It took long enough, but another of Nintendo’s cute, marketable mascots has made its way to North America. The Legendary Starfy is not the most innovative platformer around “" in fact, it combines its originality with elements from other Nintendo franchises “" but the end result of its mixing and matching is a quality marine platformer that will have you coming back for more.

Starfy is the prince of Pufftop, a kingdom in the sky. One day, a bunny in a spacesuit crashes into Pufftop and is captured by unknown assailants until Starfy saves him with his spin move “" the bunny, Bunston, then runs off to the world below. Starfy and his pal Moe give chase, and your adventure begins. Surprisingly, the story in this platformer is entertaining, and you won’t want to skip the text-based cut scenes, or the comic book style cartoons that occasionally come up during important moments. The localization is very well done and humorous, much better than the tripe that usually pollutes these types of games (I’m looking at you, hedgehog.) Despite an appearance that the game and some of the humor is intended for a younger crowd, you won’t roll your eyes unless the game means for you to do so.

Starfy and his friends are cute “" almost disarmingly so. Close your DS with the game running, and Starfy emits a wail like you’ve hurt his feelings by leaving, but he’ll greet you with a satisfied cry when you return to play again. The assault of cute on your senses is never ending, with Starfy making adorable faces as you run, jump, attack, or just sit there. The music is catchy and bubbly, and will get stuck in your head while you play and after you shut off your DS. The 3D backgrounds are well drawn and animated, and add to the 2D foreground; both utilize all of the colors of the rainbow in that sugary sweet style that Kirby is so well known for. The aforementioned cut scenes involve a bunch of character animations that look like your typical Japanese animation emoting, which is pretty adorable when it involves little sea creatures and a star.

The controls seem a bit awkward at first “" why is the button to dash on land and underwater different? “" but that goes away as you learn more abilities. When you require that the transition process between abilities is seamless late in the game, it is, and the control scheme will make much more sense than when you first start up. These powers vary from longer and stronger spin moves to double jumps to the ability to float, and you will use all of them in a variety of ways over the course of the adventure.

You have your basic Mario style run and jump platforming, but you also have Kirby style gaming mixed in as well “" though in the case of Starfy, many of these powers are inherent, rather than acquired the way Kirby does. It all works very well together though, which is somewhat surprising given the amount of things they want you to learn to do and implement. Besides reaching the exit, you will have some other goals, like collecting treasures and pearls. Treasures can be heart containers (collect three to extend your life bar) or costumes and accessories for a 3D model of Starfy to model on the pause menu. Pearls come in large and small sizes (worth five and one pearl respectively) and are used to regenerate your health and to buy unlockables from the pause menu.

Square-Enix has become a repackaging machine of late, as the “old generation” (like in their 20s and early 30s) that grew up on the origins of the modern console age yearn to play the classics once again.‚  We’ve seen various re-makings and re-packagings of Final Fantasy and well as other classics (hello Chrono Trigger) re-branded on the handheld market to various levels of success.

With one of the more hyped (at least for RPG lovers) games of 2009 being the new Star Ocean game, the good folks at Squeenix have given the faithful a chance to play the first two versions once again on the PSP.‚ ‚  While Star Ocean: The Last Hope will be an Xbox 360 exclusive, these remakes have been strangely given to the underutilized PSP platform.‚  Bad marketing, fanboy service or something in-between?‚  Who cares?‚  These are classics that deserve another play.

The re-release of Star Ocean: First Departure was of more interest originally, as it was originally only available for Nintendo’s Super Famicom, (Japanese Super Nintendo) and never got a stateside release.‚  Unfortunately, while the game was new to most, it did not especially age well.‚  For most older, hardcore RPG players, Star Ocean: Second Evolution on the PS1 was the first exposure to the Star Ocean universe, but finding a copy these days involved either a fantastic old collection, or an ebay account and a hefty amount of disposable income to acquire the rarity. ‚ ‚ Now it’s back, with some improvements (although some are questionable), portable, and affordable.

So: Second Departure follows your basic RPG clichƒ©s on a story level.‚  Boy suddenly finds himself in strange new world, boy meets girl, boy is seen of some sort of prophetic hero, and adventures and childish romance ensue.‚  This is the way things work in old-school games, but luckily when playing the game, you’re looking at one of the road maps for this base storyline, and it’s very well done and consistently compelling.‚  In addition, the game provides a unique twist that gives the game nearly unparalleled replayability, as you can begin the game as either the male or female protagonist, which significant differences in storyline, experience and even additional party members in each play-through. ‚ ‚ Adding even more game play, most characters have their own mini side stories which provide additional insight to their personal story, and it would be nearly impossible to see everything the first time though the game, while the second time can be a completely unique experience.

One slight complaint about the setting, however.‚  In Star Ocean: Till The End of Time (or Star Ocean 3, depending on how you look at it) on the Playstation 2, one got a full realized sci-fi world with you know … space, and gleaming spaceships and the kind of things one expects from the genre.‚  In these early games, developer Tri-Ace never fully committed to the genre, so while you are told it is space, and you are on another planet, it’s still mostly swords, magic, and castles and towns with shops that sell weapons, armor and potions, giving the game more of a re-skinned feel than a futuristic one.

It is within the story where Square-Enix made two significant upgrades (although one is debatable) to the game.‚  The first is in the voice-over work.‚  The initial Playstation release had some of the most laughably bad voice over work in RPG history.‚  We’re talking laughably bad, but that was in some ways part of its charm.‚  With a new script comes new voice-over work, and it falls flat of the mark.‚  For the most part, it just sounds like actors reading lines without having any context in the where the story is at the moment, so they often seem a little too excited or sad for the situation and it just doesn’t ever really gel, while also being a bit too wordy at times when the player has a full understanding of what is going on and where to go to next, but the game insists and adding about five more minutes of chatty dialogue to explain it again.‚  That is balanced by the frequent (but never unwelcome) anime-style cut scenes, which are absolutely glorious on both a sound and visual level and by far the best single addition to this new version; almost worth the price of admission themselves.