The SNES Classic Mk. II: Episode XX: Sci-Fi B-Movie Double Feature

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 XX: Sci-Fi B-Movie Double Feature

The Candidate: Quintet's Robotrek

I've said it before and will say it again during the tenure of this feature, but Quintet was the unspoken champion of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Roaring out of the gate on day one (well, day twenty-eight, but that's easily within the launch window) with ActRaiser - not only a fantastic game but a perfect example of the new horizons that only the 16-bit era could explore - they moved onto a series of sleeper hits that, perhaps barring ActRaiser's black sheep of a sequel, were all imaginative, thoughtful classics of the JRPG genre. We covered ActRaiser back in Episode I and Soul Blazer in Episode XIV, and now we're looking at perhaps the most low-profile of their SNES efforts: the lighthearted sci-fi RPG Robotrek, which they co-developed with another minor leaguer Ancient.

It wouldn't be erroneous or reductive to call Robotrek a mecha RPG for kids. A lot of the staples of that particular theme and genre combo are present here, such as customizing and modifying your mechanical cohorts with upgrades and loadouts that might emphasize speed, power or defense, but streamlined and condensed in a very approachable way that won't have you poring over diagnostic readouts for hours before making a decision. The protagonist's a kid (albeit, the son of a genius inventor), his adventures have a healthy dose of silly comedy, and there's a not-particularly-imposing criminal empire a la Team Rocket (and the various Teams that followed) as the antagonists. Speaking of Pokémon, there's a lot of what feels like early influences here: you can only use one robot at a time, but can recall the one active and replace it with another should the former be worn down or inappropriate for the foes you're currently facing. (Another curious similarity is the fact that the vessel used to summon robots and also used to represent items are spheres with a red half and a white half; I thought it was pretty telling given that this game was released two years prior to Pokémon Red/Blue, until I realized that both these spheres and Pokeballs likely have a shared origin in gachapon capsules.)

The young inventor protagonist finds himself involved with the machinations of the "Hackers" - a nebulous criminal organization that is, somehow, responsible for the monsters wandering around in addition to various criminal capers - while following his father Dr. Akihabara's (and, it's later revealed, his distant ancestor Rask) quest to recover precious stones called the "Tetron", which naturally contain an unbelievable power. As a child, the hero isn't expected to fight the monsters and villains of the game directly: instead, he uses pre-built robots to fight for him. Battles take place on a grid and have a mild strategic element, though only to the same extent as something like Mega Man Battle Network or Radiant Historia - there's not a whole lot of room to maneuver in, but there's three "lanes" that you can switch between to avoid enemy attacks or counter with your own. Combat is turn-based but features something similar to Final Fantasy IV's real-time ATB, where everyone moves on their own individual timers (it took a while before I realized you could hurry your own next move up by tapping the action button) and it's even possible to move behind your opponent and do extra damage to them, and vice versa should you get caught in a pincer trap. It's a complex system without being overly so, and perhaps the most in-depth aspect of the game.

As for the robot customization, beyond changing their colors and weapon loadouts - one for each hand, and a slot for feet and a backpack, the latter can also be a weapon or a passive boost - the big thing you can do is redistribute building points into their statistics, between HP, power, defense, speed, and charge (which determines how quickly they can move again). Instead of earning experience directly, the player character earns "data", measured in megabytes, which allows them to allocate more points into their robot's statistics once they've levelled up. In a sense, the robots themselves are entirely malleable and personality-free tools to be used at the player's discretion. Eventually, for a hefty fee, the player can acquire additional robots (up to three total), which they can either modify for specific roles - e.g. one high on defense to weather tough boss attacks, another with enhanced speed to finish random battles against weaklings faster - or simply make two more identical robots with optimized stats and use them as "backups" in case they lose the first. The player can switch robots in battle once their turn rolls around, or toss them a healing item to keep them in the fight, and despite a few difficulty hiccups it's been a surprisingly easy game so far. However, I feel that's in part due to how convenient the game makes everything: there's an item you receive early that lets you save the game anywhere, you can modify your robots and their stats due to a "portable" lab that becomes available whenever you level up, you can combine useless items into stronger ones (including both robot equipment and consumables), enemies aren't random but appear on the overworld and can be ambushed by moving into them while their back is turned (and, again, vice versa), and random chests can appear in battle that might upgrade your equipment or heal you back to full (though a few can poison you too).

One major downside is the game's official localization, which is awful. It regularly confuses NPCs, tosses advice your way which is anything but helpful, and though there aren't a huge number of typos it does feel like the translators got the wrong reading from the original Japanese. There's also clear cases of laziness (or, as is more often the case, places where the translators were rushed) where enemy palette swaps have the same name or don't adequately explain the creature you're fighting. The hitodama, for example, are generic Japanese fireball ghosts but are described in-game as "monks" despite either being the spirits of your ancestors or some sort of scientific experiment gone awry (though the game is heavily entrenched in science and not fantasy, there are a few unexplained supernatural elements scattered throughout). Far as I know, no fan translation team has taken a whack at an improved version like they did with Breath of Fire 2's shambolic official localization (though a much better one accompanied the GBA remake). Not a deal breaker, but an occasional source of disappointment.

I could waffle on about this clever little RPG's various features and ideas, like how you can earn bonus XP by completing battles quickly enough, but I think it's time we let the P.O.G.S. tell us if this 'Trek is an unmitigated wreck or deserves our respeck (editing note: this is terrible wordplay - reminder to change this part later):

• Preservation: I have a soft spot for any SNES game where it does something I've not seen before. I can't name a huge number of mecha-themed RPGs that don't get very serious very quickly, from the real-life international political allusions of Front Mission to the many layers of anti-fascism and anti-war messages expressed in the Gundam franchise, and Robotrek pulls off a Saturday morning cartoon show feel excellently. It might be a bit too basic and repetitive for a modern audience, though if this was released today with a kid-friendly marketing push I'd think it would do quite well. It really does feel like Pokémon crossed with robots. 3.
• Originality: This is one of those situations where the central conceit of the game - creating an RPG team of highly customizable robots - was a lot more original in the States than it was in Japan. Japan has customizable robot RPGs coming out of their ears, after all, though I'd wager none quite as immediately beginner-friendly and light as Robotrek. However, the game does boast a number of really handy quality-of-life features outlined above that I don't think were all that common in 1994 - Chrono Trigger's usually held up as an early example of an RPG that eschewed random battles for the sake of seeing when a battle was close at hand, and that came out a year later - and I've yet to see a party that you can edit so utterly almost on the fly. If I wanted to, I could take one of my robots and pour all its points into the power stat and just one-shot the next boss that comes along, unless it attacks first. That's pretty cool. 5.
• Gameplay: Robotrek's challenge level is, next to the localization, easily the weakest aspect. For most of the mid-game I had an incredibly powerful axe weapon in one hand and a shield in the other, the former one-shotting everything and the latter boosting my defense to the point where everything was doing chip damage in return. I eventually started meeting enemies that could blat a third of my health in one hit, and if I faced three in a single encounter it was very bad news... unless they happened to spawn alongside the weaker enemies who could barely scratch me. The bosses, too, are either complete pushovers or one-hit-kill beasts. Very unusual, but at least it's forced me to strongly consider advantageous loadouts instead of coasting along with axe murder. Beyond that, the game plays well thanks to its combination of well-designed quality-of-life features (can't express enough how important they are) and some neat concepts to build dungeons around - most recently, I had to infiltrate an enemy lair located below a volcano that at various points had me scurrying around the vents as a mouse and using special glasses to see laser alarm tripwires. 3.
• Style: As mentioned above, the game has a real Saturday morning cartoon (or anime, I suppose would be the case) vibe to its precocious hero foiling the best laid plans of comically inept masked ne'er-do-wells. It feels slightly episodic too, as you go from adventure to adventure from your home town as a starting point, which leans into the comparison further as does the upbeat and regularly silly soundtrack and the fact that the game is called Slapstick in Japan. Graphically, the character designs are distinctive enough though I wish you could do more with the appearance of your robots, which all sort of resemble the rotund Robo from Chrono Trigger. Nothing too remarkable in any stage of the presentation, but it works for the motif it's aiming for. 4.

Total: 15.

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The Nominee: Squaresoft's Secret of Evermore

Following one criminally underappreciated sci-fi RPG with another, Secret of Evermore is the rare case of a Japanese-style RPG created entirely in the west. In this case, it was created by the USA branch of Squaresoft, previously the sole purpose of which was to localize Square's games into English for western audiences until they were given the resources to create their own game. Working from the likes of Secret of Mana as a blueprint - the name makes that connection clear enough - Secret of Evermore is a real-time action RPG that has a mild cooldown system for attacks and radial menus in lieu of a separate menu screen. However, rather than a standard fantasy adventure it instead concerns a streetwise youth and his rambunctious pet dog as they inadvertently activate a malfunctioning machine in a dilapidated mansion and find themselves in the entirely virtual world of Evermore.

Two points immediately in the game's favor are its sense of humor, which includes a running gag where the protagonist watches far too many cheesy sci-fi B-movies and compares everything to them, and the wonderfully atmospheric music from a young Jeremy Soule. Soule went on to compose many soundtracks for the biggest RPGs around, from Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls to BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights, but Secret of Evermore was his first opportunity to score a game from top to bottom - one that was unusual in how its setting bounced around between antiquity to medieval to futuristic - and produce something wholly distinct from Square's usual in-house composer Nobuo Uematsu. Despite being a scrappy and occasionally goofy game, the music and the emotional moods it sets can be downright haunting at times and easily one of the most impressive soundtracks for a system not lacking for aural masterpieces.

A more divisive issue with Secret of Evermore is its... well, quirkiness would be one way to put it. It feels like the developers wanted to make a significant departure from anything else Square had created up to that point, as if to leave their own distinctive mark on the company's long and storied legacy. This led to a lot of the game's more questionable design features - it's not always obvious where to go next, there's the occasional maze area that adds nothing but confusion, and there's a really weird process where you have to figure out a Byzantine, almost algebraic bartering process in a desert bazaar to get the items you need - but these quirks have served to endear the game to its fanbase as much as they've turned away those looking for something a little more straightforward and simple. A relatively late release date of October 1995 didn't help its success either; at that point, most gamers were turning to the PlayStation and Saturn and their greatly-hyped 3D output.

Damn, if Secret of Evermore isn't a game that's close to my heart though. Like EarthBound, it combines no small amount of idiosyncrasies to create that sensation of a game that was built specifically for you, the player, even though tens of thousands of peers invariably went through the same process. The silly B-movie references, the unusual alchemy system that had you scour levels for reagents before you could cast them, the surreal interludes like the freakshow or the puppet theater, the way your dog would act erratically when you weren't paying close attention just 'cause that's how dogs do, and memorable characters like the skeleton who "rows" you across the desert while pointing out tumbleweeds with the cheerful manner of a tour guide or a recurring strongman named Tiny who often pondered the irony of his own name - these traits all left their imprint on me, and while the SNES library was a far too competitive place for an odd duck like Secret of Evermore to shine, it nonetheless burrowed its way deep into my soul and stayed there.

Which makes it all the more heartbreaking that I have to objectively appraise its adequacy for a second SNES Classic. Take it away, merciless P.O.G.S.:

• Preservation: Hmm. Well, objectively, it's hard to make a strong case for how well Secret of Evermore has held up. Part of what made it so appealing back then was how different and scrappy it was compared to its many polished contemporaries, and that moxie helped excuse some of its weaker moments. While it's true that the humble 16-bit RPG is seeing a small resurgence of late with the likes of Toby Fox's Undertale and Zeboyd's Cosmic Star Heroine, "low-key quirky and heartfelt" is now the rule rather than the exception. Secret of Evermore felt like a passion project, but so does almost every Indie game worth speaking about, so in that regard I could at least make the claim that it would fit in very well on the Steam storefront with a moderate price tag. Beyond that, it's mostly a crapshoot - every good trait is balanced out by something less palatable. 3.
• Originality: Again, hard to argue for this one because Secret of Evermore is paradoxically unique and hopelessly derivative. It's original in the sense that the developers sort of had no clear idea what they were doing in some respects, which lent the game a dose of eccentric and bespoke spirit, but it does heavily and knowingly crib from Secret of Mana from its combat down to its UI. I'll give it points for an original plot concerning 1950s sci-fi archetypes trapped in a virtual world that has slowly but surely turned against them and trapped them in there, but leaning so heavily on an established Square classic for the framework does make it seem like SquareSoft USA started their game development career with the training wheels on. 3.
• Gameplay: I have zero problems with Secret of Evermore's gameplay, give or take a maze section that has - more than once - taken up a page of my pad of graph paper to properly map. If I ever take another serious shot at the game (say, because it appeared on a SNES Classic follow-up), I'm sure I'll dread those areas again. However, it learned everything worth taking away from Secret of Mana and its combat, with fun and challenging bosses and a neat magic system that you couldn't exactly abuse but became far more dependable the more exploring you did. 4.
• Style: It's rare when this happens, but the game gets an automatic 5 here for the music alone. I'd struggle to name a better 16-bit soundtrack - on a different day I might give it to Plok or Final Fantasy VI or Secret of Mana - but it does so much to elevate the game's atmosphere and emotional tone. When you reach the sad ruins of a fallen kingdom, the music reflects that so beautifully with its melancholic vibe. When you're in a dangerous situation, the music becomes almost suffocating with how tense it becomes. Graphically, the game's pixel art benefits from being a late-era release with some budget behind it, and likewise the jokey script feels natural because it didn't have to go through any kind of localization process that struggled with Japanese puns. If I were to explain why anyone should revisit Secret of Evermore - which, frankly, is what I'm supposed to be doing here - it'd be to soak in its presentation while maybe holding your nose through its less enjoyable gameplay sequences. 5.

Total: 15.

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