 Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss Another game is Marvelous, Mohitatsu, no Takarajima, which translates to Marvelous Another Treasure Island. And this is another weird, ambitious game that's kinda hard to describe. To give you a hint, it's the first game directed by Aiji Aonuma, the guy who eventually went on to become the director and lead designer of the Legend of Zelda series starting with Ocarina of Time. And right away with Marvelous, you can see the Zelda influence here, namely from Link to the Past. As you can see, the game uses a similar pixel art style, some of the same sound design, and the same top-down viewing angle. The English translation even uses the Link to the Past font, but make no mistake, Marvelous is pretty different than Zelda. So you turn on the game and you're watching a bunch of monkeys. It's Winky's 16th birthday, and as a present, this old dude gives him three conspicuously colored keys that unlock the secret of the island. Hmm. Winky is told he must find three humans who are worthy of the keys before they're suddenly under attack from a group of intruders. From there, we're whisk away to meet three boys at camp, named Deon, Max, and Jack, and we're introduced to the game's mechanics. You control all three characters and can switch between them using the R button. The character you've selected will be wearing a hat. You can also split the team up and bring them back together by blowing a whistle. The structure here is a bit like a lost Vikings game, where each of the three characters has their own unique abilities and you use each of them to solve puzzles. You can also take a closer look at items all around you, and what's really interesting here is that on the examine screen, the game shifts to a higher resolution output. Early games are 256x224, but when this screen gets pulled up, you switch over to a 512x448 output. I think you can nearly count on one hand the number of games that have actually utilized this capability. For instance, Seiken Densetsu 3 uses it on the character select screen, Power Drive uses it on its menus, RPM Racing used it, but yeah, it's not common at all, so it's kind of cool to see it actually implemented into the gameplay here. Anyway, the emphasis is on puzzles, combining traditional Zelda stuff with point and click adventure mechanics and the aforementioned Lost Vikings party system. You pretty much just wander around and wait for the question mark to appear over your head, at which point you examine closer, and piece together what you need to do to progress. You can also use items you find, or do some good old-fashioned teamwork like moving boulders or standing on top of each other to reach something. Here's a real simple example of a puzzle, since I don't want to give away too much. You've got this boulder blocking your path, normally what you can do is position all three kids to move the boulder out of the way, but you can't do that here since you need at least one kid on each side. So, you have to find something that enables one of the kids to get to the other side. And sure enough, there's lots of items here that each kid can equip, like a fishing rod, jump shoes, and even the Pegasus boots. Okay, they're not called that in this game, but jeez, does this look familiar to anyone? But yeah, it goes find item, unlock new area, explore, look around for clues, and so on. There are enemies here and there, and you do eventually get some weapons you can use, like a baseball and a glove for instance, but it's certainly not the emphasis of the game or anything. I should also point out that there's other minigame stuff here too, like fishing and soccer. But, it's all about the puzzles here, and they're usually pretty simple, it's nothing that's gonna keep you up all night or anything, but there is enough going on here that will at least make your scratcher head once in a while. The time travel puzzles later on are pretty cool. This game is also pretty dang short, so there's not a lot of content here unfortunately, but what's here is pretty decent. What really shines in Marvelous and Other Treasure Island is how the story is told, it's really cleverly structured, into a Saturday morning cartoon series kind of a way, where the kids just kind of inadvertently bumble their way into trouble, while also stumbling ever so close to the Marvelous Treasure. Also, the folks behind the Finnish-English translation really did a great job here, you can tell a lot of work went into this project. If you really dig this game, there's two Marvelous Satellaview ROMs out there that you can track down, titled Time Athletic and Camp Arnold, and they're treated kind of like side quests, nothing in depth, but some nice additions to the game if you're interested. It's also worth pointing out that this game got extensive coverage in Nintendo Power in North America, in the February 1997 issue Volume 93 with Mario Kart 64 on the cover, so at some point a localization was planned, but eventually cancelled. To give you a hint as to why it was cancelled, all you gotta do is look at the rest of that Nintendo Power issue, which has previews of all kinds of N64 games, so it's pretty clear Nintendo simply just wanted to move on rather than localize this game. So yeah, if you're into simple puzzle solving, you gotta check out Marvelous and Other Treasure Island, it's an easy recommendation if you like stuff like Link to the Past, Luffya 2, Lost Vikings, or even Goof Troop. Just bear in mind that it's single player only, and that it's pretty light on combat by comparison. The focus here is definitely on the puzzle solving, and while the puzzles may seem too easy for some, it can definitely hit that sweet spot for others, so definitely try this one out any way you can. And I wanna thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.