Yes, it’s more of more of the same. Same baddies (mostly), same skills (that again need re-learning), same silly characters to interact with. But! Densetsu no Stafi 3 adds something new – a second, female, starfish. If my Japanese is correct, she’s Stafi’s sister Stapi.

At various times in the game you swap between the two starfish, sometimes at will, other times it is forced due to Events That Happen. Although similar, they have a couple of different skills. Notably, Stapi can wall-jump and crawl, so that’s one better than Metroid.

It adds quite a bit to the game, especially in a sections where you have to use each character’s skills to help the other character who in turn helps you. That said, this is really feels more of an extension of the series than a completely new game. If it ain’t broke, though. Oh! Except there is another thing which is new – WARIO. Yeah, for some reason Wario is in some of the levels and you have to guide him around. Weird.

There is a Densetsu no Stafi 4, which I own on the DS, but it’s a shame there’s no DS games on the Switch so I can carry on the series there.

See, I told you I was going to play them all. Soon after finishing Stafi 1, it was on to Stafi 2, which takes place directly following the events of the first game.

Somehow, Stafi has lost all his skills so they have to be re-obtained, so really it’s a re-tread of the first game only with different levels. And more levels – seemingly a lot more levels. And different bosses. And some new gimmicks. OK, so not really a re-tread. It does all seem very familiar and asset reuse-y though, which would explain how it originally came out less than a year after Stafi 1.

Still fun, despite the lack of anything properly new though.

When I bought the original Game Boy Advance, imported from Japan, I ended importing a lot of Japanese games too. At the time it was usually cheaper, and there were some really weird looking games that I wanted to play. For a few years, I often saw the three GBA Stafi games for sale on the likes of Lik Sang (RIP) and Play Asia, but never cheap enough to buy. Eventually the DS came out and the 4th game in the series was released for that, was cheap, and I bought and played it. Eventually I bought Stafi 2 and 3 for the GBA but by then the first game was All The Monies. Until now!

Nintendo have nicely plonked the three Game Boy Advance Densetsu no Stafi games on the Nintendo Online Game Boy Advance Subscription Thing, so of course I’m going to play them all. They’d best be good.

And they’re good! Phew.

At its core, Stafi is a platformer, although most of the game takes place underwater where you can freely swim. Starfish aren’t known for their jumping acumen, after all. As you progress through the levels you gain some skills in a very-linear-Metroidvania way, like double-jumping, gliding, and being able to break certain walls. At the end of the game you can return to previous levels and make use of these skills which you wouldn’t have had access to at the time.

Most levels have some sort of puzzle or task to solve. Sometimes they involve finding a certain object or character, or matching colours or shapes, and some of these tasks are pretty difficult because they’re all in Japanese. Thankfully, most are obvious even if you can’t read the dialogue, and those that aren’t are resolvable with trial and error.

Each world has the platform game standard set of themed levels, so there’s a snow world and a tropical world and so on, and each is filled with weird fish (and some not-fish) characters to interact with. The main character, and friend, you encounter is a clam thing called Kyorosuke, who somehow always manages to get further into levels than you’re able to, in less time, and gets angry a lot. I gather he explains a lot of what is going on, some of which I can understand but most goes over my head. Each world has a (very easy) boss at the end too.

There’s almost certainly a plot, involving what seems to be a punk snail or something doing Bad Things, but again, Japanese innit so it mostly passed me by. None of these translation “issues” should be seen as a reason not to play it though, as Stafi is a really good little (well, quite long for the era, really) platformer with some clever and funny bits.

Oh, and I should probably explain why I call the game “Densetsu no Stafi” not how some people say “Starfy” or “Stafy”. Because the name is スタフィー, or su-ta-fuii, and it was always transcribed as “stafi” online back when it was new, and it’s the eventual Western DS release that renamed it as “Starfy”. Also because I Am Right.