 S.M.A.S.T.R.I.C.E. Believe it or not, there are two Casper games on the Super Nintendo. They're both based on the 1995 movie starring Christina Ricci and Bill Pullman, but the U.S. and PAL regions got one game while Japan got a completely different game. They're both adventure titles, but they each take a totally different approach. I'll start with the game released in the U.S. It was made by Absolute Entertainment in December of 1996, and that is a big red flag because the other notable games they made for the Super Nintendo range from Space Ace to Home Improvement Power Tool Pursuit. Well, that's not good. Thankfully, this game is not nearly as bad as those two. In fact, it's surprisingly pretty decent for what it is. You play as Casper the Friendly Ghost, and the name of the game here is Protecting Cat Harvey and helping her get out of this giant haunted manor. And you do that by collecting items and taking their form to fend off random stuff that might be floating around. You start out with a butterfly net, which you use to knock down flying books and dinner plates. Eventually, you get a fly swatter to get rid of flying fruit. You get a toilet plunger to, uh, plunge the faces of these mini-boss ghosts. I don't know if that's something from the movie, I've never seen it, but that's a pretty weird way to attack a ghost. But yeah, you enter a room, Cat ducks down in the corner, and you as Casper have to get rid of all the obstacles so Cat can proceed. You can also just leave Cat there and pass through walls, floors, and ceilings, but if you drift too far from her, she'll get abducted by another ghost, and you'll have to start over. You also collect items that help Cat get from room to room, like this rope that helps Cat walk across holes in the floor. You get a pillow that helps her jump down from one floor to another. You get a balloon to move up a floor. It's pretty simple stuff. If this reminds you of a boy and his blob for NES, you'd be exactly right to think that, since this was made by the same dev team, and essentially uses an updated version of that same game engine. All told, there are 14 different things you can morph into. You use the L and R buttons to scroll through them, press B to attack, and press Y to change forms. And you can also press the A button to turn yourself invisible so other ghosts can't see you. The X button has you warp to another room in the house when you see one of these mirrors. Navigating this huge house can be a little tricky at first, but you can always press the select button to bring up the map. Casper's ability to change forms is tethered to a magic meter in the form of the Casper logo in the bottom middle of the screen. After you defeat an enemy, you collect Ectoplasm, and you'll notice Casper's head will rise a little bit. You'll know you're maxed out if you can see his eyes, but if his head disappears, then you start losing life. That's really not that big of a deal though, because this game is really easy. I mean, of course it is. It's based off a kid's movie. So it's not like this is some hugely ambitious game meant to rock people's worlds. As far as licensed games go, Casper is decently well made, and it takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete. It's a really easy game that's extremely repetitive, but it's not bad at all. Japan got a completely different game based on the Casper movie, with this one coming out a bit later in March 1997, and it's made by Natsume, a name you'll recognize from games like Wild Guns, Pocky & Rocky, and Ninja Warriors. This is one of those weird Super Famicom games where half the text is in Japanese, and half of it is in English. Yeah, I don't know either, but this game is still playable as it is. In this one, you play as Cat protecting Casper, and she's the one going around collecting items and, uh, throwing baseballs at stuff. This game is much less of an escort mission type of a thing, and closer to a traditional adventure game, where you check every nook and cranny to find hidden stuff like this door here, as well as finding keys, and it's up to you to explore and find which key goes to which door. Like the US game, this playthrough is really simple and straightforward, but there's a lot more substance in the Japanese game. There's not a whole lot of combat, but there are a lot more mazes, traps to avoid, levers that activate something else in the house, and you gotta go find what it did, that sort of thing. It's pretty good, and it's a pretty long playthrough, too. It'll take you at least a few hours to get through this one, but there is a battery save. I admit there's not much else I can say about this game, because there's not a whole lot of information out there, and there's no English patch that I can find either, but as far as I can tell from playing and finishing it, it's a solid playthrough. Anyway, yeah, it's pretty unusual in this 16-bit era to get two completely different games based on a semi-popular kids movie, and they're both decent games, with the Japanese edition being a much more substantial game that's held up well over time. Some of you might be thinking, well, why didn't the rest of the world get the Japanese version? I can only speculate, but I would guess it's because the movie came out in May 1995, and the Natsume made game was released in March 1997. So not only is it nearly two years after the movie, but it was released at the end of the Super Nintendo lifespan, so it's understandable why a publisher never bothered to localize that one. But yeah, the American version is inoffensive, kind of boring, but not bad. But if you like adventure games, then I'd recommend checking out the Japanese version of Casper, any way you can. Alright, that's all for now, and I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.