yet another seven years or more.

Despite how many times I exclaimed to Trico that I was going to make the world’s biggest pillowcase or a pelt fit for a football field out of whichever bodily material I could salvage after slaughtering him in my state of absolute infuriation, I could not bring myself to carry out these violent threats. Trico is just too goddamn adorable for me to keep my psychotic promises. For all of the ill-conceived ideas that went towards his mechanics, Team Ico belted a home run in regards to his design. As far as his phenotypical characteristics are concerned, Trico is a biological mishmash of a mythical, winged griffin and a fusion of the most popular mammalian household pets–the whiskers and mannerisms of a cat with the playful affection of a dog, respectively. I’m surprised that Hagrid isn’t leading the crusade to tear the boy and beast asunder, for the famous cryptid connoisseur would absolutely die to have Trico near the hills of the Hogwarts campus where he lives to study his majesty. Still, for as beguiling as Trico inherently is, his mammoth size reminds me of when my parents used to remind me as a kid that if my childhood cat was bigger than me, she’d eat me. Disregarding the fact that Trico does indeed devour The Boy on occasion whenever he’s hypnotized by a machine that emits sonic waves, the possibility of Trico reverting to his initial hostility towards the boy and animalistically eviscerating him drives a fearful wedge in their blossoming relationship. Eventually, once the tension dissolves after their continual collaboration, the bond created between the two is a beautiful sight to behold. I can’t even begin to describe how I melted when Trico jumped for joy after bringing The Boy back to a state of living after an unfortunate incident rendered him unconscious. In fact, I even began to treat Trico’s withdrawn nature with more compassion as the game progressed as well, calmly referring to him as “buddy” instead of “furry/feathery fucking imbecile” whenever his presence was required. The beast that was once a ball and chain wrapped tightly around my ankle that I begrudgingly partnered with as a means to an end soon transformed into genuine affection that I’d express towards a real-world furry friend. Trico had become the Rain Man to my Tom Cruise, and I would hurry home to catch Judge Wapner on TV for him if my life depended on it.

Unfortunately, there are forces of oppression that reside in these hallowed grounds that seek to disrupt the harmony of this unlikely pairing, and it is not Hagrid, as I jokingly stated beforehand. A combative group in The Last Guardian are the animated suits of armor that will seize The Boy and carry him into the blindingly bright, white light that probably leads to somewhere he likely won’t escape too easily. Or, at least that’s what I assume happens because even without Trico reducing these creeps into scrap metal to save my hide, I could effortlessly slip away from their grasp. Just mash every button on the controller as if you’re an actor pretending to play video games for a scene, and the mass of squiggly, cuneiform etchings meant to signify The Boy’s struggle will dissipate and allow him to scurry away momentarily. Because their attempts to capture the boy are laughably pathetic, this army doesn’t exactly provide an imposing, antagonistic blockade to The Boy’s quest. However, we can still harbor a potent resentment towards them because of the implications behind their intentions. We learn in a lengthy, mid-game cutscene that Trico is a breed of beast trained by the suits of armor to abduct children from a village located in the vicinity and transport them to the game’s secluded setting, which Trico would’ve done had he not collapsed due to being struck by lightning mid-delivery. Something about the sequestered surroundings of their practices, the occult ritualism, and the eager way they approach the boy like a sexually starved catholic priest suggests to me that if the boy broke free and blew the lid off their operation, certain names would be redacted to protect some seriously powerful people. Even if I’m completely off base with my analysis because my mind is hopelessly stuck in the gutter like a pesky acorn, you have to admit that painting these jerkoffs in this despicable light from what context clues are available does elicit some impassioned rage against them as opposed to simply being annoyed by their chronic appearances.

Whereas the blue pedophiles knights in shitty armor fail to cause the player’s heartbeat to race, the same cannot be said about encountering one of Trico’s flying brethren. One in particular roams the territory to trounce Trico for his supposed treachery, and dealing with this brute as it savagely plunges its claws and razor-sharp beak into your furry friend is the closest The Last Guardian comes to both a boss battle and a genuine form of the “panic puzzles” that were littered throughout Ico. Although Trico did not meet his untimely demise as a result of this scuffle, as the scene suggests, this tragedy tease did remind me of the sinking intimation I had, judging by the game’s tone and Team Ico’s other story resolutions, that The Last Guardian was not ending on a happy note due to the death of either of the main characters. Considering that The Boy is omnisciently narrating the events with a deeper voice that implies he’s long surpassed puberty, I would’ve bet money on Mr. Fluffy pushing up daisies before the credits rolled. When our heroes climb the ominously pristine palace where the armors reside at the game’s climax and a whole tribe of Tricos bushwhack our furry friend, I knew it was time to collect my winnings. Not with glee, naturally, as witnessing one of them pull on Trico’s tail hard enough to sever the tip caused me to cringe and recoil in discomfort more than any grizzly execution cutscene seen in Manhunt. Alas, I would’ve lost my wager either way because, to my utter shock, neither character passes on over the rainbow bridge. After The Boy manages to pull the plug on the operation by destroying the central sphere and freeing the Tricos from its control (an esoteric orb is responsible for the rampant abductions and child molestation? What in the Scientology is this shit?), our Trico concentrates enough of his remaining strength to finally spread his wings to their fullest potential and bring the boy back to his village. Because neither character has the strength to communicate to the rightfully outraged villagers that Trico comes in peace this time, The Boy softly speaks the “flight” command to Trico so he can take off unscathed into the sunset. Years later in a post-credits epilogue scene, we now see that The Boy is now “The Man,” uncovering the old shining shield he once used alongside his furry friend, which then diverts to the cavern where we see the mood ring eyes of Trico light up to signify that he made it back safely that day. Believe me, I was as relieved to see Trico alive and well, like Sully reuniting with Boo at the closing scene of Monsters, Inc. Still, the sadness I had anticipated somehow struck me with a surprise from the source of its resonance. All this time, I had expected the pain of losing a pet, but the star-crossed status of their relationship, resulting in both growing older separately, conjured up the disconnection one faces between them and an old friend. The sentimentality it evokes still stings like a bitch.

I don’t think I have the constitution to finish writing this review. My brain and my heart are currently waging war with one another on how to assess The Last Guardian, and I think this bedlam in my body is going to result in a stalemate. On one hand, it behooves my brain to criticize the game for its piss-poor mechanical performance regarding the framerate and placing an NPC intended to mimic the inferior intellect of an animal at the forefront of some abysmally obtuse platforming puzzles. My heart, on the other hand, is refuting that Trico’s uncanny mirroring of an animal is exactly why the game is so impactful, and I’ll admit that a game has never strung the cords of my heart strings over polygonal caricatures quite like this before. I’m facing a losing battle as to whether to applaud The Last Guardian as an effective work of art, or lambaste it as interactive drudgery. Therefore, I’m going to sit smack dab on the fence like a coward and situate The Last Guardian in the sweet center between a masterpiece and an abject disaster. Fuck, man, play the game yourself and form your own opinions. I can’t do this today.

Cave Story Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/21/2026)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Cave Story

Developer: Studio Pixel (Daisuke Amaya)

Publisher: Studio Pixel (Daisuke Amaya)

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: PC

Release Date: December 20, 2004

Hey kids, do you like indie games? You know, video games that are created and produced independently outside of the circle of triple-A industry influence? I sure as hell do; their ingenuity, rough-hewn quirks, and humble productions have always reinvigorated my passion for the medium when it seems like the big business realm of gaming keeps whittling my soul down to a stub with their contemptuous and condescending practices. It’s extremely fortunate that in a time when triple-A developers grow progressively more nonchalant about slapdashing their expensive products day by day, the indie circuit rivals their more opulent countrymen in sheer abundance. If you’re like me and perceive the influx of retrograded or artistically stylized graphics and Metroidvania (or Metroidvania adjacent) design formats that have defined the indiesphere for well over a decade now to be a veritable buffet you never want to stop indulging in, I believe there is one single source of this trend that we can send our tokens of gratitude towards: Cave Story.

For any aspiring indie developer who believes that they’ll take the indiesphere by storm with their coming-of-age, horror-tinged gay awakening story starring a cast of anthropomorphic furries, I hope you realize that your brainchild will never have as much indie cred as Cave Story. Millions of gamers might have purchased Halo 2 or GTA San Andreas while Cave Story sold a meager ten thousand back in 2004, but those who bought the more modest latter were inspired to create their own games as a result (a topical spin on the Brian Eno quote comparing the impact of Sgt. Pepper versus the first Velvet Underground record). Actually, the words “bought” and “sold” are misnomers on my part. Daisuke Amaya, the solo developer behind Cave Story, spent five years financially debilitating himself to ensure he’d have enough of a breather period per day to finish this passion project in a relatively timely manner. After half a decade of likely subsisting off of dollar-store cardboard ramen and whatever bugs managed to crawl into his shoddy apartment, the man was kind enough to publish his painstakingly crafted creation to the internet to download for a whopping sum of zero dollars and zero cents. There’s a point where someone’s selflessness steps beyond admiring their altruism to becoming concerned with their psychological status, and Daisuke Amaya evidently needs some serious counseling. Still, perhaps Mr. Amaya factored in a long-con approach to receiving compensation for his self-inflicted labor, for its availability allowed Cave Story to increase the span of its ring to impressionable gamers without the inherent perk of being able to amplify it to the mainstream masses. Years later, Cave Story is cited as a major influence on Braid, Undertale, Iconoclasts, and other titles that would cement themselves as gaming staples during the indie golden age that is still currently ongoing. I can state with confidence that Cave Story is bar none the most influential indie title in the medium of gaming, but is its everlasting ability to spark inspiration sustainable two decades onward? Given that Cave Story was created in a time with sparser technology on a budget of what we can surmise wasn’t even enough to engage a coin-operated laundry machine, is it time for the indie muse mantle to be passed onto another worthy title that isn’t beset by the complications of the rudimentary conditions that could have possibly been factored into developing a video game? While Cave Story does exhibit some elements that would be deemed as rather unsightly or undercooked by the comparison of its competent and more privileged indie acolytes, I defy anyone to contest the charismatic heart and soul that lies within its crude exterior.

Notice how I made the distinction between the pure Metroidvanias and games that simply incorporate some elements of the genre into their level designs in the previous paragraph? I’m not entirely sure there’s a definitive term that labels games with levels that exist between the fast, timer-duressed platforming of Mario and Sonic and the exploration-intensive, meticulously-paced Metroidvania subgenre, but Cave Story certainly treads that line. Don’t be deceived into thinking it comfortably fits the latter by the fact that health and weapon upgrades are scattered across the levels. Sure, the game offers plenty of incentive to explore, but everything that can be obtained on the field does not lead to plunging further into any portions locked by utility-gated hindrances. The encompassing level design that Cave Story seems to exhibit is a horizontal span with defined parameters between the entry point on the left side and the eventual dead end situated on the right. It’s platformer level design 101 that would be utterly orthodox if not for the lack of a clock ticking away that discourages the player from curiously hopping around the elevated vertical ground that surrounds them. However, just because the other end of the level is a logical destination doesn’t mean that a flag pole will greet the player and tally up the player’s time score once they leap on any point of its vertical stretch. Within those elevated cliffs potentially lies the next progress point for the player, or at least the subsequent point of progression if their immediate destination did happen to be the opposite side of the area, or behind a door that leads to a small room or arena where dialogue or a boss battle commences. Naturally, the objective of finding where on the map furthers progress subtly incentivizes the player to explore an area to its entirety outside of the interest of augmenting one’s maximum health. While creating a compact sandbox to roam around is infinitely more engaging than a straightaway trek from point A to B, I wish that the objective surrounding the exploration process maintained some sense of clarity. When an NPC assigns a quest to the player, like a scavenger hunt to find the ingredients for a bomb or retrieving an elderly woman’s five dogs that have run away, the objective components to progression are made crystal clear. Other times, however, dialogue that might be spoken by the NPCs the player encounters may not spell out their following course of action. I don’t need a glowing breadcrumb trail or a blinking series of arrows to explicitly direct me towards my goal like I’m an impatient child, but finding myself frazzled due to revisiting the same rooms and failing to trigger any semblance of progression occurred too many times for comfort. Walking from one side of a lake to the other in Mimiga Village to obtain an item clashes with traditional Metroidvania logic but alas, the player is sincerely intended to test the threshold of the protagonist’s lung capacity to its absolute limitations. I’m thoroughly impressed by the layers of depth that exist in each of Cave Story’s areas, but a fully fleshed-out Metroidvania map achieves the same level of richness while pronouncing how to progress through it less obtusely.

Another reason why Cave Story might seem a little more linear than the indie Metroidvanias it would undoubtedly influence is that traversing from one side of the area to the other evokes something akin to staving off one’s demise in a traditional 2D platformer. As par for the the 2D platformer course, the source of adversity between destinations is the scourge of enemy activity ready to annihilate the player with their overwhelming swarms of offensive forces. Admittedly, this is also a component of difficulty in a Metroidvania game, and Cave Story features several states to relieve the player of their choking vulnerability in generous increments, similar to that of a less straightforward realm of platformers. Still, I think the game recognizes that the level of adversity that exists between progression points can get quite staggering all the same, which is why Mr. Amaya has equipped his anemic, Pokémon Trainer-looking protagonist with an arsenal liable to arouse any NRA member. Scouring the dim tutorial cavern, the Protagonist will uncover a standard pistol from a treasure chest to procure any fundamental source of defense against the hive of bats that the player was forced to evade only moments ago. A rocket launcher is the only explosive weapon with enough firepower to obliterate the gigantic, oxygenated jellyfish that globs onto the ceilings of the “Grasslands.” The flamethrower’s rolling properties seem to do wonders with targeting the sentient dinosaur skulls that pace across the specific inclined platforms of the “Sand Zone,” while flinging a sword at the cockroaches that populate the upper deck of the same area seems to be more effective at exterminating them than anything the Orkin Man could ever whip out of his van. As potent as the projectile piece of steel craftsmanship proves to be, I’d still recommend trading it for the “Nemesis,” Cave Story’s juggernaut weapon equivalent to Ratchet & Clank’s RYNO. I wish the option to trade “The Bubbline” was available, or at least any avenue to dispose of this wimpy squirter of suspended soap. Still, perhaps the addition of a dud weapon is just a byproduct of a diverse weapon roster, where the weakest item unfortunately gets shafted when all of its peers prove to be far more useful in the long run. While not all of Cave Story’s weapons are created equal, the various situations at least implore the player to use everything at their disposal at least once. Plus, the weaker weapons all have the advantage of infinite ammunition, making a case to keep them around once even the rocket launcher requires multiple shells to blow enemies to smithereens.

Besides the specific scenarios where every weapon showcases its strengths, the player should ideally be intrigued to use every weapon for at least a little while because each of them will be enhanced via gaining more experience with them. However, Cave Story does not subscribe to the typical EXP system where the simple, continual usage of one weapon will increase its attributes. In fact, Cave Story’s EXP system for its weapons still remains so unique to its source that you’d swear that Mr. Amaya legally patented it. Instead of increasing the bar inside of the level meter automatically upon defeating an enemy, they will expel mango-colored triangular shards of varying sizes depending on the enemy’s size and tenacity. Only by collecting the shards that become strewn across the ground like candy being tossed from a parade float will any of Cave Story’s weapons evolve, and said evolution involves a plethora of noticeable perks. Ammunition from weapons like the machine gun becomes prominently larger; a single firing of the rocket launcher will unleash three shells simultaneously for the price of one; the flamethrower spurts will become so scorchingly hot that its color will turn a ghoulish white, etc. The ammunition that spews out of the machine gun at its maximum level is even powerful enough to propel the player upward if they aim down while airborne, a nifty traversal technique to supplement the jet boost before the gadget becomes available.

As awe-inducing as each weapon will be at its maximum level, the caveat behind this system is that its apex can decrease if the player sustains any amount of damage while it's equipped. As they say, the lord giveth, the lord taketh awayeth, and I don’t mind the harsh punitive measures at play because any scratch of regression can be easily remedied while motivating the player to stay alert of all enemy activity around them. That is, until I’m faced with one of Cave Story’s bosses where choosing the appropriate weapon can either make or break the player's victory. Factoring in which weapon to use when chronically batting away Balrog is fortunately irrelevant. He’s a stubby toaster and miniature refrigerator hybrid with no attack range to speak of, and the enclosed arenas he bombastically barges into like the Kool-Aid Man are nicely ironed out and simple. However, with the heightened, projectile firepower of bosses such as Weapon X and the Dragon Sisters, whose fights are engaged on more complicated terrain where the player can only damage them with slivers of opportunity, the likelihood of weakening the only sensible weapon increases tenfold. Forgive me if I’m not MLG pro enough to toss a flamethrower spurt down the gullets of the Dragon Sisters like I’m playing a round of cornhole. Only in these instances do I wish that Cave Story just crafted a normal weapon experience system that remained intact upon reaching its limit. Judging by how absolutely none of its disciples chose to adopt this eccentric mechanic, it’s safe to say that it was an experiment that didn’t entirely pan out.

If Cave Story isn’t afraid to raise the stakes of combat to the point of debilitating the player, wait until we delve into the narrative context surrounding the action. Titling this game as “Cave Story” does not ring to me as a mere coincidence. Above all of the other elements that the developer put his blood, sweat, and tears into, the story aspect was definitely the one that he bled, sweated, and wept over the most, given its outstandingly intricate lore, characters, and conflict premise. It turns out that Cave Story’s playable protagonist isn’t suffering from a severe vitamin D deficiency, but that his blanched skin can be attributed to the fact that his body is composed of a metallic mold meant to resemble a human. He learns in his amnesiac stupor that he is one of the few surviving robot scouts sent to a floating island suspended above Earth’s atmosphere that were programmed to target the land’s native mimiga population. Even though the rabbit creatures seem absolutely helpless despite their evident hyperintelligence, their secret weapon they employed to trounce their gun-toting invaders is consuming a red flower that transforms them into brutish, Hulk-like beasts, where the amplified effects are irrevocable. Years later, scientists revisit the isolated grounds of this failed imperialistic endeavor to research the “demon flower” phenomenon when one of them, referred to as “The Doctor,” stumbles upon an artifact called the “demon crown,” whose arcane properties corrupt the intellectual man into a bloodthirsty tyrant. Now, he’s hellbent on cramming as many of the red flowers down the throats of the mimiga to create an army of roided-out supersoldiers to become Earth’s despotic ruler with the aid of his witch advisor Misery and the aforementioned Balrog as the muscle of his operation. The Doctor’s intentions are the main source of conflict that are made abundantly clear by the NPCs immediately when the Protagonist (who is canonically named “Quote”) returns to the scene of his defeat in Mimiga Village. The cliché good versus evil conflict premise could’ve sufficed, but the contextual tidbits behind Quote’s existence and initial purpose, the latent, abominable natures of the perceivably cuddly and defenseless mimiga, and the esoteric evil at the root of The Doctor’s change in disposition unveil a multilayered, comprehensive world as rich and detailed as the fall of Rome.

Between learning of the storied history behind the peculiar island and its nation of bunny people while spelunking through its cavernous machinations, Cave Story’s thick layers kept peeling back more and more thematic substance that wasn’t overtly exposited by the characters. Considering that our boy Quote’s circuitry is wired to make rabbit stew of the mimigas and instead sides with them to conquer their oppressors, there seems to be a prevalent theme of defying one’s true nature or commanding officer and sprouting an autonomous consciousness. Surprisingly, the extent of this thematic undertone is explored with Balrog of all characters, who gradually steps towards the side of aiding Quote and the mimigas and opposes his “master,” The Doctor, every time Quote wipes the floor with him as he insists on making an appearance. Does Balrog’s dynamic arc make him the true protagonist of Cave Story, or is he still a useful idiot who we can at least be grateful for when he starts lending his doggedness to the good guys? More overtly on the side of revolting against the powers of strong-arming are how some of the mimiga express an impassioned fervor against those who seek to subjugate them. Combating this persecution against the mimigas the most actively is King, the de facto leader of the remaining mimigas in their home village, whose bloodshot eyes and scar-studded visage signify that this bunny is a badass who shan’t be toyed with by bullies. King would rather die than see any of his kind get abducted and turned into monsters, and unfortunately, that bargaining statement becomes a reality when he’s fatally struck down by a cracking bolt of lightning summoned by Misery during battle. Using King’s death as a segue, what I believe to be the strongest element of Cave Story’s narrative is raising the stakes of the heavy scenario by killing off characters. The game isn’t the least bit afraid of making their adorable little cast of castigated critters squeal in agony, whether it be annihilating them outright or euthanizing them for the greater good after their Dr. Hyde mutations blossom from eating the red flowers. Having to subdue the sweet and innocent Toroko after The Doctor force-feeds her the flower is an especially heart-wrenching turn of events. Scenes of various mimigas meeting grave fates are upsetting in the moment, but as they marinate in my mind longer, the tragedies do wonders for instilling the severity of the conflict at hand.

Then there’s the untimely demise of Curly Brace, a female humanoid built for the same purpose as Quote but is also going against the grain and aligning herself with the mimigas she once sought to slaughter. Given her unique kinship to Quote and the fact that she’s an aidful member of the opposite sex with a vivacious personality, this blonde bot screams manic pixie dream girl so loudly that I can hear both The Smiths playing from one side of her headphone speakers and The Shins from the other. Nipping this cliched relationship in the bud before I start to facepalm, Curly Brace is out of commission when she sacrifices herself by giving Quote her bubble-breathing apparatus when a battle arena completely floods to the point of inhabitability. Programming a waterproof robot with a drowning function in the first place is unspeakably cruel and unusual, but I digress. As much as I’d like to commend Cave Story for stocking even more grief to fuel the fire against The Doctor and his cronies, the game does offer an extensive avenue to resurrect Quote’s soon-to-be girlfriend in one of three potential endings. I implore the player to stop thinking with their dicks, or whatever sexual appendage serves like a penis that Quote may or may not possess, because I’d argue that the game punishes the player if they go the extra mile to achieve the ending where Quote and Curly live happily ever after (with Balrog third-wheeling it for the remainder of his days). Firstly, taking the steps to drain the immense volume of liquid from Curly’s core is quite the ordeal, where the specificity of a task’s completion can lead to accidentally neglecting it entirely. Secondly, when Quote arrives at the secret labyrinthine temple on this path, and the game greets him with the message, “Welcome to Hell,” do not take this message lightly. The route up to the game’s absolute final boss in the grand poobah Ballos is the first and only instance when Cave Story becomes a precision platformer, jetting around rows of deadly spiked walls with unpredictably asymmetrical patterns throughout. After that tense excursion is finished, Cave Story continues to make the player sweat buckets with FOUR rounds against Ballos, an excruciating endurance test that the player will be begging for sweet release by only the third phase. Considering the multiple transformations where Ballos becomes bigger and more malformed with every phase, the Sigma from Mega Man X comparisons write themselves. Unless the player sincerely wishes to secure some suggested robot sex for Quote as a reward for his outstanding heroism, I recommend sticking to the “neutral ending” where Quote conquers The Doctor and Misery and leaves the island with Sue and her human scientist brother, Kazuma, on the backs of the dragon he painstakingly attempted to hatch in the Egg Corridor all this time. Conversely, I will judge you harshly if you decide to expedite Quote’s egress with Kazuma at the soonest moment the dragon is hatched, saying “fuck this” to The Doctor’s sinister plans coming to fruition, to live in the far-off mountains without a care. And I thought bartering the sword weapon that has King’s lingering spirit imbibed in it for the Nemesis was the most damning example of selling your soul in Cave Story.

Daisuke Amaya, you beautiful bastard. I know your secret, buddy; you’re actually an alien that beamed yourself down to our planet to benevolently give us earthlings the gift of gaming with Cave Story. I simply find it hard to believe that any one of us would be able to create something of such an unprecedented magnitude that superseded all of the cheap, crude flash games that represented indie gaming at the time where financial gain wasn’t an applicable factor in crafting it. Alas, the reality isn’t that there wasn’t a jailbreak from Area 51 circa the early 2000s. A starving artist from Japan truly did accomplish the impossible with only his two hands and the cheapest computer software imaginable, making gamers like me moist with sprightly shooting gameplay, adequate level design, and a poignant story with, and I must impress on this, multiple fucking endings with several secret routes attached. Still, what we’re intended to take from Cave Story is not that Mr. Amaya is superhuman, but that any aspiring developer can make a game of this caliber if they persevere. Where some of the triple-A King Neptunes of the gaming industry are cynically serving up shite on a conveyor belt per year, there's the indie SpongeBobs taking their time to program hearts into their interactive vision’s binary code thanks to Cave Story setting the example. Pardon me, I’m getting verklempt just thinking about it.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 1/22/2026)

[Image from igdb.com]

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Developer: Square

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): JRPG

Platforms: SNES

Release Date: March 9, 1996

Narrative and world-building are not and never were Mario’s strong suits. I don’t think that Nintendo should lose sleep over their mascot getting crushed under the competition any time soon, but perhaps the simplistic story it insists on repeating will become a bigger blemish on the franchise the more that gaming continues to emphasize telling a substantial, coherent story as an integral part of the medium’s evolution. But if Mario’s assorted forays into other gaming genres are any indication, the way that Mario maintains his cult of personality status is refusing to be shackled and bound by the platformer grounds that he has paved. If Mario can race like Dale Earnhardt and host parties like Jay Gatsby, he can therefore expand the narrative breadth of the Mushroom Kingdom setting that he typically resides in, like JRR Tolkien. Given that Japan’s patented role-playing genre tends to stretch its narratives to an elongated, epic proportion that require as much patience to play through as its turn-based combat, I can’t think of a better vehicle to facilitate the expansion initiative of Mario and his greater gaming universe. Personally, the RPGs that bear the brand of the Italian plumber are the pinnacle of the Mario experience. It’s not to say that I don’t enjoy straightforwardly soaring onto platforms or stomping on Bowser’s minions as per usual. Still, reinterpreting these Mario tropes into the amplified realm of the RPG genre blossoms an air of whimsy, humor, and a storybook grandiosity that is either faintly sprinkled in crumb quantities or absent from the mainline Mario series altogether. It’s like adopting a jaded attitude towards a perfectly competent film franchise after reading the meatier material in the novels it was adapted from, except that it's the source material that seems lackluster in this case. I adore both Paper Mario and the handheld Mario & Luigi series for unleashing Mario’s latent substance, but neither can claim the credit of being the first to do so. No, the godmother in this case would be Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, an SNES title that birthed the Mario RPG foundation that both notable successors were built upon. While this pioneering staple in Mario’s catalog still bestows plenty of rich appeal on its own merits, I can’t help but compare Super Mario RPG to its offspring. Growing up around the fair daughters it produced and looking at their mom in comparison unfortunately reminds me that madre ain't no spring chicken.

My assertion of a Mario RPG’s overarching objective to elevate the simple source material might be proven null and void by the fact that Super Mario RPG establishes its plot premise by having Mario rescue Princess Peach (still referred to as “Toadstool” here in this earlier era of the Mario franchise) from her beastly, reptilian rival monarch. Admittedly, this game and many future Mario RPGs are still disappointingly slaves to the exhausted mainline Mario conflict conceit, but it’s the ways in which these elongated Mario experiences subvert the trappings of the tired, traditional Mario fare that make them relatively refreshing. Firstly, the lengthy, multiworld-spanning journey from one Mushroom Kingdom castle to the other is expedited entirely, as Mario arrives at the impressive ivory doors of Bowser’s imposing estate immediately. Targeting the vertical link chain of the chandelier hoisting Bowser’s monstrous mass instead of the Koopa King himself may also catch some players off guard, but this is rather an homage to an early series trademark of advantageously manipulating an object situated around the arena to outwit Mario’s arch-nemesis. Once the game establishes a clear victory for Mario in record time and makes every gamer who purchased this game in 1996 feel cheated when they opted not to rent it, the game reveals that the ordinary Mario arc presented here is but a red herring ruse when a colossally-sized sword falls from the heavens and implants itself perfectly into the castle’s thick stone brick exterior. The impact of such a convergence quakes the perimeter immensely, launching Mario downward to a cozy Toad cottage below as if he were just shot out of a catapult. Upon reorienting himself from the precarious voyage he just underwent, Mario returns to Bowser’s Castle to discover that his mission to save the princess has been inconveniently sidetracked more than he had initially thought. To Mario’s surprise, the goliath sword is sentient, informing our hero that they’re an affiliate of the “Smithy Gang,” who have usurped Bowser’s domain as the headquarters in their operation for world domination. Only by procuring the mystical seven star MacGuffins alluded to in the right half of the title’s colon will Mario be prepared to unsheath this mighty, sinister sword like Excalibur to halt its noxious presence. Sure, finding the whereabouts of the kingdom’s female monarch remains a relevant issue, but prioritizing a source of conflict with far loftier stakes and relegating the standard Mario narrative struggle to a secondary status is already a maverick mode of displacement in the grand scheme of Mario stories. Maybe rescuing Princess Peach (sorry, “Toadstool”) will always persist as a plot point because the opportunity for punani is the only way to motivate Mario to get off his doughy, spaghetti-eating ass. I don’t want to be the one to tell Mario that his efforts in this regard are futile, for it seems to drive his energy for these excursions in a way that cannot inspire any other Mushroom Kingdom resident.

Super Mario RPG is also notable for being one of the final passengers to board the SNES before the 16-bit system lifted off into sunset and flew somewhere over the rainbow (or, more likely, a box in someone’s garage) to let its N64 successor take the mantle of representing Nintendo in the console market. With any title arriving late enough in a console’s lifetime to be considered a swansong, I always detail how impressed I am at how visually superior they are compared to games released previously on the same hardware engine. Once again, I’m obliged to belabor this point not only because Super Mario RPG looks spectacular, but also to comment on the specific visual flair that makes it beam with radiance. Whoever at Rare decided to prepare pre-rendered 3D models to then compress them to a poppy, carbonated pixelation deserves some sort of lifetime achievement award for their contributions to gaming. I’d say that it’s the most practical method of innovation that the greater gaming industry implemented in their efforts to precociously emulate that third dimension before the medium was truly prepared for such an undertaking, and Super Mario RPG exhibits as much aesthetic effervescence as the DKC trilogy that popularized them. Still, I must distinguish the differences of intent between these two pre-rendered classics, for Super Mario RPG holds higher ambitions with this specialized SNES aesthetic.

While DKC simply strived to aerate the flat, garden-variety 16-bit visuals of the system by draping a pinch of photorealism over its graphics, Super Mario RPG uses pre-rendered models and backgrounds to simulate the broad spatial depth of the third dimension as much as humanly possible on hardware that evidently couldn’t cut it. After spending its entire lifespan painstakingly trying to shoot for the moon and chronically collapsing with muddled Mode 7 rotation and the faulty FX Chip that struggled immensely to simulate space battles in Star Fox, I can proudly declare that Super Mario RPG at least directs the SNES’ premature aspirations close to the orbit of gaming’s once-outer limits. Foreground setpieces such as the palm trees and elevated cliffs of “Mushroom Way” protrude from the stages they inhabit with such visual prominence, and the directional range used to maneuver Mario around said setpieces adds a broader circle of movement that supersedes the basic four-triggered directions of the controller’s D-Pad. The way in which Super Mario RPG maintains manipulating our senses is by exhibiting Mario amongst the setpieces through an askew, isometric angle like a convenience store security camera. This way, the game is forced to expose the rounded elements of its environments while simultaneously honing their sights on Mario without complicating the viewpoint with an unachievable intimate angle we’d commonly find when proper 3D came to fruition. Admittedly, our immersion that comes with warping our perceptions in this fashion is only retained when Mario is traversing through areas of a darker enclosure, such as the mines beneath “Moleville” or the “Forest Maze” that evokes the hazy trajectory of Hyrule’s infamous “Lost Woods.” In areas where the background is lighter, the conspicuous void surrounding the perimeter presents an incongruous clash of visual details. The various towns scattered around the kingdom especially look like their society is suspended in an ether that exists somewhere even beyond that of “Star World.” Ironically, the Super Mario RPG successor that would emphasize paper-thin aesthetics maintained a stronger visual cohesion in its environments, and every foreground piece of that game looked like it was sculpted by an elementary schooler in art class. Still, it’s so astonishing how competently something so advanced is running on this system, almost as if the game was actually released for a console hypothetically wedged between the last hurrah for the norm of 2D pixels and the advent of polygonal practices. Upon realizing that this console did exist in the shape of the abhorrent Virtual Boy, I retract my statement–but I hope you still understand the sentiment.

Sadly, more complications arise regarding Super Mario RPG’s peculiar presentational formula other than consistent visual discordance. It should be noted that Nintendo is not the one tackling Mario’s debut venture into this uncharted genre realm, but has commissioned Square to pop their mascot’s RPG cherry–undoubtedly a sensible choice. They evidently trusted that this third-party developer would propel Mario out of an inexperienced amateurishness with the RPG construct, given their extraordinary output on the same system and their overall synonymity with the genre alone. Still, one aspect of translating Mario’s properties to a more methodical mechanical domain is that he still had to retain some semblance of his fundamental platformer buoyancy–unlike the brooding protagonists of their original RPG IPs who probably perceive lifting oneself off one’s feet momentarily to be a barbaric, undignified display. To appease Nintendo in what they probably thought would be Square’s one developmental blind spot, they’ve ensured that jumping would be as second nature to Mario here as it is in his platformer comfort zone. The overworld outside of the turn-based combat utilizes Mario’s frog-like hopping prowess to great effect, and not just to entertain annoying fans at their behest, like harassing Jaleel White to utter his “did I do that?!” catchphrase. Every area will feature wooden treasure chests suspended in midair, located low enough off the ground for Mario to impact them with his skull and unlock their secrets as a result, exactly in the same fashion as a standard Super Mario Bros. title. Yellow tiles with those questionably-sentient oval eyes that appear all over the Mushroom Kingdom will often move on their own once Mario plants his feet upon them; the bounce physics of the trampolines will propel Mario sky-high, and Mario can shoot himself out of a cannon while hiking through the steep “Land’s End” canyon.

Highlighting Mario’s god-given talent for aerodynamics are the assorted minigames discovered between various plot milestones. I’d say that the barrel balancing act in the river rapids or playing “whack-a-goomba” with the soles of Mario’s shoes in the “Pipe Vault” sewers complement Mario’s Air Jordan abilities the best, but that might be because the minecart minigame is so calamitously fast or because struggling to identify the rhythmic sequence during the Yoshi cookie race exposed my embarrassing whiteness. Personally, the problems pertaining to Mario’s platforming here are much more jarring in sections that aren’t optional. Hopping across an army of red paratroopas to ascend a particularly lofty cliff in “Land’s End” comes to mind, or perhaps climbing the series of fairytale beanstalks in the sky afterwards revealed some serious incongruities. No, the most egregious example of Super Mario RPG misstepping (no pun intended) Mario’s platforming capabilities is two separate jumping-intensive gauntlets located at the end of Bowser’s Castle on its late-game reentry. Giving the player a mere ten chances to survive this cavalcade of constant miscalculations due to the lack of a defined line of sight between Mario and the platforms was reminiscent of when a certain green witch from a future N64 title put me through the wringer in her foreboding fortress, and that bitch was explicitly trolling me. Isometric angles are all fine and dandy when it comes to fleshing out the visuals, but practically executing anything in this perspective exposes the lack of proper Euclidean distance that still exists in this proto-3D title.

Fortunately, the game’s focal role-playing combat is solid enough to offset any awkwardness that might occur in the overworld. Displayed as prominently on Nintendo’s banner they sent Square reminding them to keep his innate abilities intact was the wish to maintain Mario’s accessibility in the gameplay department. In my experience, the gameplay of the JRPG genre is not as dense and complicated as their average lengths and epic scales might suggest. Still, the general haughtiness surrounding the genre in the greater sphere of gaming could’ve alienated a sizeable portion of Mario’s typical audience, so Square still had to conjure up some user-friendly variables and integrate them into their bread-and-butter gameplay construct. Arguably the most essential Mario-RPG-centric gameplay component is the ability to mitigate any amount of damage received with an accurately timed press of a button on the controller. In addition to what this mechanic offers on defense, Mario can also chain a combination of attacks together with the same acute timing to dish out a whopping whirlwind of damage to any enemy on the opposite side of the arena. Not only does the opportunity to augment or reduce damage from either point on the offensive or defensive spectrum provide incentive for the player to pay closer attention, but there is something fundamentally more rewarding about how a Mario RPG underlines a greater sense of effort from the player. Even the most devout JRPG enthusiasts have to admit that at the end of the day, turn-based combat does boil down to scrolling through a menu, deciding on a tactic, and then watching the characters act out your command on screen is a rather languid, armchair approach to interactivity. When the outcome of a turn heavily depends on something that requires skill, whether it be a rhythmic block or blunt impact or enacting the necessary steps to engage one of Mario’s special moves, the player should ideally feel far more stimulated by the greater extent of what the game asks from them. It’s a vital component of Super Mario RPG’s distinctive turn-based gameplay, and ostensibly interwoven into its genetic code, considering that its offspring have inherited it. Personally, I think Super Mario RPG should’ve spread its seed around like Genghis Khan so that future JRPGs outside of the Mario circle could’ve adopted this mechanic, for the typical move selection starts to feel really dull after Mario sets such a shining example.

Maybe Mario’s RPG idiosyncrasies never caught on outside of its own sequels because they’re deemed too lenient for the hardcore JRPG purists. Besides the inherent supercilious attitude towards the gaming universe’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse co-opting their precious genre, other aspects of Super Mario RPG might provide evidence for a claim stating that Nintendo’s Italian stallion is watering down the JRPG foundation for the sake of appealing to a lower common denominator. I forgot to mention that oftentimes, when Mario defeats an enemy after fluidly executing a combo chain, a lotus flower will pop out of said enemy that functions to enhance one of Mario’s various attributes, ranging from increasing his attack power or defense to maximizing his health. Honestly, receiving one of these perks did evoke the condescending sensation of getting a gold star for answering a question correctly in class, or being tossed a treat for obeying a command like a dog. In addition to strengthening Mario’s combat attributes through gaining experience points and leveling up, the player must also remember to change Mario’s means of offense and armor by purchasing them at the storefronts mostly located in every town hub. While the base level of proactivity in this frequent outing is obvious, I couldn’t help but notice that every new piece of clothing and the roulette of hammers, shells, and fisticuff appliances were objectively better than what I already had equipped in every way possible, with no nuance to consider. While some aspects of Super Mario RPG’s role-playing mechanics are somewhat shallow or overly generous, they refrain from turning Mario’s JRPG debut into an effortless experience. Eventually, at a turning point in progression after Mario collects the fourth star, the difficulty curve ratchets up exponentially. Suddenly, Mario will encounter enemies that dish out deadly damage in the hundreds, and sometimes said damage is in the form of every conceivable elemental spell found in the grimoire. Bosses featured far later in the game also cheekily bombard Mario with the aforementioned wide gamut of spells with two consecutive turns, a common tendency that most 16-bit RPGs employ that I still find to be an unfair and artificial method of raising the stakes of difficulty. Super Mario RPG may not offer a complex build system and customize Mario to fit their specific battle inclinations, but if they decide to adopt a frugal attitude with their coin currency and treat every town they pass by like a pit stop to sleep at a motel and nothing more, the game will unleash enough punishment over the next step of their journey to make them regret their negligence.

Super Mario RPG’s rude awakening of a difficulty spike also corresponds exactly with another one of the game’s properties: its pacing. Out of the two JRPG series that spawned from Super Mario RPG’s ovaries, its firstborn, Paper Mario, has inherited the progression structure of using the persistent star-collecting premise construct to divide itself into seven chapters that focus on acquiring one of the sacred MacGuffins per chapter. However, Paper Mario seems to have a far better understanding of organization because it was always crystal clear how a subarc was segmented based on a consistent thematic tone for the setting(s) and how its individual falling action always culminated in achieving a star as its primary milestone. There must be some recessive traits floating around in this gaming gene pool; for now, I know where the Mario & Luigi series gets its attention-deficit-addled pacing from. Still, the rate of erraticism differs when it's halved at the exact point where the heat of the turn-based action will start to sting Mario. The overarching issue with the first three stars is that once the objective is established, it’s over before there is any window of opportunity for it to marinate. Mario will kick the gang of Shy Guys and their springy switchblade leader out of the chancellor’s quarters inside the kingdom’s capital castle, halt the archer Bowyer from downpouring arrows onto those who are already frazzled enough attempting to navigate through the Forest Maze, and rescue a helpless little mole from becoming the victim of a mine collapse when some scoundrel is setting off Bob-ombs to erode the interior lickity split and still have time to compose a sonata for Toadofsky at Tadpole Pond. I was relieved when the arc of rescuing Princess Peach (*sigh*, TOADSTOOL) from her new royal captor, Booster, a silver-spooned manchild whose appalling hygienic status makes Wario look marvelously metrosexual by comparison, because it included several different scenes relating to the overarching goal of preventing her from a lifetime of doomed matrimony to this disgusting diva. However, once the princess is procured, the overarching narrative jolts itself awake and reminds Mario that his next star is located in the sublime core of a starry meteor situated on the same island. Shouldn’t completing the objective with the greater screen presence serve as the milestone moment so it doesn’t feel like an arbitrary detour in the grand scheme of the story? With every subsequent star that follows, the game seems to make the mistake of meandering with every milestone achievement. Both the fifth and sixth stars wind up getting stolen by one of Smithy’s goons after lulling the player into believing they’ve bested the boss that possessed the star originally. Instead of being amused by the game referencing the colorful quintet of Power Rangers and twisting their moral righteousness to the side of scum and villainy with the Axem Rangers, I was rather frustrated that the game was blue-balling my sense of accomplishment once again. The last subarc could’ve EASILY been split in half between Bowser’s Castle and Smithy’s industrial factory because both are elongated feats of endurance individually. Coupled together, the game’s climax is a protracted trudge. With the overarching goal constantly deviating or getting annexed to a diversion of evidently greater significance, there is an unnerving sense of incomplete disillusionment felt with what should be partitioned fulfillment.

Then, I realized something extremely important to consider when distinguishing how Super Mario RPG conducts its overarching star-searching concept versus how Paper Mario chooses to present it. While Paper Mario is completely driven by its core concept, it is but a facilitator for conflict in Super Mario RPG that allows for each character to fulfill their own overarching goals. The multiple characters of high relevance in question are yet another Mario RPG staple in the “partner characters.” However, instead of accumulating a coalition of Mushroom Kingdom enemies with external quirks to signify their distinctiveness as standalone characters whose arcs tend to fizzle out after their initial introductory chapter, Mario’s team in Super Mario RPG is driven by an arc that sustains relevancy throughout the majority of the game. It also helps that two of Mario’s partners are established Mario characters that have had a requisite billing in his adventures for over a decade at this point. Is Mario having that dream where he’s riding on magic carpets like Aladdin and tossing turnips down the gullets of morbidly obese amphibians again, because Princess Peach (look, old habits die hard, okay) hasn’t collaborated with Mario in this fashion since Super Mario Bros. 2? Booster must’ve been so repulsive that it sparked an epiphany in the princess, causing her to realize that her damsel-in-distress schtick is quite burdensome on her mustachioed, blue-collar savior. To compensate Mario for his blistering escapades to ensure her well-being at a rate of what must seem like every week, Princess Toadstool has decided that she isn’t content with continuing to pick flowers from her home garden and sneaks away from her estate to aid Mario on his quest as a permanent partner. At first, I was a bit skeptical at first of what Peach could offer Mario, only because I let her lower offensive output distract me from her impeccable healing abilities that soon made her an invaluable asset on my team. While Peach’s (temporary) growth arc is implied by the contextual clues backing her actions, Bowser’s reasons for fraternizing with his eternal enemy Mario are much clearer. The big lug has quite literally become a king without a castle, and this rudderless position has shown Bowser a great deal of humility, besides just letting his guard down around Mario and working together to repossess his rightful throne. Seeing the snarling brute in such a state of insecurity exposes several vulnerable characteristics we often don’t see when he’s propped up as a game’s foreboding final boss. His lines of dialogue haven’t quite reached their gold-standard hilarity yet, but this title still marks another first where the King of Koopas is a personable and even, dare I say, likeable character. Should I even detail why having these two as partners spurts subversiveness out the wazoo?

But before the player can marvel at the novelty of seeing both characters by Mario’s side, the plumber’s first crop of partners he makes a pact with are two wholly original characters crafted by the minds at Squaresoft. And when I say original, I don’t mean by one external difference like sunglasses or a mail bag (no offense, Lakilester and Parakarry). Mallow and Geno are by no means supplementary characters in the slightest. Truthfully, I’d consider them to be the lifeblood of this particular title, and this isn’t solely because they’ve both been condemned to its exclusivity. To expound on this stance, how many Mario RPG partners are treated to a character arc that runs parallel to the majority of the main quest? When Mario finds poor Mallow attempting to retrieve his precious frog coin from the petty thief Croco in the rural outskirts of the Mushroom Kingdom, he’s nothing but a timid little whelp always on the verge of crying. A prime source of the perpetual waterworks is an identity crisis, believing himself to be one of the frogs, or at least a tadpole, that he grew up around under the guardianship of Frogfucius, despite his pitiful jumping capabilities and the fact that he looks like his full name should be “Marshmallow.” Before we have time to theorize that he’s covered in benign tumors like John Merrick, it’s revealed that Mario’s new diffident friend is not an unfortunate freak, but an exalted royal prince of the cloud people that reside amongst the skies in a society called Nimbus Land. Not only is Mallow’s discovery of himself and fracturing his frangibility maintain a consistent relevance between six whole stars, but the process of Mallow reclaiming his rightful seat in Nimbus Land’s royal cabinet from a disdainful despot named Valentina encompasses as much time as Mario rescuing Toadstool from Booster. You know, the standard arc for a typical Mario game.

While his character growth is not nearly as dynamic as the partner that precedes him, that does not diminish the impact of Geno in the slightest. In fact, I’ve come to realize that the cosmic being who possessed a Toad child’s wooden doll one night and scaled him to a lifelike size is THE main protagonist of Super Mario RPG, despite him appearing after the first star is retrieved in a game of Mario’s namesake. The sole purpose for Geno’s presence among the mortals of the Mushroom Kingdom is to reinvigorate the “Star Road” that was ruptured when Smithy’s sword Exor plunged itself into Bowser’s domain, and he’s quite gung-ho in his mission to restore this interdimensional bridge between the people and the wish-granting deities up above the clouds. Geno’s all business, but said business is admittedly the primary overarching plot of Super Mario RPG. Suddenly, Geno’s determination revolving around the game’s main quest struck a chord of clarity within me. If everyone in the Mario RPG posse is working with one another to achieve their respective goals and Geno’s clearly revolves around the quest of the highest precedence, then he is the one commanding the operation as a protagonist would. Hell, the game’s falling action after defeating Smithy and before the credits roll sees the heavenly spirit leave Geno’s wooden body, reducing him to his lifeless existence as a doll to put a bittersweet period on the quest’s completion. Who's to say that Mario wouldn’t have returned to the Mushroom Kingdom capital to kick his feet back and enjoy a piece of Peach’s cake (no innuendo here, laughably) once she was in good hands again if Geno wasn’t around to keep him focused on more substantial priorities? Hey, if you can actually manage to communicate an intelligible refutation to this statement instead of just pantomiming like always, I’ll retract my theory, Mario. I always figured the cult status behind Geno was attributed to his mystique, or maybe his glass cannon battle attributes. Now, I realize that he’s a bona fide video game hero whose unending hiatus after his one-and-done adventure keeps people clamoring for more. Have I become one of his fanboys who will settle for an appearance in Super Smash Bros. to get my Geno fix? Perhaps, but only if Mallow joins him in some capacity. It’s only fair.

Normally, I wouldn’t compare a video game to its sequels because of the inherent advantages of working off an expanding template with more advanced technology. In the case of Super Mario RPG, however, the properties of Paper Mario (and Mario & Luigi, to a much lesser extent) are so heavily ingrained into my gamer brain that I can’t help but base my assessment of their birth mother off of the shared beauty marks that they’ve inherited. Given that it was unlikely that Super Mario RPG would eclipse either Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi in my mind as the pinnacle Mario RPG experience, but being fully aware of its impact and influence, my approach was to critique the Mario RPG genesis point with as much diplomacy and respect as possible. However, this disposition became harder to maintain when the game was disrespecting me by causing so much conflict with my depth perception, or lack thereof, whenever it overconfidently crossed a technical boundary with Mario’s mismanaged platforming. The star collecting process isn’t nearly as riveting, and I much prefer the streamlined, maximum number of teen digits of damage as opposed to a double-dose onslaught of pain in the hundreds like a typical JRPG would dole out. Still, the things that I came to admire and adore about Super Mario RPG were the things that didn’t transfer over to its offspring, such as relegating Mario and his cyclical goal of saving the princess to a seat in coach rather than flying the plot plane as its pilot. Not only do its bits of distinction preserve its intrigue amongst its children, but the fact that only two successors have adopted its specific formula for a Mario-brand JRPG has incidentally aged Super Mario RPG like a classy bottle of Glenlivet. If you’re still upset that Paper Mario has lost its heart and soul and yearn to play other games that share the first two’s similarities, giving Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars a whirl comes recommended…for the most part.