ActRaiser 2 is one of those titles that had a storyline hit EXTREMELY hard by Nintendo censorship. From level bosses to the name of your character, Nintendo probably swept red ink all over this ones story. Still, the game came out quite a success. Reportedly the North American version sold at just over 2 to 1 versus the Japanese version.

A product of a different time

Enix, before Square bought them, brought this gem over to North American gamers. This was an interesting title for gamers at the time. Not much compared. ActRaiser was a hybrid of strategy and side scrolling action. The sequel dropped the strategy part and upped the ante on the visuals, level design, etc. Pretty much every thing that was left saw improvement.

Actraiser 2 avoided Nintendo’s censorship, mostly

Nintendo’s censoring of the storyline is pretty much where it seemed to end, some of the bosses attest to that. Just look at the skeleton looking freak below. I don’t see any clothes/armor so technically Nintendo should have caught that or did they miss it entirely?

Nintendo did what Genesis could

I love it when people point out the Super Nintendo could not do multiple sprite based enemies. You know like Gunstar Heroes on Sega Genesis. Just look at this snake creature for proof that the SNES could indeed do that programming trick. Even the NES could do this (Robo Warrior did it for many bosses). Sure, Gunstar Heroes was released just a couple of months sooner but that does not make that argument any truer.

More straightforward than a Mario game

Back to the actual game, the overhead flying palace stuff was present in the second game. It was only as a mechanism to get around the game world. It also did offer some level of understanding its size. There are no actual strategy elements in this map movement. Even less than there were for Super Mario Bros 3’s maps. At least Nintendo offered players multiple paths to different areas and power ups.

Graphically, ActRaiser 2 is impressive, even today it holds up quite well. Sure, there are games that have passed it graphically on more recent consoles but how many look “good” still? Like their backgrounds could almost tell a story on their own – most of ActRaiser 2’s can.

Actraiser 2 is not available digitally

Sadly, there are no digital re-releases of this title available. That leaves the original cartridge version. Actraiser 2 is tough to beat if you want to beat down on some god level enemies. For now, you are stuck buying physical copies off of eBay or Amazon.

Carl Williams

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