Released in 1996 near the end of the SNES's life, Nintendo's Marvelous never made it out of Japan, like so many other wonderful games at the time. While a lot has been said about some of those other games, Marvelous remains relatively unknown even among enthusiasts, sometimes relegated to a passing mention as Eiji Aonuma's first directing job and often mistaken for a Zelda clone, something it doesn't try to be. Had it been released outside Japan, I have no doubt that it would be a cult classic fondly remembered and talked about. Playing it for the first time earlier this year, I couldn't help but think how much I would have loved to play this game as a child.
Marvelous has its roots on Zelda and the similarities are obvious from the get go but not as many as some people seem to believe. While it moves and looks similar to a Zelda game (some of the graphics wouldn't look out of place in ALttP), it doesn't play very much like one. A mix between action RPG and point-and-click adventure game sounds more like it. While there's definitely some of the classic Zelda style puzzles (specially so in the later parts of the game), the way the world is designed and is relatively unconnected, and even the most basic way the game is played, are different from Zelda. You control three characters at the same time, each with different abilities and item inventories. A push of a button changes who the leader is and another button separates the trio, allowing you to control each one individually in turn. As you can probably imagine, this makes for some very well thought-out puzzles and some fantastic "dungeons" and it's no wonder Aonuma ended up as directing the dungeons in Ocarina. There's a point-and-click adventure element to the game, with a cursor to move through the screen in order to further investigate the background or interact with the characters. The game is divided in chapters, each one set in a different location with a different theme. Very rarely you'll have an enemy to beat or a boss to fight; those are definitely not the norm. Aside form the puzzle solving, there are NPCs to talk to in every chapter, with sidequests to complete, items to find, etcetera. At the end of the game, your completion rate for each chapter is shown and it's very possible to not find every secret on a first play-through. All of this makes for a very varied, entertaining game.
Thankfully, by the grace of God Almighty and someone who took the job to themselves, there's a
translation patch. The version that I played had a couple of lines left unstranslated here and there but it was well made and perfectly playable to the full. That I remember, only one puzzle had Japanese text left but it was such an obvious one that the line or two that were missing weren't necessary to figure out the solution. The chapter titles and the credits were also in Japanese. All of this might have changed by now since I haven't checked for an update in quite a while and the version I played, while absolutely playable, wasn't the final version. I wish more people knew about this translation patch so that they could also enjoy Marvelous as much as I did.
This is a good looking, very well designed game that has excellent music and a funny story with lovable characters, pirate treasures, pirate ships, pirates and a wonderful sense of adventure. It has all the ingredients of a great videogame in a style that seems to be out of fashion. There's nothing to shoot at, there are barely any bad guys at all and the word "epic" in its current meaning doesn't even enter into it. All you'll find here are some awesome puzzles, lots of imagination and a wonderful adventure. Marvelous is available on Wii U's Virtual Console in Japan and I recommend giving it a try if you have a Japanese console and are knowledgeable enough to understand the language. If you are ignorant like me, the fan translation patch was made for us.
Music samples:
Prologue /
Pirate Village /
Gina /
Christopher Henson /
Marvelic's Crystal
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