Hopefully no one other than me made the horrible, horrible mistake of thinking that Popful mail was an RPG by Falcom that involves, yes, a postal service. This game involves no delivering of any may or receiving of any. I was so wrong it is not even funny. Popful Mail is the main female elf’s name.

There are actually quite a few Popful Mail games. The PC88 and PCE Duo version play like Wander’s from Ys (sidescrolling Ys). I really hated Wanders from Ys and am left much less interested in those versions of the game, although I will probably attempt to burn a copy of the Duo version and test it out. They were released in ‘91 and ‘94 respectivly.

PC88 Version

PCE Duo Version

After these were released Sega released the Sega CD version of Popful Mail. They handled the programming and in doing so decided to give more control to the character and made a very different game. Working Design ported the game to the US and changed a lot of the script up and increased the difficulty of the game.

Sega CD Version

I leaned in the process of getting Popful Mail working that the Sega CD does not like Memorx CDRs.

So what is Popful Mail? The extension of the Faxanadu game. Popful Mail is the bright, colorful, and easier than Faxanadu. Hell, if somone told me they took place on the same world I would belive them. I do understand that Hudson basically took Faxanadu from Falcom, and that Sega took Popful Mail from Falcom which makes me wonder. Perhaps Falcom does not know how best to make their own games.

After the release of all these other Popful Games Falcom picked up on something. They handled the SNES port of the game and made something similar to the Sega CD version. It has a completly different stage layout and the combat is more difficult, but the control that is needed in this game is in place.

SNES Version

I don’t really want to go into how good the graphics are for the Sega CD version, or how great the music is (considering I don’t really like the FM chip that the Genesis uses to create most of it), but I thought I would hint at it. This is probably one of the best finds I have made in a long time related to games. In fact I purchased the Japanese version for the Sega CD for a very reasonable price.

It is nice to be finding things hidden away inside the library of older systems. I am getting Hard Corps in the mail soon and hope that, if Bloodlines is any indication of what Konami learned at the end of the Genesis’ life span, it is another great gem I have missed.

I don’t know, this is more a journal entry than a thread, but chat away about Popful Mail. Most of my info was obtained here.