Sunsoft is back! Retro Game Selection (Switch)

Powah Dunk | September 12, 2024 | Mini Review | No Comments

Sunsoft are not only synonyms with retro gaming from the 8 and 16-bit generations, but they seem to be having a massive return in recent years; following on from releases such as Mr. Gimmick!, Uforia 2 and Aero The Acrobat, we now have a compilation of 3 lesser-known titles in Sunsoft Is Back! Retro Game Selection!

Sunsoft Is Back! Retro Game Selection compiles three NES titles that previously hadn’t been released outside of Japan: The Wing of Madoola, Firework Thrower Kantaro’s 53 Stations of the Tokaidoand Ripple Island.

Despite the relative obscurity of the titles on offer, it’s worth pointing out that these titles never got an English translation, which makes it even more impressive when you consider that Ripple Island, which is a point-and-click style adventure game, has a full localization just for this compilation.

The collection is exactly what you would expect from a celebration package, it has so much extra content outside of the three games, advertisements, the full instruction manuals, and of course the industry standard Quality of Life features you would expect such as save states and a handy rewind feature.

The games on offer are an interesting bunch even by Sunsoft standards, you have Firework Thrower Kantaro’s 53 Stations of the Tokaido which is your basic platformer game where you throw or plant fireworks to stop the many thieves, animals, and other nasties from stopping your adventure, it feels a little stiff but is quite charming and honestly the game I found myself playing the most out of the package even if on paper it has the least going for it.

The Wing of Madoola is more of an action RPG with leveling up and finding weapons and other items as you fight the forces of evil as Lucia, this game has some serious Zelda II vibes but sadly felt a little too janky for me to enjoy, similar feel to Athena by SNK and while I am sure it has its fans, it did nothing for me.

Finally, Ripple Island tides off the collection, and it is quite impressive that the developer went to the lengths of translating a full point-and-click adventure for this package, while I’m not really a fan of the genre I did play a good bit of this one and it’s quite a fun and interesting look into the early years of the genre on consoles with some fantastic pixel art but painfully obtuse puzzles, certainly one for fans of the genre to sink their teeth into.

Sunsoft is back! Retro Game Selection is a fantastic museum, celebration style package, and developers should look into the pure quality of what’s on offer here in regards to extras, sadly the games didn’t win me over but hopefully, this is the start of a series and we can delve further and further into Sunsoft and some of the fantastic titles they have produced over the years.