When renewing my subscription to Nintendo Online it was only marginally more to upgrade to the expansion pass, which has given my sons access to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC, will provide me with upgrades for Tears of the Kingdom on the Switch 2, and also gives me access to the N64, GBA and MD libraries. Tempted as I was to immediately start playing through Streets of Rage 2 again, I instead had a look for anything new and interesting. The first thing in the GBA list was a Japanese exclusive game, with a picture of a star on the cover, and a title which reads 伝説のスタフィー. Some research after playing indicates that this is Starfy, although that’s his Westernised name from the fourth game in the series, and a more literal translation is Staffy or Stafy. I knew none of this to start with, and so he became known as “Mr Spinny”.

In fact, he can’t spin at first, and his moveset is restricted to just swimming around and jumping out the water. I’m sure the Japanese introductory screen gave some idea what I had to do, but I went into this blind, and wandered around for ages until I found a big crab, who I naturally avoided. Having run out of anything else to do, I tried to swim past the crab and found that he gave me some more instructions (no idea what) and then let me past. I swam around more, found some random junk (a teapot, a big shell, something like that), and eventually returned to the crab who seemed pleased to have his junk back. I had to find other stuff, he showed me new moves (which I only understood from the A, B and D-pad buttons in the text, and then experimenting afterwards), and then eventually I found a big yellow clamshell who, I think, asked me to do the same thing. I had to explore lots, go through many doors, use my new spinny move to defeat fish and crab enemies, and after lots of getting lost I finally found a boss.

There was nothing tricky in this first level, including the boss who was in a big spiky shell but who didn’t seem to attack at all. The most difficult part is just keeping track of which door leads to where. All through the first level there were big scary orange face blocks, which I never worked out how to get rid of (other blocks could be destroyed once I got the spinny move), and I assumed I’d be able to go back to clear them after getting a new move, but after defeating the boss I’ve now moved onto a new level, seemingly alongside a whale.

I thought it might help to understand some of the Japanese text, and tried to use Google Translate’s camera function. That really didn’t help a lot at all.