Collection essentials #277: Terranigma (SNES)

I’ve already talked about how Illusion of Gaia was one of my top childhood games. I also talked about how, upon getting the internet at home, I discovered that it was the second in a set of three Quintet action RPGs on the SNES, and that I eagerly sought out the first game, Soul Blazer. Well, here we are at the third, Terranigma. Many RPGs in this era were released in America and nowhere else outside Japan, but Terranigma is notable for being the opposite; it released in PAL territories (i.e., Europe and Australia) but not America. Terranigma is probably one of the most notable games that released in PAL regions but still to this day has never been released in America in any form. Pictured is the Australian release, which has a different box color than the European releases (they were black like American SNES boxes).

The setting of Terranigma is a fantasy version of our planet earth. In this fantasy earth, all life on the surface has been sealed away. In addition to the surface of the globe based on our real life planet, there is also a small underworld on the inside with one village called Crysta. In that village lives our protagonist, a boy named Ark, who one day breaks into the mysterious room he’s not supposed to enter and opens a thing he’s not supposed to which freezes all the people in the village except himself and the village elder. He must venture into the outside underworld to find a way to unfreeze everybody, and the process also leads to the restoration of the continents on the surface world. This leads to a chain of events where Ark journeys to earth’s surface and resurrects life and civilization. Yeah, the story is pretty weird, but it works pretty well for this type of game.

Gameplay-wise, it’s a top-down-perspective action RPG, sort of resembling Zelda but with more complexity to combat. Unlike Illusion of Gaia, this game has you accumulating experience points upon defeating enemies which will lead you to “leveling up” with an increase to your stats, like in most RPGs. Ark wields a spear which has several different moves. He can both run and jump, and use one or both of those actions to attack differently too. There is also a magic system in the game which expands your combat repertoire a little further, though I didn’t find it all that useful most of the time. For quite a while the game feels fairly linear, giving you limited freedom on where to go and what to do. But as things progress, you will eventually be able to travel all over the world and do various optional “sidequests” which are pretty cool.

I have to give special mention to this game’s soundtrack, which is just unbelievable. The SNES hardware was much better in the audio department than most old cartridge-based systems, but still had significant limitations. The composers of Terranigma did an absolutely masterful job of taking the game’s soundtrack to the fullest. The instrumentation is sublime and the tunes are to die for, setting the right tone and getting stuck in your head long after you turn the game off. The Underworld map theme is one of my favorite video game songs ever. There are many SNES games with great music and thus a lot of competition, and Terranigma is one of the very best of the best in my opinion, right up there with the legendary soundtracks of Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger.

I first tried to get my hands on an imported copy of Terranigma in late 2004, when I was 14, and it proved not to be so easy. I first needed to import a “Pro Action Replay MK2” accessory to get around the region lock, so I did that first. Then I bought the game from a European guy on eBay. It was actually the first foreign release of a video game that I ever attempted to buy. Time went by and I waited. And waited. And the darn game never arrived!! I don’t remember exactly why, but the seller wasn’t too friendly with me and didn’t want to give me a refund. It didn’t end well between us and we both left each other negative feedback (back then, sellers could leave negative feedback for buyers). To this day that is the only negative feedback I have ever received on eBay. Then in early 2005, I tried buying it again from another European seller. And this time it did come in the mail! Hurrah! So then I fired up and…the in-game text was all in German. Oh no!! Turns out there isn’t an obvious indicator on the cartridge to tell you what language version you have. I continued my eBay hunt, and then I saw a listing for the Australian release. There’d be no chance of a language problem with that version. I won the auction! So I waited with great anticipation. And waited. And waited. It wasn’t coming in the mail!! I was so frustrated and forlorn. I lamented it to the seller, though I don’t think I requested a refund right away, opting to be patient. And then, one day…a package from Australia finally showed up in the mailbox!! It turns out someone had written the wrong zip code on the side of the package, and that was the reason for the delay, but at some point someone must have read the actual label and corrected the mistake. The Terranigma curse was finally over and an authentic English cartridge was in my hands!! This is the very same copy pictured above. I’m glad I wound up with a boxed Australian copy, as I think the Australian box and manual look really sharp.

Terranigma’s a pretty wonderful game, though it’s not quite one of my absolute favorites. I’m a little more partial to Illusion of Gaia, though admittedly I do have more nostalgia for that one. I don’t really think a game like this needs experience points and level-ups, and I feel it introduces “grinding” (killing enemies over and over for a while to eventually grow stronger) unnecessarily, which takes up time in a way that’s not very interesting. You’re probably not going to feel forced to grind in Terranigma very much, but you certainly may feel like it’s in your best interest and therefore tempted even if you don’t really want to spend your play time that way. Still, I love it enough to have beaten it twice in my life up to this point which I can’t say about the majority of games I play. It’s an obvious essential. Here’s hoping Terranigma sees some kind of official release on American shores someday.