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yamamanamaILOVEU
This game reminds me of Fantasy Zone, actually. Just imagine the programmers downing acid and listening to too much Laotian pop.
The review is long and has lots of pictures.
As a kid, I never got the chance to play this game but I did see advertisements in GamePro for it.
Sometimes you can hit A or B or C and get somewhere but not here. Press start.
Planet Flora: Your standard trippy lush forest planet, complete with weird ferns, plants with globular flowers, owl-galeaspid hybrids, and bushes with monsters (specifically, some kind of rabbit) hiding in them. Yes, the rest of the game is every as lovely as this level. By the way, I do believe this background was used in a Sonic hack. The boss is a snake in a (someone else's observation) Hollywood Squares style thing. After beating the boss, you fly off a thing and get a height bonus, or you can just not care about points, walk off the edge, and get nothing.
Dark Woods: It's like the first level, with a dark part that can be a pain, along with some galeaspid owls and skinks. No boss. Sorry. It does have a glowy tree that you can ram in to to bring light back for a moment. And the dark part is pretty short. Light returns with some kind of columbary or columbarium.
Boss Arena: Riho is coming! Hey, that's the guy from the intro. This is the boss of Flora. He’s this wizard with a parasite on his back that makes it rain crystals and shoots whirlwinds at you. Beating him requires knocking the parasite off of him and then grabbing the parasite. In other words, it's a boss with actual STRATEGY, but not as much strategy as the other ones. You'll have to forgive me for that one, it's not really much strategy but I was playing Felix the Cat before I played this. When you beat him, he makes it rain leaves and you go off into space and land on
Planet Undertow: You spend most of this level swimming. It's something you have to get used to, but at least it's nothing like the swimming mechanics in every 3D game that isn't Majora's Mask (I could never finish Donkey Kong 64, you know, and it's all because of one boss and some swimming minigames. And another boss. And Beaver Bother). Ristar can breathe indefinitely, and better yet, the water gets darker as he swims deeper. Clool! There are sunfish, flying fish, lobsters, and squidbert, along with spiky coral. The boss is a wave that dumps jellyfish and fish on you. PATHETICALLY EASY.
Lost Palace: It's an underwater maze. As expected from Planet Undertow. Enemies include these nautilus things, parasitic starfish, idols that spawn frogs and pregnant seahorses.
Boss Arena: Ohsat Attack! There are a bunch of stone cages in the background that seem to be unimportantant when you arrive at the arena. He's a hammerhead that rams you and spawns sea life and makes stones rain from the heavens. You have to hit him until he starts bouncing around and uncorks the floor.
Planet Scorch: This level opens up with, a volcano erupting and a rain of flaming chunks of rock. It only gets worse from here, with a part where you have to throw a statue of yourself into trap cages, air raid sirens and rising flames, vultures that drop you in the fire. Thankfully, it's short and has good music. The boss is sort of like that game Simon, except you get burninated if you mess up. So don't mess up. You have the memory span of a goldfish if you do. So fun fact: Ristar has a unique idle animation for each planet.
Under Factory: It's easier. But not much easier. Remember: Let the enemies detonate their bombs.
Boss Arena: Adahan Fall! He starts out by shooting his fists at you and making mud waves. Once you hit him twice, he causes the ground to fall away and you have to hit him while falling. After that, repeat once.
Planet Sonata: This is the famed music-based world. In this level, you have to get a metronome past a series of obstacles and enemies and to a bird. The boss is three drinky birds.
Dance Dance!!: It's rather bizarre. There are guitars that squash you, fat hens in tutus that throw their own children at you, drums you can bounce on, and horns that toot if you hit them in the right way.
Boss Battle: Awaueck Sing! It's a giant bird that knocks the conductor bird off his perch and makes the music and background distorted and crappy sounding. Also, note that there are birds in the orchestra. It took me a year to notice them. His defeat leads to a victory for good music everywhere and...
Planet Freon: This is an ice level, although a very trippy and surreal one. Though it's nothing like Sonata, it's still very cool (sorry). Like Ice Cap Zone, you ski down. Unlike Ice Cap, you do not crash into the wall. The boss is a snowball fight with a gray thing. You can tell the game was made in Japan because there's aurora borealis.
Splash Snow: It's very frustrating. Nice music, though. It's watery and there are porcupine fish and other fish. There's a snowman too. With a top hat. Awesome! And frog statues. That alone prevents Freon from being demoted from planet status twice.
Boss Arena: Itamor Lunch! You have to feed this snowman blob thingy pizzas (someone says it's curry and the boss is a cat in Japan that can't handle spicy food, a Japanese pun or joke or something that was lost on us Americans). Unfortunately, he throws blocks of tomato sauce at you and breathes ice. He's quite difficult.
Planet Automaton: It's a mechanical type level with robot slinkies and see-saw things. Being near the end of the game, it is quite hard. The boss is kind of like Robotnik in Metropolis Zone. It can be irritating, depending on what formation it uses. The music here was made by a different composer.
Brain Maze: It's a maze. Well, actually, it's a series of rooms with different puzzles to solve and you can't get lost, which is nice. One of the rooms features the only moving spinner in Ristar. If you make it to the top, you get a 1-up as your reward. Some reward, huh? The Brain Maze also features a robot you have to push backwards into a wall and a robot that bounces around the room like it's on amphetamines that's the closest thing you'll ever see to a second stage boss.
Boss Arena: Uranum Power! When you see the guy throw a screw on the TV, jump out of the way. You knock the guy down while he uses power fist and Hadoukens and throws various bits of equipment at you and then you have to make the crane hit him.
Greedy's Ship: Well, that was easy... a little too easy, if you ask me. There's a thing following you. Hmm.
BOSS: Ok, no, it's not the final boss. It's a snake robot that shoots all sorts of crap at you and launches boomerangs from his tail. He's not hard, really. Just beat it until the shield stops working and the brain guy goes out to fix it and then hit the brain guy.
Greedy!!!!!: He's not THAT hard. He can teleport around and throw enemies at you and shoot lightning from a cannon and maybe create a black hole that kills you instantly. Originally, I mistakenly said that the snake was harder, but no, the snake is really easy, this guy will probably kill you a couple of times until you figure out how to avoid the black hole or just stop him from using it.
HAHAHA. I never noticed that before. If you're wondering about the inconstancy in the score, I played through the game again recently to grab screenshots from the ending.
Did you notice the tail?
That's Ristar's dad and from the size of him, he is not long for this universe.
THE END. The ending is sligtly different in the Japanese version. Also, the intro text isn't there and we get a glimpse of the Star Goddess, the boss of Freon is a cat instead of an ice blob thing, Ristar is smiling in his normal stance, the enemies also look angrier, the bat things in Flora are flying squirrels, the dancing birds have breasts despite not being mammals, the planets have different names which are rearranged and slightly altered English words, you can change the color of Greedy's castle's walls with a password.
Here are all the bonus stage treasures.
The verdict: it's one of the best platformers of all time. Play it.
Sooooooo... Well, what I did in GFF's downtime:
Wednesday: Nothing impressive. I had a conversation with a friend about the story I'm working on.
Thursday: Went to Cambridge for a performance that was somehow related to Christmas in the middle ages, though I'm still having trouble figuring out what a donkey who wanted to be the king of everything has to do with Christmas. Oh well. There was a dagron too. He was sworded, but St. George was sworded too to make up for it. Sanders Theatre has the world's worst seating plan. It's impossible to get by if someone is sitting in the seat.
Today: Not much. I got the first 3 episodes of Wolf's Rain. And I procrastinated on the next game. You'll see when I get there.
This game reminds me of Fantasy Zone, actually. Just imagine the programmers downing acid and listening to too much Laotian pop.
The review is long and has lots of pictures.
As a kid, I never got the chance to play this game but I did see advertisements in GamePro for it.
Sometimes you can hit A or B or C and get somewhere but not here. Press start.
Planet Flora: Your standard trippy lush forest planet, complete with weird ferns, plants with globular flowers, owl-galeaspid hybrids, and bushes with monsters (specifically, some kind of rabbit) hiding in them. Yes, the rest of the game is every as lovely as this level. By the way, I do believe this background was used in a Sonic hack. The boss is a snake in a (someone else's observation) Hollywood Squares style thing. After beating the boss, you fly off a thing and get a height bonus, or you can just not care about points, walk off the edge, and get nothing.
Dark Woods: It's like the first level, with a dark part that can be a pain, along with some galeaspid owls and skinks. No boss. Sorry. It does have a glowy tree that you can ram in to to bring light back for a moment. And the dark part is pretty short. Light returns with some kind of columbary or columbarium.
Boss Arena: Riho is coming! Hey, that's the guy from the intro. This is the boss of Flora. He’s this wizard with a parasite on his back that makes it rain crystals and shoots whirlwinds at you. Beating him requires knocking the parasite off of him and then grabbing the parasite. In other words, it's a boss with actual STRATEGY, but not as much strategy as the other ones. You'll have to forgive me for that one, it's not really much strategy but I was playing Felix the Cat before I played this. When you beat him, he makes it rain leaves and you go off into space and land on
Planet Undertow: You spend most of this level swimming. It's something you have to get used to, but at least it's nothing like the swimming mechanics in every 3D game that isn't Majora's Mask (I could never finish Donkey Kong 64, you know, and it's all because of one boss and some swimming minigames. And another boss. And Beaver Bother). Ristar can breathe indefinitely, and better yet, the water gets darker as he swims deeper. Clool! There are sunfish, flying fish, lobsters, and squidbert, along with spiky coral. The boss is a wave that dumps jellyfish and fish on you. PATHETICALLY EASY.
Lost Palace: It's an underwater maze. As expected from Planet Undertow. Enemies include these nautilus things, parasitic starfish, idols that spawn frogs and pregnant seahorses.
Boss Arena: Ohsat Attack! There are a bunch of stone cages in the background that seem to be unimportantant when you arrive at the arena. He's a hammerhead that rams you and spawns sea life and makes stones rain from the heavens. You have to hit him until he starts bouncing around and uncorks the floor.
Planet Scorch: This level opens up with, a volcano erupting and a rain of flaming chunks of rock. It only gets worse from here, with a part where you have to throw a statue of yourself into trap cages, air raid sirens and rising flames, vultures that drop you in the fire. Thankfully, it's short and has good music. The boss is sort of like that game Simon, except you get burninated if you mess up. So don't mess up. You have the memory span of a goldfish if you do. So fun fact: Ristar has a unique idle animation for each planet.
Under Factory: It's easier. But not much easier. Remember: Let the enemies detonate their bombs.
Boss Arena: Adahan Fall! He starts out by shooting his fists at you and making mud waves. Once you hit him twice, he causes the ground to fall away and you have to hit him while falling. After that, repeat once.
Planet Sonata: This is the famed music-based world. In this level, you have to get a metronome past a series of obstacles and enemies and to a bird. The boss is three drinky birds.
Dance Dance!!: It's rather bizarre. There are guitars that squash you, fat hens in tutus that throw their own children at you, drums you can bounce on, and horns that toot if you hit them in the right way.
Boss Battle: Awaueck Sing! It's a giant bird that knocks the conductor bird off his perch and makes the music and background distorted and crappy sounding. Also, note that there are birds in the orchestra. It took me a year to notice them. His defeat leads to a victory for good music everywhere and...
Planet Freon: This is an ice level, although a very trippy and surreal one. Though it's nothing like Sonata, it's still very cool (sorry). Like Ice Cap Zone, you ski down. Unlike Ice Cap, you do not crash into the wall. The boss is a snowball fight with a gray thing. You can tell the game was made in Japan because there's aurora borealis.
Splash Snow: It's very frustrating. Nice music, though. It's watery and there are porcupine fish and other fish. There's a snowman too. With a top hat. Awesome! And frog statues. That alone prevents Freon from being demoted from planet status twice.
Boss Arena: Itamor Lunch! You have to feed this snowman blob thingy pizzas (someone says it's curry and the boss is a cat in Japan that can't handle spicy food, a Japanese pun or joke or something that was lost on us Americans). Unfortunately, he throws blocks of tomato sauce at you and breathes ice. He's quite difficult.
Planet Automaton: It's a mechanical type level with robot slinkies and see-saw things. Being near the end of the game, it is quite hard. The boss is kind of like Robotnik in Metropolis Zone. It can be irritating, depending on what formation it uses. The music here was made by a different composer.
Brain Maze: It's a maze. Well, actually, it's a series of rooms with different puzzles to solve and you can't get lost, which is nice. One of the rooms features the only moving spinner in Ristar. If you make it to the top, you get a 1-up as your reward. Some reward, huh? The Brain Maze also features a robot you have to push backwards into a wall and a robot that bounces around the room like it's on amphetamines that's the closest thing you'll ever see to a second stage boss.
Boss Arena: Uranum Power! When you see the guy throw a screw on the TV, jump out of the way. You knock the guy down while he uses power fist and Hadoukens and throws various bits of equipment at you and then you have to make the crane hit him.
Greedy's Ship: Well, that was easy... a little too easy, if you ask me. There's a thing following you. Hmm.
BOSS: Ok, no, it's not the final boss. It's a snake robot that shoots all sorts of crap at you and launches boomerangs from his tail. He's not hard, really. Just beat it until the shield stops working and the brain guy goes out to fix it and then hit the brain guy.
Greedy!!!!!: He's not THAT hard. He can teleport around and throw enemies at you and shoot lightning from a cannon and maybe create a black hole that kills you instantly. Originally, I mistakenly said that the snake was harder, but no, the snake is really easy, this guy will probably kill you a couple of times until you figure out how to avoid the black hole or just stop him from using it.
HAHAHA. I never noticed that before. If you're wondering about the inconstancy in the score, I played through the game again recently to grab screenshots from the ending.
Did you notice the tail?
That's Ristar's dad and from the size of him, he is not long for this universe.
THE END. The ending is sligtly different in the Japanese version. Also, the intro text isn't there and we get a glimpse of the Star Goddess, the boss of Freon is a cat instead of an ice blob thing, Ristar is smiling in his normal stance, the enemies also look angrier, the bat things in Flora are flying squirrels, the dancing birds have breasts despite not being mammals, the planets have different names which are rearranged and slightly altered English words, you can change the color of Greedy's castle's walls with a password.
Here are all the bonus stage treasures.
The verdict: it's one of the best platformers of all time. Play it.
Sooooooo... Well, what I did in GFF's downtime:
Wednesday: Nothing impressive. I had a conversation with a friend about the story I'm working on.
Thursday: Went to Cambridge for a performance that was somehow related to Christmas in the middle ages, though I'm still having trouble figuring out what a donkey who wanted to be the king of everything has to do with Christmas. Oh well. There was a dagron too. He was sworded, but St. George was sworded too to make up for it. Sanders Theatre has the world's worst seating plan. It's impossible to get by if someone is sitting in the seat.
Today: Not much. I got the first 3 episodes of Wolf's Rain. And I procrastinated on the next game. You'll see when I get there.
