Games of the Abstract: Ristar (1995)

 

Developer: Sega

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Sega Mega Drive (Genesis)

 

It can be argued that 1995 was the real transition point into the fifth generation of games consoles. By this point, the first consoles ready to get the head start a few years earlier had came - insulting the likes of the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, released in 1993, or the Philips CD-i in 1991 - and notwithstanding that the Sony Playstation, an upstart, and Sega Saturn, one of the kings of the fourth generation kings making their next step, released in Japan in 1994, by 1995 was when they were released in other countries. Even if the Nintendo 64 was very late by 1996, the momentum over the years for the machine would have been growing too.

With this transitional period in mind, it was also a time of ill advised follies - the Virtual Boy for Nintendo in 1995 and the 32x from Sega in 1994 - but also when the kings of the fourth generation, the Mega Drive/Genesis and the SNES, were to bow out but not without leaving the stage in 1995 without a few more games. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995) would push new aesthetic styles for the SNES, and from Sega we got Ristar. Produced by Sega themselves, whilst this would be the time polygons were christened the new hot thing, Ristar feels like the last hurrah for the sprite based console, even in mind the irony that sprites were the Saturn's best virtue as a games console. On a sci-fi world, an evil alien invader has brainwashed the leaders of various planets, forcing those left to pray for a hero to save them. Their calls are heard from a young sentient star, sleeping in the galaxy above, named Ristar; in the original Japanese version, he is sent by Oruto, mother of all shooting stars, and in the West, his father is among those already brainwashed, either way leading to Ristar himself coming down to save the day.

Ristar is a very idiosyncratic game, a real testament to how Sega, as much to the eventual cost of them bowing out of the hardware industry, always went for the more unconventional choices even when appealing to a larger audience. Part of a platformer, which was a popular genre on the Mega Drive which Sega did very well in with Sonic the Hedgehog, Ristar himself before you get to the vivid world onscreen in a curious little figure, a literal anthropomorphic star that also has the ability to extend his arms extra far. This adds the interesting and distinct mechanic to his game, in that you find yourself grabbing enemies and effectively sling-shooting yourself into them in a super Glasgow Kiss, propel yourself in the air between rails, and as with later levels and bonus stages to acquire treasure, bouncing up walls. It is a game, to its credit, where alongside this interesting mechanic to work with, there are countless distinct changes of pace to the planets you hop between which are all interesting.

The game, like the Sonic franchise, is a bit mean with springing hazards onto you, and it becomes clearer visiting this era of gaming that they were emphasising, unless you got the game deliberately made unfair to extend the rental period of the cartridges, memorising and repeating the game until you get to the later levels. Ristar, however, does show the best of these games in the platforming genre in that the mechanics are perfect for this game, the grabbing technique clearly with the ability to improve and even break the game with, and that between a mini boss being a snowball fight, or grabbing enemies in a specific order for one section, Ristar is delightfully eclectic. Only the wish there was a dodge button for some enemies, especially the final boss, stands out for what is Sega at their A-game here, creativity radiating from the game in its look and in the gameplay.

The game looks beautiful, the Mega Drive not leaving the console market until it had one last flourish here, where between a musical planet where you need to get metronomes to despondent song birds, to a puzzle level in a mechanical world which forces one to use one's noodle, everything looks imaginative and colourful as alien cartoon worlds. Considering the Mega Drive was released in 1988, Ristar is an achievement that was showing what could be done with the hardware and cartridges themselves still before the transition to a CD based 32 bit Saturn machine and the machine closing out within the next few years. There is an inherent surrealism here too, as found in most platformers, the lush aesthetics to all of them following their own logics but standing out. The music by Tomoko Sasaki as well, pushing the console, is a detailed and lovely one befitting the sprightliness of the protagonist. Considering she would go onto Nights Into Dreams (1996), Tomoko Sasaki had a knack for magical soundtracks for magical Sega games.

Thankfully, Ristar has been released in multiple forms over the years, more so considering Ristar back when it was first released was shadowed by the release of the Sega Saturn and the 32-bit generation. It became a cult title, one appreciated over the decades when Sega wisely made the game available over multiple compilations. All in mind Ristar never got a sequel and that, into the chaotic era of Saturn, its disastrous Western release but even with its superior Japanese market success, it was never returned to when the likes of Nights into Dreams and other titles from Sega took priority, thankfully the game has lasted over the years to an appreciative audience like myself.