Sunsoft's 1988 Famicom adventure Ripple Island hits Console Archives

Hamster Corporation is adding Sunsoft's 1988 Famicom game Ripple Island to its Console Archives series. The publisher released a new trailer showcasing the 8-bit adventure, highlighting its icon-based menu system and animal companions.

Ripple Island is a departure from the gritty murder mysteries that dominated Japanese adventure games in the late 1980s. You play as a young boy named Kyle. He sets out to rescue Princess Nasareru from Emperor Groaker, a villain who calls himself the Prince of Darkness but sounds more like a disgruntled swamp landlord. Along the way, Kyle teams up with a heroine named Cal and interacts with a cast of talking woodland creatures.

Nine ways to interact

The game relies on a menu of nine commands to navigate the world. Players select icons to look, take, enter, hit, or push objects in the environment. The trailer shows Kyle picking berries, delivering fruit to a sick villager, and watching a raccoon named Rask wash a scroll by the lake.

Structurally, the adventure is divided into five distinct areas. Once you clear the conditions for an area, you move forward and cannot return to previous locations. It also features four different endings based on the choices you make during the journey. Only one of those is considered the true ending, and it's the only one that actually rolls the staff credits.

It's a peaceful game, but it isn't necessarily easy. The Famicom original was notorious for providing very few hints to solve its puzzles, forcing players to exhaust every command on every object in a room. The Console Archives release adds save states and customizable button layouts, which should make the trial and error a little less punishing.

There's a catch for international players. The YouTube description confirms the game includes only the Japanese version, meaning all in-game text remains untranslated. I'm curious how many people will try to brute-force their way through the dialogue trees using a translation guide.

Buried by Dragon Quest

Sunsoft originally released the game on January 23, 1988. That was just 18 days before Enix launched Dragon Quest III, which effectively consumed the entire Japanese gaming market. Because of that timing, Ripple Island never quite found a massive audience, and original Famicom cartridges command high prices today.

The game has seen a few re-releases in Japan over the decades. It appeared on the PlayStation in 2002 as part of a Sunsoft compilation disc, bizarrely bundled with the vehicular combat platformer Blaster Master. It also received a mobile phone port in 2003. This Console Archives release is its first official availability on modern digital storefronts.

Hamster hasn't announced a specific release date for this title yet. The Console Archives series typically targets the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. The ESRB rated the game E, noting "Violent References" that presumably cover whatever Emperor Groaker is up to.

Bringing an untranslated 8-bit adventure game to global storefronts is an odd choice, but it keeps another obscure piece of Famicom history accessible. You'll just need a dictionary to actually finish it.