[This post is part of a collaborative Sonic retrospective based around the games on Sonic Mega Collection Plus. To read more, please head over to the central post!
This one is written by Shaun Musgrave, who posts at Post Game Content and on twitter as @ShaunMusgrave, and who recently wrote about Spider-Man 2]
While Ristar wasn’t a Sonic Team project, it has numerous ties to SEGA’s famous mascot and his stewards. In the brainstorming session that eventually resulted in Sonic the Hedgehog‘s creation, one of the discarded ideas was a rabbit that would use its extended ears to pick things up and throw them. This idea was picked up years later and eventually morphed into a little star kid with stretchy arms. The game itself shares some audio assets with the Sonic games, and many of the people who worked on it would go on to work on Sonic Team’s NiGHTS Into Dreams on the SEGA Saturn.
Interestingly, Ristar‘s gameplay is quite different from that of Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s a slower-paced affair where patience pays dividends. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why, in spite of it being a gorgeous game with charming characters, solid mechanics, and fantastic music, Ristar remains a one-off project. SEGA was selling speed in the 16-bit era, and Ristar‘s more deliberate pace probably wouldn’t have impressed many fans of the Blue Blur. Still, while it wasn’t a terribly big hit in its own time, Ristar has earned a lot of appreciation over the years from its inclusion in numerous SEGA compilations.
There’s a lot to appreciate in the game, after all. Ristar is an immediately appealing character, bopping along with the title screen music and inviting you to play with him when you begin the game. An upbeat tune kicks in as the first stage is introduced, and you find yourself in one of those vibrant, lush environments that SEGA was well-known for creating. Ristar can’t pick up the speed that the likes of Sonic or even Mario can, but he can jump and stretch out his arms in multiple directions. The game shows you right away the primary use for that ability by sending a rather harmless foe your way. Grab it with your arms and Ristar will bop it off the screen.
As the stage rolls on, you’ll learn about the versatile nature of your elastic arms. They can grab onto handholds, used to climb walls, hitched on to flying enemies to catch a ride, bust open treasure chests, reach into holes to see what’s inside, swing you around posts to send you skyrocketing into the air, throw certain objects, and more. Certainly a bit more complicated than the “one button does it all” approach of Sonic, but it’s all quite intuitive. Most of us tend to grab a lot of things in everyday life, after all. The game makes the most of these mechanics throughout the course of the game, finding interesting new things for you to do in each stage.
Ristar is divided into discrete planets, each containing two stages and a boss. This allows the game to present an impressive variety of visual themes and gameplay styles without worrying about any narrative inconsistencies. The verdant forests of the first planet give way to an aquatic planet where you’ll spend most of your time zipping around underwater. There are the expected elemental planets with fire and ice themes, though the game finds amusing ways to play around with these well-worn ideas. If you’ve never defeated an ice monster by tossing spicy curry down its throat, Ristar will allow you to check that one off your bucket list.
One of the more memorable stages is set on a music-themed planet. You have to carry metronomes with you and give them to specific characters to pass through certain checkpoints. It culminates in a battle with some sunglasses-clad drinking birds who dunk their heads with the beat of a song as a little bird conductor waves its stick around. The second stage on this world puts you inside some sort of giant musical instrument, bouncing off drums, flipping around flutes, and bouncing off keyboards as you make your way through its labyrinthine design. Ristar presents players with at least one interesting new thing to do in each stage, showing off a real sense of creativity on the part of its designers.
Ristar is a fantastic game that in another time and place could have made a much bigger mark. Unfortunately, it was another mascot platformer for a company that wasn’t particularly in need of one, released on a platform whose successor had already arrived in one region and wasn’t far off in the rest of the world. It was sweet rather than sassy, moderately-paced rather than a speedy race, and more dedicated to delivering a breadth of ideas than drilling in hard on one in particular. A wonderful complement to Sonic the Hedgehog in hindsight, even if that wasn’t something that seemed to be needed at the time.