STARTROPICS

GAME INFO: StarTropics is an early attempt to mix role-playing and action game elements in a similar manner to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link where players navigate overworld maps viewed from a top-down perspective and interacts with non-player characters until they reach dungeon areas, where the gameplay shifts to real-time combat. Players control Mike Jones, a teenager who visits the tropical island village of Coralcola to meet his uncle, Dr. Jones. It is quickly established that Dr. Jones was abducted, presumably by monsters that have recently began appearing on the otherwise placid island. Attempting to rescue his uncle, Mike unravels an interdimensional genocide at the hands of a being called Zoda, who appears to threaten the inhabitants of Earth with the same fate.

SETTING: The game takes place in a fictionalized representation of Earth, specifically located in a series of island nations whose villages all end with the suffix -cola, such as Coralcola, Miracola, and Shecola. For the majority of the game, the environments resemble tropical areas similar to the Pacific Islands, with lush greenery, sandy beaches, rocky mountains, and vast streteches of blue ocean. While the exploration sections of the game take place in such landscapes, the action oriented gameplay typically takes place in subterranean dungeons that grow in complexity as the game progresses. Toward the end of the game, Mike is transported to an alien ship with advanced technology, and both the exploratory and action gameplay elements reflect that change.

FUNERARY IMAGERY: In the third chapter of the game, Mike must locate a crystal ball that was lost by a fortune teller who lives on the outskirts of the all-female fortified village of Shecola. The fortune teller notes that she dropped her crystal ball in the lake located in the center of the Ghost Village, which is a small cemetery on the far north-west end of the island. A large blue lake is at the center of the map, with ruined walls and outcroppings dotting the perimeters of the cemetery, which is populated with upright headstones that bear a cross on their face. The cemetery is seemingly deserted, but when Mike touches a blue-colored headstone he is transported into a dungeon called the Ghost Tunnel, which is, as its name implies, haunted with several forms of undead including skeleton dogs, disembodied skulls, and invisible ghosts that can only be seen after Mike finds the Rod of Sight. Despite being located beneath a cemetery, the Ghost Tunnel itself contains no funerary objects or architecture.

ANALYSIS: Owing a certain debt to the Legend of Zelda games that preceded it, StarTropics includes a cemetery stage that exhibits some of the same characteristics found in those games. Most obviously, the cemetery is a mysterious, deserted location wherein a magical item can be found, albeit the item in question, the crystal ball, is of no direct use to the player except as a means to progress the story. However, the presence of enemies that are initially invisible is a theme that originated in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, where enemies that are found in cemetery environments are initially invisible to players who have not obtained a cross. In both games, the presence of enemies that cannot be seen by players implies that the undead are so unnatural to the living that even their presence is undetectable, although still dangerous, without a form of supernatural intervention through magical items.

Gallery

Overworld map of the Ghost Village in chapter three


Headstone


Entrance to the Ghost Tunnel


Ending cinematic depicting Mike enterting the Ghost Tunnel