@cwebber ActRaiser was also one of the first titles for the Super Famicom after launch. Given the age of the console at the time it was released, it has held up incredibly well! I seem to recall completing it the day I took home the cartridge, but I have enjoyed replaying it over the years; it is short enough that it is not an enormous time sink.

IMHO, ActRaiser 2 has a masochist level of difficulty. Even with the benefits decades later of fast forwarding/rewinding emulators, cheats and such completing it was extremely difficult for me and I do not believe I have ever completed it without such assistance, though I did purchase the cartridge when it was originally released in the USA.

I seem to recall an AGDQ run that blew my mind, and the technical commentary of how it was done, also blew my mind (this one from 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el7hzIlH9RM&pp=ygUPYWN0cmFpc2VyIDIgZ2Rx though I guess there are faster speed runs now e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2NRgOkSUwc, yikes). Even if they hadn't done away with the overhead Sim City style gameplay for ActRaiser 2, IMHO it would have been a worse game based on being too challenging alone.

Thankfully, both titles have gorgeous sprite animation and soundtracks by the legendary 古代 祐三「koshiro yūzō」. In 2021, the soundtrack to the original was released on vinyl as "ActRaiser Original Soundtrack & Symphonic Suite" and I purchased it (this is why I am in debt, basically: procuring art legally in fetishized lossy physical formats even though lossless ROMs are easily available freely).

Albeit, I haven't deejayed anywhere publicly since 2018 and declined an invite in 2019 shortly before the pandemic and while someone seemed intrigued enough by my description of teajayin to make an offhand comment about having me do such things in Boulder, CO; that seems like a lot of travel with no promise of income and the last time I visited CO in 2019 was a disaster too. So for the time being the vinyl is safely in storage.

#古代祐三 #KoshiroYūzō #ActRaiser