Anyway I will get along with the review. If you haven't played the original Star Tropics, then you are under a rock and have been for some time. It's one of the more popular Zelda clones that grazed the NES in its heyday. That game was a great game in most aspects, except the awful control. The second picks up where the first left off.

Mike's (the main character) uncle gets captured again as does Mica the Alien girl from another planet who telepathically communicates with you throughout the game. This time around Zoda has captured all of the Tetrads which of course are Tetris pieces ripped off from Tetris (how original). They've have been scattered about through time. Mike travels through time by reading a book called The Oxford World Wonder and starts chanting "papa papa oo papa papa mow mow." How original again.

Each area has a town with someone in distress and then it's off to the cave to find a Tetrad piece. Along the way, Mike will run into characters such as Sherlock Holmes, visit the wild west, Transylvania, and finally come back to C Island for the ultimate hair puller in the final showdown. The story is quite cheesy but enjoyable, it does however repeat itself through each area Mike travels. The ending surprised and was better than most any RPGs for the NES.

Enough blabbering about the story and on to the rest. Graphics are detailed but jagged. Some areas are brightly colored and others are quite drab. They are not up to par with the capabilities of other games released at the end of the NES's lifecycle. There is an awful lot of flicker in this game as well. The cinema scenes are excellent though and offer some mild animation. The music fits the mood of the game but is missing something. Some caves have a catchy tune but most are no better than a few of the low budget RPGs the NES saw. I will say though that sound effects are fairly fitting though and make up for some of the music.

The area that absolutely kills this game is the control. The core gameplay is good and versatile, Mike can move and fire in eight directions but the control is so sluggish and choppy that I even screamed at the game from time to time. When you walk you will walk find for a second and sometimes just stutter and lag as if using a flakey controller and turning is sluggish. Some times you will want to walk and jump, but end up jumping straight up in the air.

For such a late game in the system's life, this is a lot meatier than a lot of other NES games. I found my self enjoying them at times and mad out of my mind at others. These are great for die hard RPG fans but casual fans and meek gamers altogether will probably want to avoid these games for difficulty alone.