From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Reflections: "Skyblazer" (SNES)

A couple of years ago, as I was enjoying the absolutely delightful Umihara Kawasi, I suddenly developed the urge to delve deeper into the SNES library and discover more of the console's hidden gems. "Apparently there are plenty of them out there," I thought to myself, "and I'm tired of missing out on them."

I was ready to grow as an SNES enthusiast.

So in the days that followed, I spent some time on YouTube and did some research. I watched a bunch of videos that bore titles like "Overlooked SNES Games" and "Best Obscure Super Famicom Games," and I made sure to take some notes.

Most of the videos, unsurprisingly, talked about games that I already knew about--those like Hagane, Magical Pop'n, Rendering Ranger: R2, Clock Tower, Super Back to the Future II and Mickey to Donald: Magical Adventure 3. These were the usual fare. They were games that were always sure to appear in these types of videos. So when I'd see one of them, I'd nod in an annoyed manner, say "Yeah, yeah," and then promptly skip to the next part of the video.

I didn't have anything against those games, no. I thought that all of them looked very nice, and I was interested in playing them (at some point), but none of them grabbed me and said, "I'm a shining gem that you need to play right now!"

That's how it was until one particular video introduced me to an obscure game that immediately captured my imagination. It was an impressive-looking action-platformer called "Skyblazer." I was drawn to it mainly because it was visually striking and also because it had the type of presentation and gameplay style that screamed greatness. "This is the one," I thought to myself as I pored over the video footage. "This is the shiny gem that I need to play as soon as possible!"

I imagined, based on what I saw, that Skyblazer was an all-time-great video game, and I was really looking forward to playing it. At the time, though, I refrained from seeking it out because I knew that I'd have to turn to emulation to play it, and I didn't want to do that because my new MO was to get a hold of games legitimately and make sure that the people who were involved in their creation got compensated in some way. (I only turn to emulation when I suspect that the game that I want to play is never going to be re-released.)

So I decided to wait and hope that Skyblazer would be re-released as part of a collection or a Sega Ages-type legacy series. I even thought, naively, that it might come to Nintendo's online service, since it wasn't connected to any major publisher (or so I thought) and could probably be secured on the cheap.

It was a longshot, yeah, but still I was convinced that it was possible, so I was content to wait.

As of a month ago, I was still waiting and hopeful. But then, suddenly, I discovered something--an important fact that had somehow escaped me: Skyblazer, I learned, was published by Sony Imagesoft! It was a Sony game!

At that moment, my heart sank because I knew that the game wasn't likely to be re-released and that its coming to a Nintendo device was pretty much an impossibility. "There's no way that these two companies would ever work together in the video-game sector," I said to myself in a deflated manner.

That's when I decided that the best thing to do was take the only option that was available to me and play Skyblazer via emulation. I wasted no time in seeking the game out, loading it up, and excitedly tearing into it.

And I've been playing it ever since then.

And now, after having spent a month with Skyblazer, I'm ready to talk about the game and tell you how I feel about it.

The only thing that I'll say in advance is that I had really high expectations for Skyblazer.

Read on to find out if it lived up to them.

 The first thing you should know is that Skyblazer was developed by Ukiyotei, which most famously created Metal Slug and The King of Fighters '97, and that it was published by Sony Imagesoft. So it is, like I said earlier, a Sony-branded game. It was a 1994 release and one of the last games that the company published as a third-party entity (soon after, it start focusing all of its efforts on its upcoming PlayStation console).

So Skyblazer exists in a weird space. It's an SNES game that was brought to the platform by a competing company. It represents one of the last cooperative efforts of two companies that were about to enter a decades-long blood feud.

That's part of what makes it such a curiosity. (It's always surreal to load up a 1994 SNES game and see a Sony logo flash onscreen. It feels almost unholy.)

Its story isn't quite as interesting. It's just your standard "descendant of a legendary hero is caught up in an ancient conflict that is recommencing in the current age."

As it goes: Before the dawn of history, in an age when great sorcerers and mystic creatures walked the earth, the world was in a constant state of turmoil and war. In this age, Ashura, the evil Lord of War, waged an eternal war on the Mystic Pantheon and attempted to stamp out the light of reason once and for all. At one point, fortunately, a great sorcerer named Sky-Lord arose and defeated Ashura and then proceeded to banish him from the realm. And in time, the Mystic Pantheon and Ashura's great deeds passed into legend.

One day, though, a gifted sorcerer inadvertently freed Ashura from imprisonment and put the world in danger. Ashura, as expected, began to wreak havoc. He captured the Mystic Pantheon's descendants one by one and irrevocably transformed them into evil warlords and his eternal servants.

This is where Sky, the current-day hero, enters the picture. He's the last free descendant, and he confidently sets out to rescue the recently kidnapped sorceress Arianna and permanently end Ashura's tyrannical reign. This last part of this backstory plays out in the game's into stage, which ends in a scripted battle between Ashura and Sky. Ashura quickly dismantles Sky and leaves him in an unconscious state. This defeat represents the start of Sky's character arc and establishes that he isn't yet powerful enough to stand up to the mighty Lord of War (he's basically X to Ashura's Vile).

Sky, who is weirdly arrogant for someone who just got stomped, denies his current inadequacy and promises the old man, his guardian, that he's going to humble Ashura. The exchanges between these two are mostly played for humor. The old man keeps doubting him and throwing wisecracks at him, and Sky keeps insisting that he's a legendary hero who will have no trouble taking down the evil villain. (The subtext is that Sky is stubborn and unwilling to acknowledge his weaknesses, but because he never orally expresses feelings of uncertainty or apprehensiveness, we don't really get this sense. We don't see what's actually going on in his head. So it appears, rather, that he's just foolishly arrogant. Call it a narrative failure.)

The point, these scenes are meant to communicate, is that Skyblazer isn't a dark or deathly serious game. It's light-hearted and optimistic in tone. It has a hopeful energy. "You're going to have a fun, feel-good action-game experience!" these scenes convey to you.

And they're not lying! That's exactly what you'll be in for if you decide to play this game!

 So Skyblazer is interesting because of the way in which it presents itself. It takes elements from games like Super Mario World, Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden and blends them together with its own ideas and then spends all of its time showing you how eager it is to use its eclectic mix to create new and original action and platforming scenarios. And consequently it establishes itself as one of the console's most unique-feeling action games.

It's a stage-based action-platformer whose mode of progression is a lot like Super Mario World's: You access stages via a top-down map and open up new map locations by clearing stages. Your goal is to clear 16 action stages (there's also a special secret stage that I'll talk about later) and advance from continent to continent. The condition for moving on to the next continent is to grow more powerful by beating all of the current area's boss characters and consequently gaining new abilities. These acts of heroism earn the confidence of the shrine keeper (an old man who acts as your guide) and convince him to allow you entry to the next continent, which you reach via a bonus stage.

There are three continents in all, though the majority of the action stages are concentrated into the second, centralized continent. It's the one in which you spend most of the game.

The hero, Sky, has multiple abilities.

The first is his basic attack, which you execute by pressing the Y button. It's a one-strike punch that executes quickly but inflicts only a limited amount of damage. Though, if you press the attack button three times in succession, he'll instead deliver a more-effective three-strike combo (punch, punch, spinkick) that can stunlock and kill even the toughest minor enemies.

He can jump, of course, and while he's aerial, he can throw a roundhouse kick that hits twice as hard as his basic punch. You jump by pressing the B button.

He can crouch to duck under attacks and crouch-walk to pass through narrow passages, and while he's in that position, he can can throw a punch and use the same three-strike combo.

While he's in water, he can swim freely in any direction and execute his normal ground attacks.

In the autoscrolling shoot-'em-up stages, he gains the ability to fly and throw fireballs (you fly by tapping the B button, and you throw fireballs by pressing the Y button). And in the on-rail third-person bonus stages, he can freely fly around in any direction.

And then there's his most unique ability: the wall-climb. He can cling to walls and then proceed to freely climb up and down. He's able to cling to any type of terrain (save for spike walls), and while he's in a clinging position, he can protect himself by throwing punches and executing a similar three-strike combo. And he can propel himself off of the wall with a jump.

The wall-climb is an essential platforming ability, and you'll have to gain a good grasp of it if you hope to successfully advance. Fortunately the ability is easy to learn and control, and it's a whole lot of fun to use! So you'll be eager to master it and abuse the hell out of it!

Otherwise, Sky can use a number of special powers (I'll talk about them in a bit).

You start with 3 lives (except in the intro stage, which serves as a practice area and refrains from penalizing you for failure), and you have unlimited continues. If you Game Over, the only punishment you'll face is being sent back to the last shrine that you visited. You don't lose any of your progress.

There's no battery-backed save function. If you want to continue from where you left off, you have to enter whichever password you received from the last shrine that you visited.

When you're in a shrine, you can choose one of three options: "Story," which repeats the narrative-advancing dialogue scene that played when you first reached the shrine (this option is useful when you haven't played the game for a while and forgot what you were supposed to be doing). "Show Mystic Pattern," which displays a password. And "Resume," which continues the game and places you back on the top-down map.

All of the most pertinent information is displayed in the HUD. It contains four items.

• The energy meter, which shows you current health. You start with four points of health, and you gain an additional point whenever you reach a new shrine. You can get up to eight health points.
• The special power window, which displays your currently selected special power and the mystical energy meter. The meter has eight units of energy, and it drains in certain increments depending upon the special power that's being used.
• The life counter, which of course displays your current number of lives.
• The crystal meter, which shows the number of crystals you've obtained. You get an extra life for every 100 crystals you pick up.

The game has a number of obtainable items:

• Small gold crystals, which increase your crystal meter by one point.
• Large gold crystals, which increase your gold meter by ten points.
• Small green vials, which replenish one point of health.
• Large green vials, which replenish four points of health.
• Small red vials, which restore one mystical energy point.
• Large red vials, which restore four mystical energy points.

Items are distributed in two ways: They're placed all around the stages' open spaces (usually in abundance), and they're dropped by enemies.

Then there are the special powers I talked about earlier. You start with one of them--the Dragon Slash--and you gain seven more of them over the course of the adventure. During gameplay, you can cycle through them with the L and R buttons, and you can use the currently selected power by pressing the X button.

These are the available powers:

• The Dragon Slash, which releases a flaming scroll projectile straight ahead. Its only limitation is that it can't pass through walls. It costs one energy point.
• The Comet Flash, which turns Sky into a fiery comet and allows him to dash forward at a full screen's length. It's mainly an accessibility and platforming move, but it can also be used to damage enemies. It costs two energy points.
• Heal Power, which restores four health points. It costs two energy points.
• Starfire, which causes Sky to toss out fiery flame arrows in all eight directions. It costs two energy points.
• Time Stop, which freezes enemies for five seconds. It costs two energy points.
• Lightning Strike, which summons lightning bolts that strike all onscreen enemies. It costs two energy points.
• Warrior Force, which allows Sky to turn invincible for five seconds. During this period, his attack power doubles. The power costs two energy points.
• Fiery Phoenix, which turns Sky into a fiery phoenix for about five seconds. While he's in phoenix form, Sky can fly and damage and kill enemies with contact. The power costs four energy points.

The mystical energy meter communicates to you how many points your currently selected special power costs by marking its units with an associated amount of Xs.

Some of these special powers are most useful than the others. The Dragon Slash, for instance, will be of help in any instance in which you need to take out an enemy from a distance and especially in instances when enemies are incoming as you're traversing your way over series of collapsing platforms. And the Comet Flash will allow you to safely travel long distances and cut through pesky aerial enemies at the same time; it's fun to use, and I really wish that they built more platforming challenges around it (there are sadly only three or four challenges that require its use).

But really, you're probably going to conclude, much like I did, that the smartest move is to refrain from using projectile attacks and stopping time and instead save all of your mystical energy for Heal Power, which is extremely useful. If you have a full energy meter, you'll have enough juice to fully heal yourself two times over, and that'll do much more to help you survive the toughest stages and boss fights.

 So Skyblazer is, like I said, a stage-based game. You advance through it via a top-down world map, which is segmented into three separate continents, and as you travel along its roads, you automatically access any stage area that you come across.

The first and third continents are wholly linear, so you have no choice but to tackle their stages sequentially, but in the second continent, which comprises about 70% of the world map, you can freely move along the multiple roads and tackle the stages in any order you please. So if you feel that one of its stages is too difficult for you at the current moment (because you lack a useful special power), you can head in a different direction after you Game Over and try your luck somewhere else.

You can't return to previously traversed continents, but then, really, you never need to. There are no major powers or items that you can miss.

One of the things that makes Skyblazer so great is its stage variety. It has multiple stage types! It has, of course, some basic, straightforward stages in which you engage in some simple platforming and combat, but generally, its stages are more apt to constantly introduce unique themes and ideas.

There are woodsy areas that you traverse by jumping onto and maneuvering your way through trees' foliage, through which you'll sink if you don't keep jumping. There's a Battletoads-style rotating tower that you ascend by jumping onto and off of all different types of blocks and moving platforms, and as you climb upward, you can enter into its interior portions via open doors and collect some goodies. And there's a largely surface-less desert stage that you traverse by jumping and clinging onto objects that are emerging from the sandfalls in the background.

And that's not all!

There's a stage in which you have to advance by strategically breaking your way through block formations, many of which were built to contain dangerous enemies. There's a vertical autoscrolling stage that you traverse by negotiating your way onto and around floating, dilapidated pillar parts, some of which collapse if you try to stand on them. There's a bridge stage that you traverse via rotating logs, falling of which drops into piranha-infested waters. There's a sky stage that you traverse by jumping onto and riding currents. And additionally there are stages that take traditional ideas like crushing walls and floors, water mazes, travel via lift systems, elevator sections and put cool twists on them!

There are also the aforementioned autoscrolling shoot-'em-up stages, in which you freely fly about and assault enemies by throwing fireballs at them, and the Space Harrier-type on-rails bonus stages, in which you collect big gems as they come into view and continue to do so until you collide with a spike ball or arrive at a stage's endpoint. (Note that there's no penalty for failing to clear a bonus stage. If you die while flying through one of them, the game just quickly scoots you along to the next continent's starting point.)

Oh, and there's also a secret bonus stage that takes you to the second continent's normally inaccessible northern shrine (you can trigger the secret bonus stage by pressing up on the d-pad while standing on the cleared Gateway of Eternal Storms stage)! Traveling here earns you an extra health point and grants you access to a hidden boat stage that hands out a lot of goodies.

Some stages have linear progression while others are varying degrees of labyrinthine. Some are transitional while others have bosses. Some of them have light puzzle-solving elements. And some of them have a more open design and invite exploration (you can find shortcuts and hidden areas if you explore stages thoroughly).

So yeah--this game's stages throw all kinds of different things at you. And sometimes it's the case that each of a stage's individual sections will hit you with something new.

And all of it is fun and interesting!

Note that you can reenter a cleared stage for whatever reason you desire to (you might want farm lives or try to find secrets). You can then exit the stage by pausing the game and pressing the Select button.

The game's boss fights, too, are creative and fun. Each one asks you to engage with your foe in a particular way and use unique tactics to dodge its attacks and successfully strike it. The boss room's environment also plays into the fight, and consequently, your other task is to find out how to safely operate within the environment's surrounding spaces and use its platforms, surfaces and other elements to your advantage.

And these design choices help the boss battles to feel distinct and memorable.

It's just too bad that certain design oversights allow you to cheaply dispatch a few of the bosses. In multi-screen boss areas, for instance, you can despawn bosses' large, destructive projectiles by scrolling them off of the screen; and you can otherwise use movement-manipulation tactics to (a) get bosses stuck behind walls and take them out of the picture and (b) set them up for series of unobstructed strikes that essentially stunlock them.

These oversights make the game feel a bit unpolished and give the sense that it wasn't thoroughly tested. (One of the testers, by the way, was David Jaffe, who went on to become one of Sony's most important players.)

I'll talk more about boss fights in the "visuals" section of this piece, since their associated graphical effects sometimes play an essential role in how you engage with bosses.

I like pretty much everything the game does design-wise. It's always throwing new and interesting things at you, and thus it makes you eager to discover what else it has in store for you. "What fun, creative platforming scenario or boss fight is this game going to throw at me next?" it inspires you to wonder.

And once you experience a new type of platforming scenario or boss fight, you'll be so enchanted by it that you'll immediately begin to look forward to revisiting it in the future!

That's how well the game does to capture your imagination.

There is, though, one design choice with which I take issue: the boss rush in the final stage. It was a bad decision to add it. All it does is slow the game down and create a sense of tedium (the mermen fight is the biggest offender because it takes two to three minutes to clear even if you tackle it in an optimal way). By then, the game has already made its point (strongly, I'd say) and is ready to end on a high note. The boss rush is unnecessary and only serves to lower the energy and disrupt the pace and flow that were established in the first 95% of the game.

My only other minor complaint is that enemy hitboxes are sometimes too centralized. You have to get real close to certain enemies to successfully strike them, but doing so will often result in Sky taking contact damage. It should be the case that the enemies' hitboxes are the same size (or roughly the same size) as their sprites.

This would be a much bigger issue if the game wasn't constantly handing out health items.

 One of Skyblazer's best aspects is the way in which it controls. It has some of the finest character movement you'll ever see.

Sky's basic back-and-forth movement is super-smooth, and he swiftly and fluidly glides in whichever direction he's traveling. There's a little acceleration on his animation startup, but it's barely noticeable and doesn't cause any trouble.

It's the same deal with crouch-walking: It functions smoothly and without inhibition. It has a slower movement-speed, yeah, but unlike the walking animation, it has no acceleration period.

The jumping controls are also topnotch. Sky's jumps can be fully modulated, and his aerial movement is so smooth and so graceful (and somewhat floaty) that it feels as though he's acrobatically soaring through the air whenever he's in a jumping motion.

Jumps are pressure-sensitive, so the longer you hold the button, the higher he jumps. His vertical max is four tiles, and his horizontal max is roughly eight tiles. So he gets a lot of lift on his jumps, and he can make the most of the time he spends in the air.

Wall-climbing, too, is extremely easy to execute. Sky effortlessly clings to walls when you push up against them, and he climbs up and down in silky-smooth fashion. Also, he quickly and nimbly hops up to a platform or surface when he reaches its edge. And he'll cleanly drop off a wall when he reaches its bottom edge.

Sky jumps off of walls in an equally effortless fashion, and he can catch some major air when he does; and while he's aerial, he can pull off deft, elegant wraparound maneuvers and propel himself up to wall sections that jut out two or three tiles farther than the one to which he's currently clinging!

The only problem is that clinging occurs so naturally that Sky might do it at times when you don't want him to, like when you get too close to a wall at a moment in which you're trying to put some distances between yourself and an approaching enemy. In such instances, it's very possible that you'll accidentally get stuck on the wall and get completely crossed up. So it helps to stay a tile or two away from a wall when your current intention isn't to wall-climb.

Swimming, which is the only other form of movement, is also easy to do. You can move freely and precisely while underwater (when you're not swimming through or fighting currents) and attack the same way that you can when you're on land.

Switching between special powers is also easy to do. You simply press the L and R buttons to quickly cycle through your available powers. It might be difficult to do so in a clean and accurate way when the action is hectic and you're under pressure, yeah, but thankfully you can also do it while the game is paused; so there's never a need to panic and start hyperactively mashing the shoulder buttons.

Ground and air attacks execute quickly and have a lot of priority. You can even use them to nullify projectiles.

And the flying roundhouse kick is interesting because it acts as an extension of your jump and its movement can likewise be fully modulated. It's a versatile attack. And what's great is that there's no landing lag when you hit the ground after executing a roundhouse; you cleanly transition into your walking animation and start immediately moving forward in your usual smooth fashion.

That's the theme with Skyblazer's controls: smoothness. All of Sky's actions are swift, flowing and smooth. And for that reason, simply moving around in this game is fun. It's a joy to just speed along environments, wildly throw yourself into the air and twist yourself around as you soar over long distances, and cling to every surface and see how far you can propel yourself.

And that's what you'll feel inclined to do when you play Skyblazer: Have a blast experimenting with its wonderfully smooth movement controls.

They represent one of its biggest appeals.

And I appreciate that the game's knockback animation isn't punishing. When you're in knockback state, you can shift yourself forward and recover from the strike. Thus you have a fair chance to prevent yourself from being knocked into a death pit.

I can't ignore, though, that there are a few negative control aspects. Jumping up to a moving platform's top portion from a climbing position can be rough. Sometimes, when a platform is moving away from the direction Sky is facing, he'll refuse to shift upward, onto the platform's top portion, and get stuck in his transitional animation. This can cause you to get crossed up and start unintentionally executing jumps that send you adrift and potentially drop you into death pits.

Also, Sky sometimes takes an extra step forward when he lands. This, annoyingly, can cause him to collide with nearby enemies and walk off platforms.

And the flying-type stages' movement controls also have their issues: In the shoot-'em-up stages, your movement is so unsteady that it's difficult to aim your shots, and oftentimes, attempting to engage with the large numbers of enemies can cause you to fall behind and thereafter struggle to regain solid positioning. In these stages, it's sometimes better to avoid combat and simply fly around the enemies.

The controls in the flight-based bonus stages are always a problem. They're hyperactive as hell, and thus you always feel like the action is completely out of control. Sky isn't able to freely halt his flight momentum and has to slow down before he'll stop moving, so if you want him to hold his position, you have to rapidly dart back and forth and hope that he arrives at a center point at the exact moment a jewel is passing through it. Thankfully there's no penalty for dying in these stages.

On the whole, though, Skyblazer's controls are great. They're smooth, precise and highly responsive.

 Another one of the game's biggest appeals is how it looks. It's a visually striking game. That's what initially drew me to it.

And I'm happy to say that it's just as impressive-looking up close, in game form, as it is in video! Its environments and textures are vivid, radiant and entrancing, and they're also crisp, clean and finely detailed. It doesn't have a ton of multi-layer parallax, but when it uses the effect, it provides some of the most engaging and enchanting scenes you'll ever see in an SNES game. In those instances, multiple layers of clouds, water bodies and mountain ranges work together to create a symphony of movement and consequently bring the game's world to life in a breathtaking way and absorb you into it (like Shadow Dancer and Quackshot Starring Donald Duck, the game uses an advanced technique called "high-definition memory access" to split single layers into multiple layers and imbue its backgrounds with an even greater sense of depth).

It's a beautiful game to look at.

I'm just disappointed that the designers didn't use multi-layer parallax more often (only 4 of the game's 17 stages uses more than one scrolling background layer). When they use it, they get stunning results, and that's why I would have liked to have seen the effect used to a greater degree--particularly in woodsy- and mountain-type stages. Their having the accompaniment of such an effect would have made them even more striking and wondrous!

The designers also make great use of the SNES' scaling and rotating abilities. It does so most memorably in two of the boss battles. In one of them, the boss, a round one-eyed demon, grows in size each time you hit strike it, and it continues to grow until it fills 90% of the room! And as the creature expands in size and the available amount of traversable space decreases, you have to find new ways to avoid colliding with it as it executes its room-encircling attack.

In another battle, the boss, an evil face, makes the entire background wall, into which its embedded, spin around horizontally like a rotating door! And if you want to avoid getting crushed to death, you have to continue to find the randomly placed openings in the wall's sides and jump through them or crouch into them.

And the designers also incorporate many other graphical effects.

Two of the game's stages have sections whose action takes place in front of towers that spin from left to right and vice versa as you climb their exterior portions. These sections use the three-dimensional wrap-around effect that you've seen in games like Tower Toppler, Battletoads, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Mickey Mania, and they do so memorably. The effect is, as always, very impressive, and it does the job of creating an entrancing sense of visual depth. And it's also fun to look at!

The secret stage uses the Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts wave-crash effect. As you battle enemies on a boat, giant waves emerge from the background and wash over the entire sprite layer and wipe out anything that isn't nailed down. If you want to survive the deadly waves, you have to find the time and the opportunity to cling to the boat's chained-down cargo.

There are also the obligatory Mode 7 effects: In the bonus stages, Sky flies above the world, whose landscapes take three-dimensional shape and appear to sprawl in every direction. And whenever you enter a stage, the map zooms in epically to the location in which it's placed.

And both these and all of the game's other graphical effects are impressive as hell and just a lot of fun to observe.

The game's environments in general are fun to look at. Their backgrounds are formed from glorious skylines, mountains, waterfalls, and stone structures, and they're always populated with eye-catching statues, etchings, reliefs, pillars, columns, and other interesting, attention-grabbing objects.

The sprite-layer textures aren't quite as striking, but still they're nicely rendered, and in a couple of instances, they're rife with animation. I only wish that more of them featured animation.

So that's my summation of how the game looks: It's a visually attractive game, which is to say that it literally attracts you with its visuals. Its imagery is very appealing, and you'll want to play it just so that you can get the chance to intently observe it and admire what it does graphically.

Skyblazer, overall, offers a great package of vividly colored sprites and textures, beautiful backgrounds, and cool visual effects. It creates a lustrous ancient fantasy world whose gorgeous imagery will continue to wholly absorb you.

My only complaint, again, is that it doesn't do more with its best qualities: multi-layer parallax and animated textures. Had the designers used these qualities to greater effect, they would haven made their already-attractive game even more stunning.

The game's character animation is fine. Characters (particularly the enemies) don't have many frames to their movement (some floating enemies have no animation frames), and they're a little jerky in how they walk and run about, but still they animate pretty well.

I mean, it's a little disappointing that a game that looks this good doesn't also have amazing character animation, yeah, but still it does well enough in this area, and you probably won't notice (or care to notice) the instances in which the animation isn't smooth or fluid. This is one of those shortfalls that you can only find if you're looking for it. Really, it's not something that matters all that much.

Technically, the game is very solid. There's no noticeable slowdown, and there are no obvious graphical glitches. The only notable flaw is that the game doesn't have a lot of sprite memory. Enemies that leave the screen tend to stay offscreen and remain idle, and they don't reactivate and continue their animation cycles until you scroll them back onto the screen. You can use this to your advantage, of course, and purposely scroll enemies off of the screen and keep them there until you're ready to deal with them, but you'll always be doing so with the understanding that you're exploiting a technical flaw.

 Skyblazer's music is a standout mostly for how well it does the job of setting the tone and telling you everything you need to know about the story in which you're involved and the world that you're traversing your way through.

Its soundtrack, in that sense, is very reminiscent of Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Demon's Crest's (coincidentally, the composer is Harumi Fujita, who created the soundtracks for two Ghosts 'n Goblins series games: NES Ghosts 'n Goblins and Gargoyle's Quest), which is to say that it has a powerful medieval and ancient-middle-eastern energy to it and that it uses its great energy to fill you with the sense that you're on a grand, epic journey in a storied fantasy world. And, likewise, it enchants you with its instrumentation--with its thunderous, booming percussion and symphonic mix of Arabic ouds, sitars, horns and organs--and imbues you with fighting spirit.

All of the game's tunes are pretty great, but what makes them truly memorable is the way that they work together as a collective to ensure that the action always feels energetic and high-spirited. Each tune contributes to the cause by vigorously maintaining its inspiriting quality regardless of what its tone is--regardless of whether its inspiring, mysterious, ominous or urgent in nature. No matter what the situation is, it expresses optimism and continues to speak of heroism, and consequently it invigorates and inspires you.

Wherever you are, the music makes sure to remind you, in encouraging fashion, that you're on a grand, epic adventure in a wondrous fantasy land and that you're a hero who's very much capable of meeting the toughest challenges.

So yeah--Skyblazer's soundtrack is a winner. It does its job on a high level and creates the exact tone and mood you want for this sort of game.

The sound effects don't do as well. They're a little muted and limited in number, and the majority of them are reserved for Sky, who makes sounds when he attacks, punches, and lands. Enemies, contrastingly, are largely silent as they move about and attack, and most of them only make sounds when they explode. And all bosses make the exact same sound when they take damage.

Environments, too, are largely silent. Outside of crushing walls and ceilings and crashing waves, there aren't many environmental objects that make sounds.

Skyblazer's world is a quiet place, it would seem.

Overall, the sound effects are good but not spectacular. They're mostly utilitarian, and they're content to leave the job of creating aural energy to the music, which certainly succeeds in picking up the slack.

 Skyblazer's difficulty-level is moderate to high. It'll tilt toward the latter in your first play-through because there are certain boss fights that will come off to you as frustratingly baffling and seemingly insurmountable. They'll likely cause you to Game Over a bunch of times. But once you figure out the correct methods for dealing with the bosses in question, you'll discover that their fights aren't anywhere near as tough or as arcane as you thought.

Then, at that point, the challenge will be all about how you handle the game's platforming segments, which are often tricky but still always manageable.

And certainly it helps that the game is more than fair with its item-distribution. It hands out 1ups in abundance (1up symbols and large jewels are available in large numbers, and in any of the bonus stages, you can easily earn 10-plus lives), and its enemies always drop one or two items.

What's nice, also, is that the game always gives you magic when you need it--when you come across a platforming segment that can't be cleared without the use of a special power. It never requires you to farm.

Additionally, it allows you to continuously reenter certain rooms and farm lives (via the obtention of 1up symbols and jewels, which respawn each time). So if you desire to do so, you can continue to exit and reenter a jewel- or 1up-rich stage section and obtain 99 lives.

And the game's checkpoint system is very generous. It always allows you to restart in the stage section in which you died (except when you Game Over, in which case it requires you to redo the entire stage).

It's my opinion, though, that the game is overly generous with its item-distribution. Its providing an overabundance of items (especially 1ups) only serves to diminish the challenge and dramatically lower the stakes. So it becomes the case that once you know the game, you'll be able to get through it without great struggle. You'll be able to charge along and never have to worry about suffering consequences for repeated failures.

I wish that the level designer, Kenshi Naruse, had shown more restraint. Had he done so, the game would have had a more appropriate level of difficulty.

 So my conclusion is that Skyblazer is a great action game, but it falls short of being top-tier. It needed a little more to reach that level: It needed to be more ambitious visually. It needed to go even further with some of its stage ideas. And it needed some of its boss fights to be more polished and more complex.

It settles for being great when, with a little more effort, it could have been amazing.

Still, though, Skyblazer is a high-tier action game and absolutely worth your time. It's a joy to play, and its every aspect is enchanting and fun.

Fun is the operative word. Everything it does fits that description. Its ideas are fun. Its gameplay is fun. Its movement controls are fun. Its world is fun to look at. And its music is fun to listen to.

Skyblazer is pleasing in many ways.

Closing Thoughts

 So that's how I feel about Skyblazer after spending a month with it. I consider it to be a great game, and I'm fond of it, but still I'm slightly disappointed with it. I love how it expresses its ambition and endeavors to constantly introduce new ideas, but I feel that it had the chance to do more (gameplay-wise, graphically and aurally). It had what it took to reach the next level but sadly restrained itself in certain ways.

Now, I admit that my expectations might have been too high. I was anticipating that it was going to be an all-time-great action game and rank among giants like Mega Man X, Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master and Contra: Hard Corps. "This is going to be one of the era's defining action game!" I thought going in.

And that, I can see now, is unfair to Ukiyotei, which was a much smaller company than Capcom, Sega or Konami and probably had to deal with a number of constraining development issues (like a small budget, a strict deadline, and the size limitations of a 1MB cartridge). It likely didn't have the time or the resources necessary to produce an absolute masterpiece.

I still wish, though, that the game did just a little more. Had it aspired to take a few extra steps, it could have elevated itself to beyond just "great."

But don't get the wrong idea: Skyblazer is still is high up there. It's certainly a shining gem and a must-play action game. And I'm happy to say that it's one of my new favorite SNES games. It is, I'm sure, a game to which I'll be returning quite frequently in the future.

The shame of it is that Skyblazer would be one of a lot of people's new favorites if it were widely available for play. It's sad that it's relegated to obscurity and that the majority of games will probably never get the chance to discover and enjoy it.

I hope that I'm wrong about that. I hope that someday it finds its way to one of the big company's legacy services, which were made for gems like Skyblazer.

 The only other thing that I can say is that I highly recommend that you seek out Skyblazer and play it any way you can. It's a great action game, and clearly it was made by designers whose goal was to impress us with their creative ambition and consequently deliver to us a game that's filled with unique and interesting platform scenarios, graphical displays, and action scenes.

Its action is fast-paced and consistently fun, and after you beat it, you'll surely want to replay it immediately and continue returning to it in the future!

So do yourself a favor and check the game out. And then, kindly, take the time so spread the word about it.

 I consider my discovery of Skyblazer to be the true starting point in my SNES journey.

I've always been a big SNES enthusiast, yeah, but the truth is that I'm not as knowledgeable about the console as I'd like to be. I grew up with it, and I was surrounded by its games, but the sad fact is that I never really ventured far beyond my favorites (Super Mario World, Super Castlevania IV, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Mega Man X, Super Metroid, Street Fighter II, and a few others). I played it safe, and I continued to do so until recent years.

So I still don't know all that much about the sheer depth of the SNES' library or the expanded Super Famicom scene. I'm aiming to learn about them through the process of exploration and the discovery of games like Skyblazer and Umihara Kawase and all of those that can do the job of revealing to me just how rich and varied the SNES' library truly is.

The journey is off to a great start with the wonderfully engaging Skyblazer. I hope to discover many more like it and experience their power of enrichment, which will surely help me to become the type of SNES enthusiast I long to be.