Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: October 1995

Amazingly enough, as the mid-90s approached, Nintendo seemed to be distancing itself from its flagship character. Though Super Mario World was followed by several Mario-themed spinoffs like Super Mario Kart and Mario Paint, a direct sequel to World was not immediately forthcoming. As a kid I wondered if Nintendo wasn't abandoning Mario. When Nintendo of America introduced its edgier "Play It Loud" advertising campaign in 1994, Mario seemed to all but disappear from the company's portfolio, with glitzier franchises like Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct suddenly monopolizing the headlines.

In this climate, Yoshi's Island was not the subject of a grand unveiling, nor was it hyped by any of the video game magazines of the period. My first notice of it was a tiny picture of the Baby Mario sprite riding Yoshi in a collage of upcoming SNES games in the January 1995 Nintendo Power. I don't believe any actual mention of the game was made in that issue, so it left me wondering intently as to whether a new Mario might not be on the horizon.

Little notice was attracted when Yoshi's Island was finally revealed. People didn't know what to think. A Mario game where you don't control Mario, but rather Yoshi carrying a baby version of Mario? "Simplistic," hand-drawn graphics in the midst of the CGI craze started by Donkey Kong Country? Quickly the game was shoved to the back pages in favor of what were perceived as more graphically-advanced 16 and 32 bit games.

For these reasons I was reluctant to purchase Yoshi's Island upon its release. It didn't seem like a "real" Mario game, and the graphics weren't all that impressive in magazine stills. I bought it a few months after its debut almost as an afterthought, but boy was I glad when I finally did.

Yoshi's Island indeed isn't truly a follow-up to Super Mario World(the Japanese version doesn't even include SMW in the title), but forges its own path. It establishes its own set of basic mechanics, centered around the making of eggs which Yoshi can use to defeat enemies and solve puzzles. Yoshi never dies(unless he falls off a cliff), but when he is hit he loses Baby Mario and precious seconds off the timer. It goes without saying that the controls, which first introduced Yoshi's now-famous butt-stomp and flutter-jump, are tight and smooth and the level design is as clever as can be. The hand-drawn worlds appear as if they have literally been scribbled with crayons, and are sprawling, colorful, and bursting with life and charm-- much of which is made possible by the powerful Super FX2 chip built into the cartridge, which allows for advanced sprite handling capabilities termed by Nintendo in advertisements as "Morphmation."

Though the game generally received good reviews, a few outlets viciously criticized it for what were termed as "simplistic" or "childish" graphics. Game Players magazine in particular wrote an infamous critique which rated it in the 60s out of a scale of 100 primarily for its graphical style. Many game reviewers were put off by the lack of computer-modeled sprites or 3D polygons, particularly given the game's use of the Super FX2 chip. Those reviewers have been proven fools over time, and many of them are now among the very people who include it in their various "Best Games of All Time" lists. Yoshi's Island indeed is one of those rare games that has actually accumulated more respect and adulation in the years following its release than it received in its own era.

Similar to what Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 did with Wario, Yoshi's Island also spawned a new series of platformer games based exclusively around the Yoshi character. This series has spanned several systems, including the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. Nintendo would even do a makeover of its Japanese puzzle game Panel de Pon with Yoshi's Island assets and publish it for Super Nintendo in North America as Tetris Attack in 1996. Just like with all of its franchises, Nintendo has without a doubt gotten its money's worth with Yoshi, Baby Mario and company.

Altogether Yoshi's Island oozes with that trademark Nintendo ingenuity and charm. It is one of the most purely fun and original platformers ever created and puts its flashier contemporaries, such as Donkey Kong Country and Sonic the Hedgehog, to shame. It is in fact rumored that Shigeru Miyamoto specifically settled upon the "childish" art style because his bosses were ordering him to use that same inhuman, cookie-cutter CGI look which Rare used for Donkey Kong Country. Miyamoto then ruffled more than a few feathers when he stated publicly that DKC proved gamers will settle for mediocre gameplay as long as the graphics are nice. He has been proven correct over time, as Yoshi's Island, though not as popular upon its release, has withstood the test of time far better than Donkey Kong Country, and is recognized today as residing in a higher echelon of quality than most every 2D platformer that has come either before or after. It is truly one of the greatest Super Nintendo games ever made.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

Publisher: Square Soft
Developer: Square
Release Date: October 1992

Before Final Fantasy VII was released in 1997, Japanese-style RPGs were almost non-existent in North America. The Super Famicom had possibly the most prolific RPG lineup in gaming history, yet only a tiny fraction of them made it out of Japan. Being a rabid fan of the genre when I was a kid, it was a frustrating task to find games, and when you did, you developed an appreciation for them no matter how terrible they were. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is the kind of game which tests the boundaries of even that fanaticism.

Mystic Quest is a beginner's RPG in every sense of the word, designed specifically with "dumb" western players in mind. Everything about it is agonizingly simplistic, from the linear map screen, to the battle system, to the item management, to the primitive graphics and sound. It holds your hand throughout and altogether reeks of being a low-rent production. Not that the game isn't still soundly assembled, but for the serious RPG fan it is nothing more than a forgettable diversion.

After being hooked on the groundbreaking Final Fantasy II, I was excited to discover Mystic Quest, but was very disappointed once I actually got to play it. Beyond residing in the same genre, the game overall bears minimal resemblance to the franchise it's named for. Of course this was back when Square used to slap the Final Fantasy name on just about everything they released in the US, whether it was a Seiken Densetsu game or a SaGa game, so one shouldn't have been surprised.

Mystic Quest does hold a distinction as being one of the few, if not the only, Japanese-produced, turn-based RPG ever to be released in America first-- it would come to Japan about a year afterward as Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest. This was back when it was considered experimental to bring J-RPGs to the US, and Square probably felt they needed a tool to help ease American gamers into the genre. From that point of view, the game does what it sets out to accomplish. As to whether those new RPG gamers ever actually wanted to play another RPG again afterward is another matter entirely.

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10 most memorable SNES title songs

10. E.V.O. Search for Eden (Enix, 1993)

A serene, string-laden song perfectly suited for a game about the vicissitudes of Mother Nature.



9. NFL QB Club 96 (Acclaim, 1995)

When you think of music in SNES football games, you usually think of shoddy production with muffled instrumentation. That wasn't the case here.



8. The Lost Vikings (Interplay, 1993)

Very nice instrumentation and voice samples. This was one of those multi-platform games that truly took advantage of the Super Nintendo's audio capabilities and thus sounded exponentially better than the Genesis version.

Radical Psycho Machine (RPM) Racing

Publisher: Interplay
Developer: Silicon & Synapse
Release Date: November 1991

RPM Racing is a somewhat obscure early SNES racer most easily compared to the popular NES game R.C. Pro Am. Based on the 1985 Commodore 64 title Racing Destruction Set, it was the first game ever developed by Blizzard, which at the time was known as Silicon & Synapse. It was also the first American-developed SNES game.

RPM is a fairly basic isometric-view racing game. You choose from three cars and may upgrade them in a shop area between races. Mines, nitro, and oil slicks may be purchased and used as well. There are over 100 tracks, with some variety as to surfaces, such as pavement, dirt, and ice. The basic goal is to finish first in each race to earn money for car upgrades and for purchasing entry to more lucrative races and competitive classes. Also included are a track editor and a two-player mode.

Technically, RPM Racing is most notable for being one of a handful of games to use the Super Nintendo's high-resolution graphics mode, and the only one to use it exclusively in-game. This allowed for sharper, more detailed visuals, but sacrificed color, as the Super NES could only show 16 colors in that mode. It altogether made for a very bland-looking game compared to other titles of the SNES launch period which featured stunning(at the time) 256-color graphics.

A sequel to RPM Racing was developed and eventually released as Rock N Roll Racing in 1993. The latter game did not use the high-resolution mode, and featured far more color and personality, along with licensed music tracks, and was distinctly more popular than its predecessor.

XBAND Video Game Modem

Produced by: Catapult Entertainment
Release Date: November 1994

XBAND was an interesting device made by a company called Catapult Entertainment operating out of Cupertino, CA. It basically allowed you to play a handful of popular SNES games and chat over a dial-up connection with other human players. Even though it had a limited reach, many people consider it the forerunner of today's online console services.

I purchased one of these beauties for $19.95 at Blockbuster Video, which was pushing them hard at the time(1995). The service operated from from late 1994 through early 1997, and besides the price of the modem, you paid Catapult $4.95 a month for a limited number of connections to their network, or you could break the bank at $9.95 and go for unlimited connections. The extra five dollars was worth it for any serious gamer.

Generally you played only against other people in your area code, as long-distance fees were required otherwise. Because of this there would often be a considerable wait until someone with your game connected to the network, particularly if you were playing a game few people had like Doom. If you lived in a rural area, sometimes there would be no players available at all. I only knew of one other kid personally who had an XBAND, but there was a core group of local players who you could usually count on to be active most nights. A sense of community would develop among this core, which would quickly ostracize anyone who developed a reputation for "cheesy" play or for "pulling" from games, the latter of which was a frequent problem that was never adequately addressed by Catapult.

Besides gaming, the service also offered limited email functionality-- in fact my first email address was via an X-Band modem, as my family didn't own a computer at the time. Also there were a couple of daily newsletters which were mostly filler, but which didn't necessarily feel that way when you were a kid. Tournaments and rankings existed as well, but I was never good enough to do very well with those.

The complete list of games compatible with the device was:

• Doom
• Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball
• Kirby's Avalanche
• Killer Instinct
• Madden NFL 95
• Madden NFL 96
• Mortal Kombat II
• Mortal Kombat 3
• NBA Jam TE
• NHL 95
• NHL 96
• Super Mario Kart
• Super Street Fighter II
• WeaponLord

As you can see, the biggest problem with the service was compatibility. The only games that were developed specifically with the XBAND in mind were Namco's fighting game WeaponLord and Midway's SNES adaptation of Doom. Of the two, WeaponLord was the only one that had XBAND compatibility advertised on the box. The remainder of the compatible games were reverse-engineered by Catapult to work with the device. Even worse, the list above was not even the lineup of games available from the beginning-- the original slate was even more modest, and popular games like Super Mario Kart and Kirby's Avalanche were not playable until much later in the device's life.

XBAND died in early 1997, a victim of the internet boom and the passing of the 16-bit era, and Catapult faded from the limelight shortly thereafter. My time with the service had long passed by then. The games I had played primarily were Killer Instinct, which a lot of people had, and Doom, which virtually no one had-- so I mostly just played Killer Instinct. Unfortunately I was not a big fighting or sports game fan, and eventually tired of the service.

I still remember the local network of players though, and the interesting life revelations of a kid in middle school playing and chatting with people often a lot older than he was. XBAND was my first exposure to concepts like online play, chatting, and e-mail, and even though I only used the service for a relatively short time, it will always be remembered as a special part of my childhood.

Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind

Publisher: Accolade
Developer: Solid State
Release Date: May 1993

This franchise gets a lot of hate in retrospect, mostly because of the 3D sequel that was later released for the Playstation, but the original game was actually not so bad.

While it seems ridiculous now, Bubsy was one of the more hyped 3rd party games of 1993. It appeared in the midst of the "animals with attitude" craze initiated by Sonic the Hedgehog, and was a dyed-in-the-wool imitation, from the smart-aleck main character, to the open, multi-tiered level designs, to the game's pacing and physics. In fact Bubsy was regarded by some onlookers at the time as potentially being the Super Nintendo's answer to Sonic. Though it was later released for Genesis as well, the SNES version came out first because of an Accolade lawsuit with Sega at the time.

I bought into the hype completely and remember purchasing Bubsy as summer vacation began in 1993. Though I was disappointed that it was not quite as fast as Sonic, I wasn't displeased altogether. Bubsy is definitely in the upper echelon of 16-bit platformers. Though it doesn't do anything groundbreaking, the levels are huge and challenging, with lots of items to collect, and the graphics and sound are above average for the period. Bubsy was certainly hefty for a platformer of that era, weighing in at 16 megabits, and was packed with colorful animations and the sound samples of famed voice actor Rob Paulsen to give the Bubsy Bobcat character life. Since at the time the only other games of that size were usually fighting game conversions like Street Fighter II, notice was attracted for that fact alone.

Bubsy generally received positive reviews and was successful enough to merit a disappointing sequel released a year later. Accolade, which had re-branded itself upon Bubsy's launch as offering "Games With Personality," obviously had big things planned and intended the series as a flagship for the company. A cartoon pilot was actually made, a special edition was produced for Windows PC, and a next-generation sequel was licensed for the Atari Jaguar. Poor follow-ups however ultimately doomed the franchise to obscurity as the 32-bit era dawned, but it will always be infamous for the failings of its final installment, Bubsy 3D.

10 most memorable SNES attract sequences

Though not as common on home systems as in the arcades, a skillfully-crafted attract sequence can sell a game, showcase the system's hardware, and get the user fired up to start playing. Here are what we've judged to be the 10 most memorable attract sequences in Super Nintendo history:


10. Kirby Super Star (Nintendo, 1995)

This is a quick and pointless little 18 second blip which dazzles you with Mode 7 effects and an incredibly catchy jingle. It caught my attention at the time, and I still enjoy watching the silly thing today.

Axelay

Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Release Date: September 1992

An original and SNES-exclusive shoot-em-up, Axelay was what you expected from Konami at the time: expertly-designed action with gorgeous graphics and catchy music. What you didn't expect, and what made the game particularly notable, was the graphical warping effect that produced a pseudo 3-D perspective in the vertical-scrolling stages. It's funny to think about now, but this effect blew a lot of people away back then, and was what distinguished the game among the glut of shooters that populated the Super Nintendo's first year.

Disregarding the graphical novelty, Axelay is at its heart an alternating vertical and horizontal scrolling shooter. There are no power-ups-- instead, you choose three weapons at the beginning of each stage which you can switch between in the heat of the action. The pace is typically slow, similar to a game like Gradius or R-Type. There is never an overwhelming number of enemies on screen, but many of the enemies take an abundance of hits, and the action involves quite a bit of terrain-dodging. Furthermore, the weapon-changing mechanic gives the game an air of strategy, as you often need to switch to the correct weapon to navigate certain portions of a level.

Though the Super Nintendo isn't commonly known as a great system for shoot-em-ups, it does feature a small group of them which are of a notably high-quality. If you are a fan of the genre looking for action on your Super NES, Axelay certainly belongs at or near the top of your list.

Brandish

Publisher: Koei
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Release Date: February 1995

Brandish is a game which is misunderstood, but which can be rewarding for fans of its genre. It is a quirky, hardcore dungeon crawler produced by the dungeon crawler specialists at Nihon Falcom, makers of such games as Legacy of the Wizard and Faxanadu for NES, as well as the Ys series. It was also one of the last games published on the Super NES in North America by Koei, which was better known at the time for its strategic military simulations than for its RPG and adventure games. Because of its hardcore focus and late release, Brandish is thus a game often overlooked by Super Nintendo fans.

The story of Brandish is basic, and a mere pretense for you to be thrown to the bowels of a winding dungeon. In the midst of battle, your hero Varik and his nemesis, the iron bikini-clad magician Alexis, together stumble into a hole in the ground, which conveniently sends them deep into the underworld. Now Varik must explore and fight his way out of an ancient underground ruins from which no one before has escaped, all while avoiding capture by Alexis, who wants Varik's scalp for allegedly killing her master.

Brandish does an outstanding job of relaying the hopelessness of your situation. You and Alexis were not the first people to fall into this bizarre pit, and you periodically encounter others who have long retired in their aspirations to escape. The fighting is real-time and the usual methods of grinding and leveling up apply here. Treasures, confusing paths, puzzles, false walls, and traps abound, as you creep your way up the floors towards daylight. Inventory management is also a key, as you have only limited slots for storing items, and weapons must be collected liberally because they break after a certain number of usages.

For most players, the biggest turnoff will be the game's method of scrolling. Pressing left or right on the D-pad does not move your character, but rather rotates the maze 90 degrees in that direction. The reason for this is to provide a pseudo first-person vantage point which allows you to see around walls. Unfortunately it's not a smooth rotation, but rather an instant 90 degree jolt, so it can cause disorientation and frustration for new players.

Also, the graphics and sound are quite poor, particularly for a late-generation Super Nintendo game, presenting further reason for casual players to reject the game upon sight. Players willing to stick with Brandish and forgive its quirks however will discover one of the most addicting and atmospheric dungeon-crawlers on the system.

Three sequels to Brandish were released for the Japanese PC platforms. The first one, Brandish 2: The Planet Buster, was later ported to Super Famicom, but was never released outside of Japan.

Ninja Gaiden Trilogy

Publisher: Tecmo
Developer: Tecmo
Release Date: August 1995

I first got into gaming at the tail-end of the NES era, and the Ninja Gaiden series was one of my most cherished from the 8-bit days. The action was tight and challenging, the cinema sequences were groundbreaking for the period, and the graphics and sounds were among the best the NES had to offer. As hard as it may be to imagine now, those games were considered killer-apps at the time. So you could imagine my delight when I heard that Tecmo would be releasing a compilation of all three games for Super Nintendo! Instantly images of 16-bit-quality renditions of these classics, a la Super Mario All-Stars, began dancing in my head.

And what a letdown it was. While the gameplay is relatively unchanged from the originals, which is to be expected, the graphics are only very lightly touched-up, with some of the sprites and backdrops looking a bit crisper with an extra color or two. What is thoroughly disappointing is that the graphics are actually worse in places! Details like the lightning strikes in Ninja Gaiden 2 and the beautiful parallax scrolling backgrounds of Ninja Gaiden 3 are completely removed!

And the music! Though Tecmo did virtually nothing to alter the graphics, it decided to go out of its way to fiddle with the music. The NES trilogy featured some of the most outstanding tunes of the 8-bit era, but the SNES version simply does not do them justice. The cheap midi instruments, along with various ill-conceived "creative" changes applied to the notes and pacing of certain songs, result in a disastrously underwhelming soundtrack. In fact some songs in Trilogy are completely remixed and barely recognizable when compared to the originals. Tecmo would have been far better served retaining the original NES instrumentation and arrangements and redirecting its energy toward geniunely improving the graphics.

As I mentioned, the gameplay largely remains intact, thankfully, as do the cinema sequences. The trilogy basically plays the same, with a few exceptions: each game now has a password system, and Ninja Gaiden 3 is restored to its original Japanese difficulty(the NES version dealt the player double the damage, among other cruel devices).

Ninja Gaiden Trilogy happens to be one of the pricier games to obtain on the Super Nintendo aftermarket, but that is because of rarity rather than quality. Obviously the game was released near the end of the Super Nintendo's life and was distributed in small quantities. In fact the only copy I ever saw in person was the one my local Blockbuster Video was renting out at the time. Unless you're a hardcore collector, you're honestly better off saving your money and purchasing the original trilogy for NES.

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja

Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Release Date: February 1992

This game was a revelation for me as a kid. Never before had I seen so much variety in one cartridge! In fact no one in the western world had even heard of Konami's Goemon series before The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, and to be honest, no one had afterward either. The reason? Konami renamed the series' two iconic characters, Goemon and Ebisumaru, to "Kid Ying" and "Dr. Yang." But that is a superficial point.

The variety of gameplay at the time was striking. The heart of the game is the exploration of each town, as the player controls Kid Ying(and a second player Dr. Yang in 2P mode) in attacking enemies and collecting coins and power-ups. Each town has a variety of shops and mini-games to play, but the goal is ultimately to reach the entrance to the 2D side-scrolling "action stage" at the end of the town and to defeat the boss.

Besides the main action, Mystical Ninja offers nearly as much content in the form of mini-games which can be played at the abundance of shops in each town. Among them are a first-person maze, an Arkanoid clone, and even the first level of Konami's original Gradius! This game had so many different little games to play that I thought it was huge and amazing as a kid, and certainly very fun.

The graphics are good and pleasant for a first-generation title, and the music is yet another memorable early SNES soundtrack, this one of generally soothing, traditional Japanese-style music and instrumentation. The song on the title screen is one of my all-time favorites, and brings back vivid memories of the early days of the Super Nintendo whenever I hear it.

The Goemon series would continue in several iterations on the Super Famicom in Japan, but would not again grace western shores until the release of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on Nintendo 64. It was definitely to the detriment of western gamers that we missed on the sequels.

Top Gear

Publisher: Kemco
Developer: Gremlin Graphics
Release Date: April 1992

When you think of Super Nintendo racing games, Top Gear is one that inevitably comes to mind. Produced by European developer Gremlin Graphics, publishers of the excellent Lotus Turbo Challenge racing series on the Amiga and Atari ST computers, Top Gear was one of the system's first racers, and remains today as one of the best.

A 2-player, split-screen arcade-style racer in the mold of Sega's OutRun, Top Gear borrows heavily from Lotus in both style and gameplay. Unlike OutRun, which is a race against the clock, Top Gear is a race against 19 other racers in a four-race circuit. You must finish in the top 5 of each race to advance to the next track, and you must finish in the top 3 of the standings to advance to the next circuit. There are 32 tracks in all.

The game is a blast to play, particularly against a friend. It is always in split-screen mode-- when a friend is not playing, a computer player operates the bottom screen. There are four cars to choose from, with varying attributes for some variety, but it remains a very basic and bare-bones, pick-up-and-play racer. The music is particularly unique in style, and remains as one of the most memorable scores on the system, though most of the songs are actually sampled from previous Lotus games.

The Top Gear name, though now obscure, continues to live on today. Two sequels were made for Super NES: Top Gear 2 and Top Gear 3000. The series then moved to Nintendo 64, and sporadic versions have been made for various consoles and handhelds in the last few years. Unfortunately once the series moved to N64, it became a mere brand-name, as the gameplay had considerably changed in the move to 3D, and Gremlin Graphics was no longer involved. Still, gamers who grew up on the Super Nintendo will always remember Top Gear as one of the great names in racing.

Arcana

Publisher: Hal America
Developer: Hal Laboratory
Release date: May 1992

This was a rare find on consoles at the time: A Japanese-style RPG with a first-person vantage point. Arcana was one of the final console games released by Hal as an independent publisher before its marriage with Nintendo, and it was a notable effort.

I speak of "Japanese-style RPG" of course in relation to western-style RPGs, which are more common to use the first-person view. Even though Arcana is first-person, it has a linear progression, a developed story, and a set cast of characters with limited customization, essentially like a Japanese RPG. There is no real overworld-- the player chooses from locations on a map. The game is otherwise a dyed-in-the-wool first-person, tile-based dungeon crawler where the player progresses from town to dungeon to a new town to a new dungeon, and so forth.

When I was a kid I was frightened of first-person games, precisely because they were usually of the complex European or American mold with high strategy, customizability and an often creepy atmosphere. For me, Arcana was the first game with this type of viewpoint that I ever felt comfortable playing, precisely because of its accessibility and the cartoony, anime-style art. Japanese RPG fans will definitely find themselves at home here-- the game even features a catchy and full-featured soundtrack, also a common trait of the Japanese style.

So if you're looking for a nice, entry-level Japanese-style RPG that uses a first-person vantage point, you can't go wrong with Arcana. Though it does nothing overly remarkable, it is highly polished and a very enjoyable playthrough.

Super Adventure Island

Publisher: Hudson Soft
Developer: Hudson
Release date: April 1992

This is one of the first games I ever played on SNES, so it has always held a special place in my heart.  Hudson's Adventure Island series, a slight variation of Sega's Wonder Boy arcade game, had been very popular on the NES and quickly received a SNES incarnation in the system's first year.

In all honesty, Super Adventure Island is a simplistic and somewhat unremarkable game on its surface.  The design is very basic: You generally run to the right while shooting and avoiding enemies, you die with one hit, you ride a skateboard on occasion, and there is nothing to collect other than a few weapons and fruits to increase your score and timer-bar. In fact the game is actually more simplistic than the series' previous two incarnations on NES, which featured a variety of dinosaur sidekicks and the ability to collect spare weapons in an inventory which could be accessed between levels.  In all, besides enhanced graphics and sound, the SNES rendition has very little more to it than the mechanics from the original Wonder Boy.

Of course, anyone who played Super Adventure Island back in the day knows the most memorable part was the music.  The game has a jazzy, R&B-style soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro which was quite distinct and notable for the time.  This was one of those early SNES games that really showed off what the SPC700 sound chip could do, and which made the Genesis's FM synthesizer seem archaic in comparison.

Altogether, Super Adventure Island is a fun, fast-paced arcade-style game that doesn't do anything unexpected, other than dazzle us with one of the more spectacular soundtracks on the system.  A sequel was later released on SNES in 1994, but was more of an action/RPG style game in the mold of Zelda II, and lacked the prodigious Koshiro soundtrack which had made the original so memorable.