I finished playing through it. I played it on emulator because I'm lazy, and used a gratuitous amount of save-states.
...
Man I must have been some kind of gaming god when I was a kid, this game is REALLY hard, and having to play through the final few levels nearly flawlessly is almost inconceivable.
What I like about this game is how good the game design is. EVERYTHING is deliberate. The way you move, how your attack works, the items, the range of your attacks, how jumping works, how the levels are set up, how the monsters move, how secrets are hidden, character progression... everything is meticulously planned so that everything works with everything else. It has its issues, namely the part with the parrot, and with the piece of paper you have to dip in water (if you get the game used, you likely won't have that piece of paper)... But the good parts of this game are SO good I can ignore the few flaws.
When anyone tells me they want to get into making games, I tell them to go play StarTropics.
It's a shame Zoda's Revenge destroyed the franchise. Instead of building on what made the first one great, it just broke what didn't need fixing.
