Startropics is awesome

[A Black Falcon]

That is true, while StarTropics takes a lot from Zelda, it's pretty much totally linear. I don't mind at all, because it makes it a lot easier to play, as I said, and NES Zelda's idea of linear kind of annoys me due to its randomness, but some people may.

Still, as I said, I think I'd rather play StarTropics now, from a modern-gaming standpoint, than Zelda 1... it does feel a lot less archaic, thanks to things like how all of the hidden passages do have subtle visual clues that they are there.

For example --

-First, the standard dungeon puzzle in the game is "jump on all the tiles on the screen until you find the one that makes a button or item appear, then get the item or jump on the button." Those tiles are probably the game's defining feature in the dungeon... if you haven't played it, in Startropics 1 you can only jump straight up unless you're jumping onto a tile or across a gap. And "activate the tile-buttons" is, as I said, the game's core puzzle.

-If there is a hidden passage in a wall, there's a small bit of darker shading on the square next to the wall.

-If you can travel through the wall off the edge of the screen, when you move towards that wall the screen will scroll, showing that there's more to the right or left that you can't see.

-In the overworld in the sub, squares you can dive in (to travel to another square) are darker blue than the normal sea squares.

-In the sub, places where you can travel through a hidden passage through an island have occasional 'bubbles' or 'tide' or something animations on the squares on both ends.

-Some puzzles require you to kill an invisible enemy to make the exit appear ("kill all of the visible enemies" rooms are pretty obvious of course). You make the invisible enemy appear by using one use of a 'make invisible things visible' staff item you get in the dungeon. Each staff has four uses, and you'll get the item near the place where you'll need to use it... so if you ever get one of them, you'll know "hmm, okay, I need to use this soon, particularly if seem stuck".


Now, it's not perfect. There are still some truly hidden elements, such as:

-The dungeon you need to find in the graveyard -- you have to try to walk into all of the graves until you find the one you can go into. I can't see a visual difference between it and the others.

-Some hidden passages in the overworld, through mountain tiles particularly, are invinsible and you simply have to find them by trying to walk into those tiles. Sometimes this is obvious -- like "I want taht big heart over there, there's got to be a passage here right?" but sometimes it's trickier, like the path to one of the dungeons in level 5... you have to figure out that you need to go right at one point instead of up, which leads to a dead end. Of course, given the limited sizes of the overworlds in each chapter, you simply keep trying in that one area until you find your way; because of the linear design it's obvious WHERE you are supposed to be -- here, the only place you can be. You simply need to figure out where to go in that area.

-There is one puzzle rooms with invisible holes on the floor, where you need to figure out the path. But there's some help -- enemies, which only move on the actual squares. Watch where they go and you'll figure out where the floor is...

... even so of course a few times I've gotten stuck, not noticing things like the subtle shading of a passage, or that this room has a hidden enemy in it I need to destroy, or something like that. But still, overall, great fun game. :)