The SNES Classic Mk. II: Episode VI: Pop'n Zitz

The SNES Classic had a sterling assortment of games from Nintendo's 16-bit star console, but it's hardly all that system has to offer a modern audience. In each installment of this fortnightly feature, I judge two games for their suitability for a Classic successor based on four criteria, with the ultimate goal of assembling another collection of 25 SNES games that not only shine as brightly as those in the first SNES Classic, but have equally stood the test of time. The rules, list of games considered so far, and links to previous episodes can all be found at The SNES Classic Mk II Intro and Contents.

Episode VI: Pop'n Zitz

The Candidate: Polestar's Magical Pop'n

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System had no shortage of platformers, though it was uncommon to find one that eluded localization. With the exception of those based on anime licenses few in the west would know anything about - reducing their market value significantly - most platformers have little more than a framing story, bookend prologues and epilogues, and perhaps a few dialogue cutscenes with bosses and other significant story NPCs. Magical Pop'n is one such platformer with the merest wisp of a plot: a child princess, gifted in magic if not a fan of studying or sitting still, is forced to defend her kingdom from a demon army who are there to steal a priceless magical gem that the royal family has guarded for centuries. It's a game that skews young with its cute visuals and uncomplicated story, yet was passed over for localization internationally. This may be due to the game's relative obscurity - this was Polestar's first game - and the late release year of 1995, the same year that saw the North American debut of the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Nonetheless, it's the type of confidently made game that frequently shows up at the end of a console's lifespan: one that has learned from many previous examples how best to effectively invoke that system's strengths.

Magical Pop'n (which has no relation to Pop'n Music or Puyo Puyo) is one of those Super Famicom games that has a great reputation, in part due to its exotic region exclusivity and rarity. Considered a lost 16-bit platformer classic, it was something I was curious to try out for this feature, though after playing it I'm not sure there's enough substance here to justify its prestige. It's certainly not a bad game, but there's not a whole lot it does differently from the crowd of 2D platformers that populate the SNES. When Super Mario World came out, it set a bar for the level of imagination and variation that a 16-bit platformer could attain, and while nothing from that genre has managed to match it - even to this day - a lot of SNES games were inspired to try their own spins on what was already a fairly well-worn genre construct. Between Super Metroid's exploration, ActRaiser's merging with real-time strategy, Yoshi's Island's egg-tossing and transformations, Mega Man X's upgrades, etc., you saw a lot of platformers try to be innovate to help them stand out: those that couldn't beat Super Mario World at its own game, but instead tried to offer something sufficiently different to create an equally compelling prospect.

By any metric, Magical Pop'n is a very traditional 2D platformer. The player character has a short-range melee attack and a long-range spell projectile; the latter of which costs a finite "star" resource to cast, preventing its overuse. There's also a "kamehameha" type laser beam that consumes more stars best used for emergencies or if you can guarantee a hit on a boss, and the heroine can learn more spells as the game continues. The game cleverly creates a secondary use for these spells as a means of traversal: for instance, an early grenade spell can destroy certain types of block, while a hookshot beam is required to pass over a few of the game's bigger gaps. Each type of spell has its own mana cost too, dependent on its strength, and can be used as attack magic in addition to their more utilitarian uses. While Magical Pop'n only has the six stages - you acquire a new spell on all but the last - they can be fairly long, fairly maze-like and fairly tough. It's a game that benefits from replays, as there are optimal paths to take, item locations to memorize (including a very helpful permanent health upgrade hidden somewhere on each of the first five stages), and extra lives to bank for the harder times ahead.

That said, Magical Pop'n suffers from a few control issues. The worst is the hookshot - if you hold right while leaving the swing, you drop like a rock. Instead, you either need to stay "D-pad neutral" (as in, don't push any direction) or hold up to get any kind of lift at the end of the swing, which never feels intuitive and can cause a lot of misery when there are multiple hook-points between you and the goal. Enemies become impossible to hit if they occupy the same spot as you, either during their post-hit invincibility or your own, leading to some panicked swinging to eliminate the minion in your midst before more damage registers. The general difficulty of the game is exacerbated, unintentionally, by little irritations like this, but on the whole the game is fair enough: if you find yourself getting killed too often, there's usually an alternate path or a spell you could use to mitigate the challenge.

When I'm not Pop'n, I'm POGSin', so let's apply the science:

• Preservation: Magical Pop'n still plays very well, and though it isn't particularly remarkable from a graphical perspective at least its character and enemy sprites are cute and detailed. Its sturdy construction means it hasn't aged too badly, though it's relatively threadbare compared to the puzzle- and exploration-focused 2D platformers in the Indie market: beyond a scattering of permanent health upgrades to find and the unavoidable spells, you don't gain much from going too far out of your way, especially as each room can chip away at your health. 3.
• Originality: There's not a whole lot of originality to be found here - Magical Pop'n belongs more to the "doing what everyone else is doing, but better" school of game design. The traversal-enabling spells give you a few options for combat, as well as allowing the designers to build levels around barricades that forces the player to explore elsewhere before they can surpass them, but most spells find very little utility outside the level in which they are found. For boss fights and general exploration I found myself falling back to the hookshot a lot: not only does it carry no magical cost to use, it's able to hit enemies in the air with its angled trajectory which makes its coverage useful for the many floating enemies and bosses. Even the cutesy anime aesthetic was fairly well explored by this point. 2.
• Gameplay: I do think the core of Magical Pop'n, as a platformer with all the requisite moving platforms, traps, hazards, deliberately awkward enemy placements, as well as its own distinct mix of spells to learn and the traversal abilities they impart, is a solid one. It has a perfect difficulty curve - you can breeze through the earlier levels but will be stopped dead by the final level's aggravating gauntlet - and the replayability value isn't insignificant due to some branching and having to pick an efficient route that incorporates regular health refills and forgoes the more annoying hazards and dead-ends. 4.
• Style: I generally like the look and music of Musical Pop'n, and the character sprites are both well-animated and detailed, but it should be said that a cutesy magical girl anime aesthetic wasn't exactly uncommon during that era. You could mistake it for a dozen other games on the Super Famicom alone. However, it does have a few purely cosmetic perks in its favor, such as a copious amount of voice samples for its protagonist whenever she jumps, casts magic, gets hit, gets killed, balances on a precipice, pushes against a wall, and so on. I also quite liked the detailed splash screens that accompanied each new level. 4.

Total: 13.

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The Nominee: Rare's Battletoads in Battlemaniacs

Yeah, I know, Battletoads is bufonidae non grata in this corner of the internet, but Battlemaniacs was one of the first SNES games that really impressed upon me what the new 16-bit platform could do. A mid-lifespan 1993 release, it was - along with Super Mario World and Pilotwings - one of the earliest SNES games I was afforded the opportunity to play, and the only unique game Rare put out on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that didn't involve apes. And, of course, it beat my ass. Naturally.

Rare's Battletoads series has two major characteristics that have endured in the collective consciousness of those who have been playing video games for a significant time: the absurd level of difficulty, which is precipitated on a lot of Double Dragon-style instant-death pitfalls and traps, and a sort of 1990s comic book sensibility in parts inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (another famous batch of amphibians with attitude) and the cartoonishly violent and cringeworthy machismo of the Liefeld/McFarlane era of 90s comics. It's the type of series that will kick your butt and then call you a pansy wuss-bucket for allowing your butt to get kicked in the first place, and that sort of attitude does not endear a franchise to many beyond the masochistic or the really determined.

The core appeal of Battletoads, in theory at least, is that every level is different and everyone has their own personal roadblock. For me, that was usually the turbo bike level - the third overall, if you don't include the bonuses - but after replaying it for this feature I barely got halfway through the second. If I recall my many failed attempts with the game, I'm sure I got as far as the snakes level but I'll be darned if I remember much past that. The varied goals and formats of the separate stages helped them stand out, and rather than a pure brawler experience you were often tested in a myriad of ways. Hypothetically, if you were decent enough at the game after many hours of practice, you could probably make it to the end within a couple of hours. It was all about the execution, ultimately, which let Battletoads join the likes of the Contras and R-Types and other hard-as-nails arcade-style games built around memorization and muscle memory and overcoming your own disintegrating nerves when the end was in sight.

Battlemaniacs is essentially a remaster of the original NES Battletoads, recreating many of the same stages with fancy new visual overhauls and a banging soundtrack (courtesy of Rare's long-time in-house musician David Wise), and switching the playable 'Toads to Pimple and Rash; erstwhile protagonist Zitz having been sidelined as one of the hostages. You pass through a standard brawler level, the vertically-descending tunnel level, the high-speed jetbike level, the trial-and-error snake climbing level, an on-rails roller coaster level, and finally a level where you quickly ascend a tower in a series of literal rat races to fight the trash-talking, emasculating, professional Jessica Rabbit palette swap The Dark Queen at the top. Battlemaniacs also adds a few auto-scroller bonus levels and a different final boss, as well as a new framing story, but it's hard to argue that it's an entirely new adventure for the 'Toads.

• Preservation: It's probably aged the best out of all the Battletoads games, pulling a Link to the Past by framing the quintessential Battletoads experience in the most appealing aesthetic it has to offer. The graphics, soundtrack, and framing device of a virtual world are all great, and really the only downside is the gameplay itself, as brutal and arbitrary as it can be. Still, Battletoads has a surprising amount of cultural cachet even now - someone thought it was a good idea to add them to Killer Instinct, at least - and this is probably the best one outside of that Arcade port. 3.
• Originality: This is a hard category to quantify, because we once again have the question of whether "originality" in this case refers to the game compared to its contemporaries for the SNES, or in terms of how much unique content it contains. Battlemaniacs isn't original at all, considering it's a remake of Battletoads, but if you decide to momentarily forget that other Battletoads games exist then... well, there's nothing really quite like its eclectic mix of brawler/shooter/racing/platforming on the SNES. 2.
• Gameplay: Depending on your level of patience and your frustration threshold, Battlemaniacs could be incredibly rewarding or incredibly not. The brawler level is a strong introduction to the game, with those satisfying punches and kicks landing hard, though it also portends to the horrors to come with its collapsing floors and irksome fireball traps. From there, the game gets progressively harder and less fair, and it becomes the sort of of masochistic challenge that rose to prominence in the years hence. I can only speak to my own tolerance for the game, ultimately, which is remarkably high given how much of a cheap piece of... well, maybe not that tolerant. 3.
• Style: I'll say this for Battlemaniacs - it has style out the wazoo. Between the cartoonishly giant fists and boots that pop up when eliminating enemies to the big detailed enemy sprites to the great use of parallax scrolling in its more active levels it's a visual treat and a big reason I was so impressed with what the SNES could do when I saw it for the first time. David Wise's soundtrack is equally excellent, with a great remix of the Battletoads theme on the main menu and some fantastic hard rockin' level music. Even if significant parts of the game haven't aged well, it still has some impressive production values for the platform. 5.

Total: 13.

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