Terranigma

So you battle your way through monsters galore, face down communists, and revive and develop the worlds major cities, sit through Buddhism 101 and all for what--to face a gigantic, satanic Mothra at the very end?

That's kind of what happens in Terranigma. Here's the basic plot: Your name, inexplicably, is Ark. (I've tried to figure out if there's some kind of significance to this, but as far as I know Ark doesn't get coated in gold leaf and house any holy commandments.) Old guy in your village sends you on a journey which will ultimately revive the world. But the journey starts out with a trip around the five towers outside of your village, where you will encounter a guy who's just a few spikes shy of looking like Shredder. You kill a gigantic insect monster. And this means that you're ready to revive the world above with the help of a weird little pink ball with wings named Yomi.

Now, to get to the upper world, you have to say goodbye to your girlfriend and jump into a giant crevasse. As it turns out, you've been living underneath the surface of Earth, just hanging out there, and not getting burned alive by magma.

Despite the way I've been writing here, I actually enjoy this game. Like most RPG games, the plot is a little ridiculous. There's romance in the air. There's drama. There's killing lots of monsters, which is the entire point of most video games.

So when you get up to the surface, you first have to revive all the plants, which you do by killing a giant parasitic monster choking some kind of giant tree that talks to you. And the plants talk to you, too. And one of the flowers even sings you a song. Now, the appearance of the plants is kind of a mystery, but this happens throughout each of these revival missions: you kill the boss, emerge from wherever you where, and everything's suddenly, conveniently revived. One minute the earth's surface is a volcanic wasteland; the next, it's covered in green.

The next mission: Revive the world's birds. Here, I just want to not that the state boss is two giant birds, and one of them uses its poo as a weapon. You got it: lethal bird shit.

Then you revive the animals, which is followed up by a mini-mission in which you help a lion cub become king. (No, the cub's name is not Simba.)

And now for reviving the human race. You get to climb through the Himalayas, talk to Yetis, and eat a dead, frozen goat after being urged to do so by its surviving mate.

And then you revive the human race, fall into a deep sleep, and wake up in a town called Lhasa. This begins the main adventure. You get to make friends with a Buddhist monk, save a girl from a village full of her zombie playmates, wander around the world a bit, get killed, get reincarnated, and then go kill Satanic Mothra.

I'm not kidding. The final boss is a big flying moth-man, and all you have to kill him with is a big stick. Is it any wonder I was using cheat codes?

So enough with the plot layout. And there is quite a plot attached to this game. But here, you do see some themes that are going to pop up in Japanese games: yin-yang duality, blond-haired blue-eyed youths, and general f***ed-upedness.

Now, when I played the game for the first time and encountered several world cultures through the game, as written up by Japanese game developers, I learned that they saw the world like this: 1. Paris is awesome; 2. Buddhism is awesome; 3. Tourism is awesome; 4. Americans do nothing but work; and 5. Ridiculing the Chinese is A-okay!

I'm going to elaborate on point 5 here. Now, as Ark makes his way around the world, every world culture and even the plants and animals are more articulate than the people you meet in the game's equivalent of Beijing. The buildings are squat an unattractive; there are flies circling bare light bulbs hanging from the ceilings. The doctor uses traditional medicines and has weird things in jars in his office. And the Chinese characters speak in broken English. Now, in the game, the French don't do that, the Portuguese and Spaniards and Japanese speak perfectly. Only the Chinese people's dialogue has been translated as all broken up.

Not cool, Japan. Not cool.

But the Japanese get their comeuppance: Not too long after it appears on the map, Tokyo is destroyed. I suppose that just happens from time to time, and the residents there are quite used to it by now.

Other little gems you get to see: a sassy '90's black kid on a skate board, communists that look like KKK members, a chicken race, an Aussie zoo, and Christopher Columbus.

If you're looking for an old game to play and relive the SNES days, I'd recommend checking this one out. It's pretty big, world-wise, for an SNES game, and lots of fun little missions to go on. And, in pre-destroyed Tokyo, you can find where the software company has actually written itself into the game, and is staffed by (if I remember correctly) a bunch of chickens.

As you develop the world, you also get to explore the US. There are two major cities to visit in the game's version of the US: Freedom, roughly where Washington DC is and seems to be more like NYC; and Nirlake, which is roughly where Chicago is and seems to be a cross (pre-development, anyway) between Crossroads Village and, well, Nebraska.

And, at the very end, you face Satanic Mothra.