StarTropics: C-Island

     StarTropics 2: Zoda's Revenge flopped as a game, doing even worse than the first game, StarTropics. Besides the fact that it was just plain worse than the first, it was released in the days when the SNES was new, and shredding the competition in the market place. But besides the SNES trouble, why wasn't this game like the original?
     Although the game reflected the original in many ways, and brought new, great things to the short-lived series, Zoda's Revenge lacked something that StarTropics seemed to have. Perhaps that was due to G. Takeda(writer and director of StarTropics), leaving the game in the hands of NOA to produce and distribute, thus this game was not released in Japan either.
     Besides the downfall of the game, it had some good points, such as the wonderfully frustrating new play control. Mike could now walk and attack diagonally, as well as jump forward in any direction, even if he had nothing to jump over. This new jumping system was good, but the fact that you could control Mike in the air led to many drownings. This jumping also made tile-hopping very unfun.. it just wasn't like the original.
     Another bad, bad, bad thing they did to Zoda's Revenge was changing the sound system. Although the new sound-style produced nice sounding music, it gave us players very, very annoying sound effects. Everthing seemed to sound like a crunch or a ding sound.
     The enemies in Zoda's Revenge were really unimaginative. Their names sucked, and they sucked. Most were just annoying little guys that ran at you or shot at you(with that annoying ding sound). The bosses, however, were creative, tough, and fun. One of the few things they did right in this game was the bosses.
     So, at the end of all this, I reccomend this game to anyone willing to give it a chance. Fist-time players seem to like it more than returning StarTropics players. But if you're a true StarTropics fan, you'll play it through, and maybe even like it a little. Go ahead, at least try it.