 There aren't many roguelike games in the 16-bit era, most of the ones that were made usually stayed in Japan, but this particular game, Mystery Dungeon Shiren the Wanderer for Super Famicom, has received an English patch, so it's playable for us English speakers today. I should also mention quickly just in case you don't know what I mean by roguelike, it means a dungeon crawler where each dungeon is randomly generated for each playthrough. And yes, this is a Mystery Dungeon game, the second game in that series which is still going today, and has since spanned out into the Pokémon universe. The first game was actually Torneko's Great Adventure, Torneko being a merchant from Dragon Quest IV, but you don't need to play that one to get into Shiren the Wanderer. In the case of this game, it's a top-down action RPG complete with upgradable weapons, armor, items with towns and shops you can visit, and NPCs you can talk to to gather information and find even more items. But the best way to describe this one is probably as a survival adventure game. You begin at level 1 with no equipment, no weapons, nothing. You just have to go exploring, collecting whatever you can and survive as long as possible. And whenever you die, and you will die, you come back to the village you started at in the same predicament, and you have to start all over and go through a new set of randomized dungeons. There's 30 levels with a town every 6 levels or so, with your goal being to get to the top of Table Mountain to investigate the legend of the Golden Condor, and you have to get through forests, caves, streams, all the normal settings you usually see in action RPGs. You can move and attack in 8 directions, and your health automatically regenerates as long as you're moving around. And like I said earlier, everything is randomly generated. The maps, the enemies, the stuff enemies drop when you defeat them. Which items the shops are selling, you get the idea. The closest comparison to this one on Super Nintendo is probably the Ancient Cave in Lufia 2, so if you enjoyed that then you'll love this. There's little things here and there that I should mention that help this game stand out a bit more. For instance, certain villages have storage houses, where you can store a finite number of items, and they can be picked up for later playthroughs even after you die, so that's handy. There's plenty of shops where you can buy items, like meat which turns you into a monster, and scrolls that can increase a particular stat. The trouble is, a lot of these items are way too expensive, so sometimes you have to resort to stealing them, if you're confident you can get past the guards. I found myself stealing a lot in this game, I don't know what that says about me, but it does work pretty well. One trick I learned worked almost every time. Use the large room scroll, which causes the entire area to be one big room, and then after the shopkeeper blocks the door, use the place exchange staff to switch places with them. Of course it's obviously no guarantee you'll get those two items on any given playthrough. In another example of how random this game is, I got those two items two playthroughs in a row, and then I never saw them again the rest of my time playing the game, so I couldn't even get footage of me doing the trick. But still, it's a great way to land yourself a katana or a heavy shield. The thing is, if you get caught, a horde of guards come chasing after you, and they will be right on your ass until you either find the exit, or until you're dead, there's just too many to fight at once. There's also random characters that join you occasionally for side quests, which is really cool. You already have Kappa, the talking weasel, that's that white animal thing walking beside you, but there's also Naoki the chef for example, or the wandering chef. You can work at his restaurant for money, but we need to slay some monsters with him first to clear the areas. There's also a little girl you stumble upon so she can go home to her parents, there's this mysterious woman who blinds you, there's all sorts of chaos that can happen at any given moment. And that brings me to the difficulty of this game. Sheeran the wanderer is definitely not for everyone, this game can be brutally unfair and frustrating for all the wrong reasons, well depending on how you look at it. You can cruise through the first 10 levels, finding all sorts of cool stuff, then suddenly you hit the 11th floor and you're surrounded by monsters with like 80 hit points each, and before you know it you're dead. Some people hate that, but I mean hey, it's a roguelike. That's kind of what you sign up for when you play this one. Every single playthrough is a role of the dice. Some people love that and really enjoy the challenge, and I have to admit this game presents a challenge unlike any other Super Nintendo or Super Famicom game I've ever played. There's a certain kind of intensity and urgency to the gameplay that I like, and like I said, the name of the game is simply to survive. Mystery Dungeon Sheeran the Wanderer received a remake in 2006 for the DS and as you might expect that version has a lot more stuff like rescue quests where you can save other players who died, and you can help them to continue where they left off. It's a good game and a faithful remake, but again, it's brutally unforgiving and hard as hell. So yeah, for what it is, Sheeran the Wanderer does the roguelike thing surprisingly well, and there's tons upon tons of items and weapons you can find, buy or steal, and the game enables lots of inventive ways for you to get by. There's even more stuff here that I haven't even mentioned like traps you can set, that you have to manage, buffs and debuffs that strengthen or debilitate your character, and an additional 100 floor dungeon that you can unlock that's even more difficult. I could spend forever going into all the minute details of all the different scenarios you could potentially come across, but that would be pointless because the odds of you coming across the same scenario with the same items aren't that great. Besides, it's more fun to just experience that for yourself. Like I said, not everyone's gonna dig this one. Many people understandably aren't gonna like the unforgiving nature of roguelikes. But for the people that do dig this genre, Sheeran the Wanderer is well worth checking out.