StarTropics

StarTropics is played from a 2D, top-down perspective, similar to role-playing games of the time. The game is divided into several chapters; in each chapter, players take control of the protagonist, Mike Jones, exploring various settlements and other areas of interest and interacting with non-player characters to obtain more information. The player is then usually tasked with locating the source of a local calamity or disturbance. In dungeons, the game switches to a closer view and introduces various obstacles and enemies, which the player must either navigate or destroy to progress.

Mike primarily wields a yo-yo, which is renamed "star" in the Virtual Console release. As the player progresses, they unlock more weapons and tools, including several items influenced by American baseball.

Mike Jones, a 15-year-old boy from Seattle and the captain of his high school's baseball team, travels to visit his uncle, archaeologist Dr. Steven Jones, at his laboratory on C-Island in the South Seas. When Mike arrives at Jones's home in the tropical village of Coralcola, he finds that he has disappeared. The chief of Coralcola gives Mike a yo-yo to defend himself, and Jones's robot Nav-Com permits Mike to use his submarine to search for him.

On a nearby island, Mike finds a bottle with a message from Jones, stating that aliens have abducted him. While fighting monsters and traveling across the isles of the South Seas in search of Jones, Mike encounters various characters, including a parrot and a mother dolphin looking for her son.

In a 1991 review, the Green Bay Press-Gazette praised the game's graphics and sound, but considered it too similar to The Legend of Zelda and deemed the gameplay "dreadful."

AllGame's Christopher Michael Baker also found the game to be derivative of The Legend of Zelda, but still "very much an excellent game". Michael Baker commented on the graphics, noting that the characters and action sequences "look fantastic" while the travel scenes were "kind of dull". IGN's Lucas M. Thomas praised the creative gameplay of StarTropics, calling it "the natural evolution of the original Legend of Zelda."