Popful Mail (Sega CD) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
643A playthrough of Working Designs' 1994 action-RPG for the Sega CD, Popful Mail.
Popful Mail was one of a handful of games brought to American Sega CD owners courtesy of Working Designs, and it bears all of the company's hallmarks in its English production. It was lavishly packaged compared to most other games at the time, coming with a full color manual and a cover embossed with metallic leaf. It prominently featured fully voiced anime-styled characters that were all rerecorded in English, and the company's signature humor runs riot across nearly every line in this localized version. Unlike in many other Working Designs' productions, however, the oddball humor full of pop-culture references and non-sequiturs works in the game's favor, and much of it is actually quite funny.
The game itself is a hybrid platforner/RPG. It plays a lot like the NES classic Faxanadu, but it features a far heavier emphasis on story and dialogue than that title did. It's very linear, but the action stays focused because of it, and it rarely becomes bogged down with meaningless padding. Popful Mail is short, but it provides a quality bit of entertainment with its quirky personality and solid action mechanics.
You start only able to play as Popful Mail on her quest for piles of treasure, but over the first couple of stages you also gain command of a couple of unexpected, freely selectable allies, including the mage-apprentice of the villain and a blue dragon/bubble looking thing, and each brings their own distinct advantages to the table. Mail is speedy but weak, Gaw is slow but powerful and can jump high, and Tatt gets a variety of controllable projectile attacks. It's a good party make-up, and the stages do take some care in catering to each of their strengths.
The graphics and sound are generally excellent. The action scenes are a cut above standard Genesis fare with some fluidly animated, large character sprites, and the cinematic cutscenes are among the best you'll see on the system, falling just shy of the quality of those found in Lunar: Eternal Blue.
The controls are good, as well. Though they can feel a bit slippery, they're responsive and easy to adapt to, and the game's difficulty level is nicely manageable without being too easy.
Overall, if you like platformers, high production values, and an absolutely oddball sense of humor, you'll find a lot to enjoy in Popful Mail. I absolutely recommend it.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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