Retro Review-Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars-For SNES

The traditional old school Japanese RPG is, at times, archaic, frustrating, and wildly inconsistent. Although I've played a number of entries in the Final Fantasy series, I've always found myself frustrated with the wild card nature of the battle system. Battles occur at random times, sometimes within a few seconds of the last one, or a powerful enemy one isn't prepared for annihilates your team, leading to needless backtracking to the last save. Yet, in spite of these things, the Final Fantasy series has always had great, entertaining storyline, and the battle system is fun when it is not getting in the way of other aspects of the game.

In one of the greatest creative merger's in the history of video games, Squaresoft (now Square-Enix) teamed up with Nintendo to create the first role playing video game starring world famous icon Mario. On paper, it seemed ridiculous. How could the hop-and-bop platforming world of Mario be merged into the world of Final Fantasy? However, the results were nothing less than stunning, in that to this day, Super Mario RPG is still one of the most fun and accessible role playing games to date. This is due to the game's fundamental rethinking of a RPG's battle system to make it much more fun and much less frustrating.

Super Mario RPG begins with a typical Mario saving the Princess from Bowser routine that quickly gets turned upside down by a new, more powerful villain who wants nothing less than world domination. Mario must traverse the Mushroom Kingdom in search of seven magical star pieces that form the very channel for making wishes. Along the way, he comes across a charming cast of allies, townspeople, and villains that ooze with personality. The script is one of the most entertaining aspects of the game, and is many times laugh out loud funny. The sheer variety of oddball situations that Mario finds himself in on his quest are ingeniously crafted, such as disguising himself as a gold statue to get inside a palace and dodging a bird henchman's polishing poke.

The gameplay is a combination of Mario's platforming roots and a Final Fantasy style battle system with many welcome tweaks. Mario's world is presented in an isometric point of view, creating a semi 3D feel that is unique and fun to traverse with many interesting platforming challenges. Instead of battles randomly occurring, a battle begins when Mario touches an enemy on the world, leaving it up to the player to decide how much experience he wants to gain, and how much time he wants to spend in battles before moving forward in the game world.

Of course, even with random battles removed, the game wouldn't be fun if the battle system weren't engaging, and Super Mario RPG definitely delivers. Instead of the player just selecting an attack and watching a character carry it out, each attack has it's own unique button input as it's being carried out. For instance, when Mario shoots fireballs, the player pushes the y button as fast as he can to do the most damage. This aspect of player input goes into every facet of the battle system, with even each individual weapon having it's unique timing for the most damage. Learning and mastering each of these timing's is one of the most intriguing parts of the game.

The game's music is simply a delight to listen to, somehow managing both to capture the light-hearted whimsy of Mario and the more serious nature of Fantasy. There are plenty of strong tunes that you will find yourself humming to, or making ridiculous Youtube poops out of (see "Scrub, Scrub, Scrub" for example).

Overall, Super Mario RPG is a fantastic experience that shows that role playing games do not have to be the frustrating endeavors they sometimes are. It's a game I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, especially to those who normally don't like RPG's. The game makes the genre much more accessible to the average player, fixing what was broken and creating something new and fresh.