Ristar (Sega Genesis, 1995, Sonic Team)

Sometime back in 1995, a quirky and odd, but strangely charming platformer made its way onto the Sega Genesis. Made by the wonderful folks at Sonic Team (The same group responsible for the Genesis Sonic games), Ristar certainly gets a similar treatment as the old Sonics did. For a Sega Genesis game, Ristar looks incredible. There is a surprisingly large amount of attention to detail present within the game, which I wouldn’t expect anything less than the folks who created my all-time favorite video game (Sonic 3 & Knuckles). Ristar certainly gives off the impression that there was a lot of time and effort spent into its development. I mentioned before that Ristar looks very sexy for a Genesis game but that’s not all! Call me insane, but I swear Ristar looks just as good as a Super Nintendo title, if not a bit better. Which is quite an accomplishment, given the Super Nintendo’s superior hardware compared to the Sega Genesis, so clearly the effort put into this game definitely shows. But how does it play?

In a word, balanced. One of the few 16 bit platformers I’ve played that doesn’t suffer from being either painfully difficult or pitifully easy. Not to say either is a bad design choice (I’m a hardcore Castlevania fanatic, and my favorite game of all-time is Sonic 3 & Knuckles which is piss easy as far as I’m concerned), but its definitely refreshing to see a platformer maintain a balanced difficulty curve from beginning to end (With exception to the final boss, but at that point, they already have your money). Early on, Ristar is a pretty easy game. You have plenty of time to react to any dangers that come your way, it slowly introduces gimmicks that become more pertinent as the game goes on. Enemies are large and easy to notice and being able to react to them isn’t an issue. As the game progresses though, the level designs get a bit more subtle, enemy and boss patterns get more complex and require using the skills you obtained playing through the game to move past them. Failure to learn from what the game taught you prior will most likely not end well. While the early game is quite simple and easy, and the mid-game is nothing to write home about if you’re experienced with platformers (As far as difficulty is concerned), the final boss at the end of the game can really catch you off-guard and is far more difficult than anything else the game has thrust upon you. Ristar’s narrative is about as typical as you can get for a 16 bit platformer, which is to say it does what it needs to and nothing more. It introduces a crisis and a motivation for the main character to take care of it and leaves the player to finish the job. Ristar’s father among many other dwelling citizens among the solar system that this game occupies has been kidnapped by the evil space tyrant Greedy. Ristar’s father supposedly is a great hero of some kind, but the game never really goes into detail about that. So in short, with his father kidnapped, its up to Ristar to save the day! Eh, not the greatest narrative either, but platformers have never been known for their plots (Well except for Ninja Gaiden). As mentioned before, it does what it needs to do. It introduces Ristar’s place in the game, and a clear motivation for what he sets out to do. Is it shallow? Absolutely, but for a game of this scope, I don’t particularly mind.

Now Ristar (Who looks like an animated star, with arms and legs and the like) controls pretty simply. There’s nothing ultra-complex about the game, so the learning curve is fairly moderate (Unless learning how to manuever the spinning poles counts as complex). The main thing that sticks out about Ristar is his ability to extend and stretch his arms considerable lengths, enough to grab and bash into them and defeat his foes. The whole stretch mechanic is kind of interesting in that while Ristar is bashing into enemies he gets a few invincibility frames during that animation, which can come in handy in a few boss fights and makes certain portions of the game much easier otherwise (It seems minor at first, but those invincibility frames can be godsends in some boss fights). The game also introduces some swinging poles that allow Ristar to move in a circle and collect enough momentum that he can bounce around the screen like a “Shooting Star” (Hence why he’s a Star) and is invincible during that period. While bouncing about, he’s pretty stiff and difficult to control, but Ristar is not a game that revolves around cheap instant death pits, and he is invincible, so it’s not a huge issue. He can grab in all eight directions (Just like Simon Belmont can whip in all eight directions in Super Castlevania IV!) too. During normal gameplay (That is, not in one of the harder difficulty settings) Ristar has four units of health represented by a group of stars in the far right corner of the screen. Losing all of them causes him to lose a life, as you would expect of a platformer from this generation. Throughout the levels are yellow stars and blue stars, which restore 1 and 4 units of health respectively, so if you’re diligent and can find where they are located, Ristar can manage to take a decent beating. However, the game maintains a cap of 4 health points so that if you’re particularly aggressive (without the necessary skill to back it up) you’re in for an ass-kicking.

In addition to needing to travel throughout the solar system and its planets to rescue everyone from Greedy’s grasp, there exists the option of partaking in a number of special bonus rounds. These are completely optional, but performing and completing them allows you to gain access to special passwords once you’ve completed the game. They’re essentially mini-games, one in each level that isn’t a boss act. You only get one chance to complete the mini-game though, and each one has a time limit and some of the later special rounds can be quite stingy with their time limit, which makes getting all 12 relics feels like an exercise in trial and error/memorization. If you fail, you won’t get another chance unless you start a new game. But again, they’re completely optional, and there’s hardly any penalty for not getting them other than missing out on a few passwords that aren’t even that important (They simply allow things like boss rush, harder difficulty settings, level select, etc.)

Each level is broken up into 3 areas a piece with a sub-boss at the end of the first area and the real boss in the 3rd area, each with their own music and designs. Its rather refreshing to see different musical pieces used throughout the levels and not just one theme for each area. It also helps that Ristar’s musical score is quite spectacular in its own right, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Each level takes place on one of the several planets in Ristar’s solar system, and they’re all incredibly vibrant and very pretty to look at considering the era in which the game came out. The backgrounds and environments have a lot of attention to detail, as does Ristar himself. He alone has several animations present for a variety of situations which all pretty silly and funny in their own way, and the bosses have their own gimmicks to make them all feel unique from one another (The game’s 2nd boss is a Shark that attempts to ram at Ristar in the water, but damaging him causes him to ram into various plugs that hold the water in the room, causing the water to decrease his effectiveness to gradually decrease over the fight. It’s not anything special, but it is that little attention to detail that makes Ristar special). You see, I’m an absolute whore for attention to detail, so neat little things like that just stick out to me, and Ristar being a game that does attention to detail pretty well, has my attention as such.

As far as level design is concerned, the game strikes a nice balance between not being hand-holding and not being confusing to the player. While the levels aren’t nearly as non-linear as what someone would expect from Sonic 3 & Knuckles stages or the sprawling labyrinthine design of Super Metroid, it’s not as linear as say – Mario 1 would be. It’s a nice balance and it’s easier for a first-time player to sink their teeth into it, without an experienced player getting tired of picking the same path through the level for the nth time. Like a lot of platformers of the era, Ristar likes to use the method of introducing a mechanic early in a level as a subtle tutorial and then expanding upon that gimmick down the road as the player has had more opportunities to get used to said mechanic (Which is exactly how it should be done, Sonic Team. Not that I’m bitter, or complaining or anything.)

Each individual world, as mentioned before, is quite pleasing to look at on it’s own, though I suppose each world falls into “generic platformer level” trope as far as aesthetics are concerned (Being a 2d platforming whore on the other hand, I really don’t give a damn as long as they’re done well). The first planet (Flora) is a lush, green filled world (or the token “Green Hill Zone” level if you want to go that far) with plenty of color and is the easiest level in the game. The 2nd one (Undertow) could be described as “token water level” (Though Ristar sports much better swimming controls than a lot of games do, so this really isn’t a bad thing). The 3rd world (Scorch), is your token fire world or would be if I played more platformers whose fire levels rained meteors on you periodically and had a sub-boss that consists of a few matches of “Simon Says”. The 4th world (Sonata) is actually quite unique in that it doesn’t take an elemental theme (Like your usual Forest/Jungle/Fire/Ice/etc. levels) and is instead focused on music as a theme (the 2nd level of this world is filled with nothing but instruments as platforming gimmicks. It’s actually quite fun to mess around with them). The 5th world (Freon) is your token “Ice level”, though I find it captures the “winter wonderland” atmosphere quite well. Despite the world not doing anything particularly noteworthy as far as aesthetics are concerned, it’s fun enough on it’s own. The 6th world (Automaton) takes on a very futuristic and mechanical tone (Not unlike Metallic Madness from Sonic CD) and makes pretty interesting use of the swinging mechanic that other levels don’t. The final world, isn’t really much of a world on it’s own. Instead, it’s a prologue (and by that, I mean a small level that might as well act as a prologue to the final boss), a penultimate boss fight (Which is actually quite easy once you realize Ristar has invinciblity frames once he bounces off of enemies after grabbing them), and a final boss fight (Which despite the game’s colorful and cheery tone, is actually quite difficult and can be a complete bastard if you suck at the game).

The game’s assortment of bosses, I find maintain legitimate difficulty (You could argue the final boss’ instant death vortex is cheap, though the method in which the player avoids the attack is one of the game’s main gimmicks, so it might not be as cheap as first glance would indicate) throughout. The early game bosses have pretty simple patterns that are easy to recognize and counter. Later on in the game, the bosses are faster and a bit trickier to figure out their attack patterns (Which again, is how I feel difficulty in a game should be handled). As far as design goes, the bosses manage to be quite memorable and colorful (Who can forget beating a giant bird that shoves sour musical notes on the player or an ice monster that’s killed by throwing hot soup in it’s mouth?) Upon completing the game, the player is rewarded with passwords based on how many treasures he/she found during the course of the game, like mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this brings me to a criticism of the game and that is how the passwords are given to the player. In order to get the full passwords, you need to acquire all twelve treasures, which isn’t exactly an easy feat on it’s own. The game also has no save feature or a traditional password system (There is no password you can use to save your progress, basically), so if you want the passwords, you’ll need to grab all of the treasures in a single run through. It’s a lot more difficult than it sounds, trust me. It’s a pretty minor complaint (nitpick would be more accurate), but I still feel it’s worth mentioning. It doesn’t ruin the experience of the game for me, but that’s also possibly because I owned the game as a child and have a pretty intimate knowledge of the game’s mechanics. A similar person playing the game for the first time can’t say the same thing, and may not have the same patience for this mechanic as I do. So I feel it is a legitimate complaint, if only a minor one.

Overall, what do I think of Ristar? I think it’s an absolutely fantastic game, with a few minor flaws that hold it back (No save feature, fairly generic platformer tropes, end-game can be quite brutal especially for inexperienced platformer players) from perfection. It’s not my favorite platformer ever, but I do find myself wanting to go back to this game from time to time. If I were to list my favorite 2D platformers, it’s certainly one I’d closely think about listing towards the top, but isn’t quite there. It is, however, a game I can easily recommend to anyone that enjoys 2D platformers like I do. The game is availible on Virtual Console, so even without a Genesis this game can be easily found and purchased.