Retro Review - Skyblazer

The SNES catalog is so large that it is quite common that many excellent games are overshadowed by others, which are called "hidden gems", games which at the time did not have the same fame of other games and simply remained in oblivion despite being (in most cases), games of the highest quality and worth playing. The game I will talk about today is one of those hidden gems of video games, an excellent game in many of its elements and mechanics.

Today's Retro Review is about: Skyblazer.

The story of this game focuses on the rescue of a princess and the salvation of the world, you know, typical in video games. Ashura, the villain of the game, through a ritual and using the princess wants to dominate the world completely, however, our hero, Sky, will prevent this, so Sky will face the most important battle of his life, but in order to achieve this he must overcome a series of stages which will be full of enemies and in this way, our character can get powers that will help him in his final fight. The typical story of saving the world, that as long as it is well founded and developed, will be an entertaining story, being an aspect that this game fulfills to perfection. Originally (the Japanese version) the plot of this game is centered on the Hindu religion, but in the American version, they completely removed all references to that type of religion.

Skyblazer has a pretty good pixelart, it is an outstanding game in the graphic aspect. With a lot of color in each and every one of its scenarios, characters and enemies. The scenarios are excellent, with a lot of decoration and many details, especially stand out for their wide variety of bright and vivid colors. And as I already mentioned, the pixelart work in this game is great.

The character design is similarly of great quality, the sprite of our main character is relatively large and with good details and use of the color palette, besides having a set of movements and animations very good. The design of enemies is varied and are very original, but what stands out the most and with great difference are the final bosses, they are quite large and with designs related to the Hindu culture and religion. There are many bosses with spectacular designs. Most of the game we will be in a horizontal side scroll environment, but in some sections the game will change to a more vertical mode, using the classic mode 7, plus there are also some flying sections, with very good visual effects.

Musically Skyblazer is equally outstanding, the music, as expected, is inspired by the Hindu culture, being a type of music quite distinguishable by how characteristic it is. Music of very good quality and very well implemented in the moments of greatest action in the game. Similarly, the sound effects play an important role in this game and this is one of the aspects of a video game less recognized and personally, I consider it one of the most important aspects in relation to the gameplay, although it also depends on the type of game. But in this video game, I think that having good sound effects is quite appropriate for a better gaming experience and satisfaction when performing any action.

Skyblazer is mainly a side scrolling and platform game, but at the same time, it also has other elements that make it a quite varied game in terms of gameplay and mechanics. It is quite simple to control our character and equally fun, as we go through the scenarios we can perform different actions, among the basic ones are jumping and hitting our enemies to defeat them, but also, Sky can learn various magical attacks that will be very useful to defeat common enemies with greater speed and to have a little advantage to fight against the final bosses. Obtaining these abilities is quite useful, since Sky will be able to move around a decent-sized map, where we as a player will be able to choose where our protagonist will be able to go, in this way we can obtain new abilities.

The battles against the bosses are quite entertaining and with original mechanics, so they are quite an entertaining challenge to face them, in certain parts of the game, the side scroll mode will be replaced by a vertical scroll mode and also a mode similar to a third person shooter. There is even an underwater stage, the classic scenario where our character will have to go underwater, a very typical feature in old games.

I should have posted this review last week or yesterday, but when procrastination strikes it's impossible to do anything about it. But in general terms Skyblazer is an excellent hidden gem of video games, one of those that deserve much more recognition, because it is an excellent game.