Moñeco que se agarra a las cosas.

Lo empecé pensando que sería muy Sonic, cuando los Sonic no me vuelven loco, pero acabé bastante contento.

Visualmente se parece a los Sonic clásicos, pero todo lo demás es completamente diferente, la forma de conseguir vitalidad, atacar, zonas bonus, jefes...

Se puede volver jodido en varias zonas y los bonus de balancearte en los palos me volvieron feral.

La verdad es que no sé qué más decir, es de esos juegos que o los juegas o no puedes saber a dónde te metes.

started to see the vision once I realized the grab (your only verb outside of jumping) gives you i-frames when you bounce off of whatever you're grabbing... pretty cool wrinkle on an otherwise plain set of mechanics. a lot of the game is carried by the dense mix of geometric terrain and organic outgrowths a la sonic; it's no surprise that much of this team got rolled into sonic team for NiGHTS into dreams the year after. said team really demonstrates their technical aptitude as well, with some stunning overlapping parallax on stages such as planet automaton and swirling line scrolling in the background of the itamor lunch fight. ristar emotes fluidly, with his walking scowl morphing into a grin and twirl upon defeating hard enemies. occasionally he'll even show a penchant for childlike play, such as in this snowball fight setpiece.

a first impression yields something a little dry on the gameplay front, with single-hit enemies and slow movement compounding into something more leisurely than interesting. thankfully around the halfway point the design veers into level-unique puzzles and setpieces. the one that stuck out to me the most was a series of areas in planet 4 involving babysitting this radio(?) item across various hazards in order to give to various birds who want them blocking your way. presages a klonoa style of puzzles built from manipulating objects in the environment rather than working with pre-defined aspects of the player's toolkit. near the end the game veers into some execution challenges as well, with mixed results. ristar's grab actually has a lot more going on to meets the eye: not only does he have the aforementioned i-frames, but he also gains a bit of height off his bounce, and he can hold onto some interactables indefinitely, swinging back and forth using his arms as a tether. the former gets used for a couple climbing challenges jumping between walls and swinging poles, which makes for some pleasant execution trials in the midst of the level-specific stuff. the latter never gets expanded on quite as much, probably because ristar maintains no momentum from his swinging when he releases due to bouncing back off of the fulcrum he's attached to, so actually manipulating the technique to achieve certain bounce angles is a bit unintuitive.

bosses are neat across the board; while somewhat cycle-based, the designers trickle a couple small points for attacking them before they're obviously wide-open. some of these (I'm thinking of specifically the bird boss on planet 4 and its array of non-linear projectiles) encourage the i-frame abuse in interesting ways. by the end of the game, however, it seems like they expect you to exploit it pretty openly to get anywhere, and by that point the bosses end up becoming grab spam. definitely makes the fights fly by quicker, but I find myself preferring the more cautious approach I took during the earlier bosses, although I would imagine upon a replay some of the same techniques apply.

Interesting. Frequently, feels more like a puzzle game than an actual platformer: no run button, no momentum, no tough jumps. Instead, getting through every level revolves around picking up on a series of little stage-specific tricks. Take the bosses for example- Ristar's extremely slow movement means 90% of the challenge is figuring out how to avoid their attacks, and the remaining 10% is execution, which seems to be the exact inverse ratio from pretty much every other platformer ever. The focus on learning rather than motor skill makes it nearly impossible to fail a section that you've already beaten, which, combined with the game's short length overall, means that redoing levels after a game over is an absolute breeze, even if you lose your last life on the final boss. The tradeoff here is that, aside from each stage's bonus area, it doesn't feel like there's much to strive for on repeat runs. There is a scoring system, but, from what I gather, it mostly consists of bonking your head on walls at random and hoping they drop gems, which doesn't much interest me personally. I vastly prefer the Sonic or Mario approach where you can feel yourself completing each portion of the game faster or more adeptly each time. But it's hard to argue against its design philosophy- having to pay close attention to the details of your surroundings rather than running past them as speedily as possible- as a vehicle for embracing the Genesis's bouncy, stylish presentation; six-and-a-half bite-sized worlds and every single one is memorable. Even if not my cup of tea personally, it's pretty easy to see why this one is among the more fondly remembered games on the system.

Ristar is an extremely cute and well put together platformer that for most of the journey is fun but challenging. Unfortunately it's held back slightly by awkward controls for it's main gimmick, demanding overly precise aim for it's grabs despite them being limited to eight directions and diagonal inputs being somewhat iffy to execute reliably, and an unfair difficulty curve that leaves the game falling apart in the back half, the final boss in particular having several attacks that seem to be entirely luck based with a chance of simply killing you almost entirely out of your control. Despite its shortcomings and less fun back half it still shines for the levels of polish on most of the game with incredible spritework and good music.

I love Ristar. I don't think you could make Ristar again. Part of what makes this one special is that there's only one of it. (do we count the 8-bit version...?) Nowadays, you'd probably get some 2.5D reimagining that mostly just recycles a buncha stuff from the original and calls it a day. And it'd be servicable for one playthrough, but I wouldn't come back to it like I would come back to this one over and over again.

Ristar, for its short length, emanates a level of passion and variety akin to something like Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Fitting, as the Ristar team would go on to join Sonic Team after this game released (which is why there's a misconception that this was developed by sonic team). Every world's broken up into two platforming stages and a boss, each with a new mechanic, a new bop of a song, rarely overstaying its welcome and always a marvel of spritework to appreciate. Controls are simple, you move and you stretch your arms out for a variety of context-sensitive acrobatics, including using enemies as climbable platforms, flinging yourself off poles/handles, and climbing up walls as one of the more advanced techniques. If that one small part of your brain lights up everytime a game lets you swing across something to cross a gap, then I'm happy to report that with some practice on hand, Ristar is a Tarzan game in disguise. But even without taking full advantage of these abilities, the game has plenty of mini-bosses and hidden nooks and crannies that reward you with lifes, or even extra bonus stages that feature unique mini platforming challenges for you to overcome, and perhaps take advantage of to practice your moveset.

Game only gets half a star off for the 1st music world stage, which has something akin to an escort mission that I personally found it went a little against the rest of the game's flow. Everything else points to Ristar being a sort-of hidden gem amongst the Genesis library. Coming out at the tail end of its life cycle, this is one of the games that understood the Genesis best. And in a way, as the Saturn approached and overshadowed this game's release, this might very well have been the last glowing star in Sega's track record that burned out.

Level design: 10\10;
Gráfico: 10\10;
Gameplay: 10\10;
Diversificação: 9\10;
Trilha: 9\10;
História: 8\10;
Fator replay: 8\10.

Yes, it's a lot slower paced than Sonic, but it was never meant to be a high-speed platformer. This is much more of an exploration based game, and to this day, it amazes me just how much Sega was able to get out of the simple mechanic of grabbing. You'll be launching yourself off star poles, swinging around to climb and reach greater heights and head-butting the fuck out of anything that stands in your way.

I do think that the treasure-collecting side of the game could've been done better though. Each regular stage has a hidden star pole to find that will launch you into a special stage. Here, you'll be asked to reach the end of the area and pick up a bonus treasure within a set amount of time. Taking damage won't hurt you, but it will decrease the timer. Getting all of the treasures will reward you with special passwords at the end of the game that trigger anything from a sound test to a boss rush. For its time, this was a brilliant idea since the internet wasn't super relevant but has (of course) kind of lost its luster in a contemporary world. I can't fault the game for this, but what does bother me is that you only get one shot to do these per playthrough. Fail once and that's it- you need to start the whole game over to have another shot. Hopefully a remake will let you spend a life to retry (kind of like how Sonic Triple Trouble 16 bit did for that respective title).

Still, that's a very small issue when the rest of the game is brilliantly paced and accounts for the character's primary ability the way it does. Dare I say it's still the best thing Sonic Team came up with after Sonic 3 and Knuckles. It's just really damning that the game had to come out as the Genesis was on its way out.

I think playing this game so soon after Sonic 2 was a mistake, because it was hard not to make comparisons. This game is beautiful with a lovely style… because it looks like Sonic. The designs and music just aren’t quite as good. It’s not really fair to make comparisons, I know, but it’s hard not to.

The main mechanic, Ristar’s stretchy arms, is really creative and definitely has some fun and unique uses. I enjoyed it, mostly. But it feels like it definitely needs another coat of polish. There are times it really doesn’t feel as smooth as it should. I’d say I wish this game had some more time but considering it was already one of the last Mega Drive games before the Saturn, that might have led to it lounging in even more obscurity than it already did…