勤... Nass drunk! Time to dive into another super Famicom game that never left Japan, this time it's Melphond Stories, developed by Sting. No, not that Sting. Or that Sting. They've had a hand in some other interesting games like Flying Hero, a solid vertical shoot-em-up, as well as the Jetsons Invasion of the Planet Pirates, a surprisingly well made, and inventive, licensed game. Melphond Stories, meanwhile, is a beat-em-up and the gameplay takes place on a strict 2D playing, kinda like Ninja Warriors, with one hook here being that there's four playable characters to choose from, each with their own weapon, and the game is two player co-op, with the second player being able to join in at any time by pressing start. Right away you'll see there's a bit of story here, but since this is just a regular old beat em up for the most part, you don't need to understand Japanese to play through this one, there's no English patch for this one yet, and sure, there's some story you'll miss out on, but it's pretty much just save the kingdom from this evil dude. Today as either El, the well rounded fighter who fights with a sword, of course who's a knight that has a powerful attack using a trident, but is the slowest and has the shortest range of the four, there's Lemon, the fastest of the four with the widest range, but the weakest attack, and Nora, who attacks with a whip, she's kinda like El, but a little bit faster, but in turn, takes a bit more damage. You get three lives here, but bear in mind the game refers to them as continues, there's no actual continues here, just the three lives, that's really not that big of a deal however, since when you die, you respawn right there, and you have the option of switching characters at that time, plus you can add more lives through the point system, and your life bar is pretty substantial as well. Tapping the Y button attacks, but you can hold Y to block, and hit up and Y at the same time to hit enemies on either side of you, it can be a bit tricky since all three of those things are tied to one button, and that kinda sucks, so it's one of those things where you just gotta get the hang of it. You can also obtain three different magic spells, wind, lightning, and fire, just press the X button to use those, and there's also a handy sliding move if you press B while holding down. What's cool here is that the game has varying paths you can take, when you finish a level you can pick either the easy or hard path, and that adds a ton of replay value here since there's no one path that covers every level in this game, there's nine total levels, but you'll only see five per playthrough, pretty dang short unfortunately, but I do appreciate the variety. In addition, the final stage in the castle will be different depending on what path you take, since you can either go in through the front door, or through the back door. One strange thing about this game is the music, I don't know if it's just me or what, but it almost sounds like it's off-key somehow, here listen for yourself. Anyway, yeah, the best comparison for this one that I can come up with is like if you crossed King of Dragons and Popful Mail. It reminds me of King of Dragons and all the different characters and their varying abilities, and I get a big time Popful Mail vibe from the combat itself, as well as the character design and each character's movements and range of motion. All the different settings here are really well done too, especially these Mode 7's scrolling backgrounds that really look nice, but yeah, all the typical settings you'd expect in a game like this are here, everything from caves to open fields, to a church, to a forest, to a castle, and the enemy design is inventive as well, at least from a visual standpoint. So yeah, those are all huge factors when it comes to playing through a game like Melphonse Stories, because let's face it, the gameplay here can be a bit repetitive, it's just block attack, block attack, use magic, rinse and repeat, you're not exactly implementing a huge amount of strategy and forethought here, and yeah, this game is a pretty short playthrough as well, but the settings, music, and art direction here are all so well done, and the different characters and paths give this one a little bit of variety and replay value, and it all adds up to making this one well worth playing today. And I want to thank you for watching and hope you have a great rest of your day.