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Densetsu no Stafi (Switch): COMPLETED!

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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.

Street Fighter Alpha (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Anyone would think I’d recently bought both the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection pack and the Capcom Fighting Collection pack on the Switch eShop for super cheap recently or something. And if they thunk that, they’d be thunking right because I have.

Now, I’ve said before that Street Fighter Alpha 2 is my favourite Street Fighter game (and, probably, my favourite one-on-one fighting game of all time), but that doesn’t mean I don’t like Street Fighter Alpha, er, One. It doesn’t have as many characters, it doesn’t have as many moves, and it doesn’t have quite as much flash and sparkle, but it still has Sir Kenneth “Ken” Masters and he’s still the best of all the animals.

Naturally, I whipped through the game pretty quick. Not that I’m really good at it or anything despite how much I love the Alpha games, but probably because the default difficulty is pretty low? I don’t actually know as I didn’t check, but it seemed a fair bit easier than I remember from last time I played it.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Yes, it isn’t the best two player competitive blocks-in-wells based puzzle game (that would be Puyo Puyo), but you can’t not like Super Puzzle Fighter with it’s super-deformed Capcom fighters and just the sheer absurdity of it.

The aim I much like other similar games – match up blocks and send them over to the other player’s well to fill it up a bit and bugger up their plans. Each character has a special pattern of blocks that, when you form them, unleashes hell on the opponent. In my playthrough, I found creating these patterns were literally impossible and also, completely unnecessary. But it doesn’t matter, it was all fun anyway, although a lot easier than I remember.

And yes, I played as Ken. Obviously.

Vampire Savior (Switch): COMPLETED!

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No, not the horde-based twin stick only one stick sort of shooter. That’s Vampire Survivors, even though I keep getting the two names mixed up. No, this is the Capcom 1-on-1 fighting game from the late 90s heyday of Capcom 1-on-1 fighting games. There was a cheap bundle of bundles (a bundle^2, if you like) on the eShop recently where you could get Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection and Capcom Fighting Collection together for less money than either collection had ever been on sale for individually. Ah, gwan then.

Vampire Savior (the lack of a U is making me queasy), or Darkstalkers 3, depending on region, is a CPS2 based game, much like Street Fighter Alpha and X-Men: Children of the Atom, so it has big ol’ sprites and loads of animation. The fighters are generally based on monsters like a mummy, a vampire, and a Definitely Not Frankenstein’s Monster.

I played as newcomer-to-the-series Baby Bonnie Hood, who absolutely isn’t supposed to be Little Red Riding Hood, and has a machine gun and a dog. It was silly fun.

Metroid Zero Mission (Switch): COMPLETED!

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An actual Metroid Metroidvania game! Released on the Switch Game Boy Advance Online Service Thing presumably to tie in with the re-announcement (and gameplay footage) of the upcoming Metroid Prime 4, I thought, why the hell not eh?

It’s good. Oh so good. Yes, I’ve played it before, but almost 20 years ago so I remembered very little of it. In fact, I’d even forgotten about the whole “zero suit” bit where Samus loses her armour and you have to sneak around a Space Pirate ship with a weedy little gun. A bit which inspired the whole premise of Metroid Dread, I’m sure, but still – totally forgot it. And didn’t really enjoy that section too much either, truth be told, but it’s fine as it’s only about 15 minutes of the whole game.

The rest of Zero Mission is glorious ‘vania exploration and traversal and it hasn’t really aged either. Being a GBA game, it’s a shame nothing was done to make use of the Switch’s extra buttons as some of the moves are a little tricky using just ABLR. Specifically, swapping between missiles and super missiles has to be done with the Select button, which on the Switch is next to your left hand, not your right like on a GBA, so that’s a minor pain. You only really need them for Mother Brain though.

What I also hadn’t remembered, is how bloody easy the game is. I’m used to Metroid games, and the genre generally, being pretty difficult. At least, more difficult than this. I died once. On Mother Brain if you’re interested. Perhaps it’s just because I’ve played a lot of these games recently, or I was especially careful here, but I was very surprised at how easy I found it.