Popful Mail
Encyclopedia
is a side-scrolling
platform game
. Popful Mail was developed by Nihon Falcom for the NEC PC-8801
computer in 1991
and for the PC-9801 in 1992
. It was later ported to PC Engine
CD-ROM
by NEC Home Electronics
and to the Sega CD by "Sega Falcom", an alliance of the two game companies Sega
and Falcom. In 1994
, Falcom themselves remade Popful Mail and released it on Super Famicom
; this release was their first original console game. SIMS Co., Ltd. translated the Sega CD version and Working Designs
published it in North America
in late 1994.
The PC-8801, PC-9801 and PC Engine CD-ROM versions are for the most part similar to each other, but the Super Famicom and Sega CD versions differ significantly both from each other and from the previous versions.
bounty hunter
who hasn't had much luck lately. Mail's main target, Nuts Cracker, always seems to escape after she defeats him.
Mail has red hair; her pointed elven ears stick outward from her head, as in the Japanese convention. Her personality is rather confrontational, and she is never drawn as humorous or morose
. Her main and starting weapon is a sword; she can acquire a dagger and boomerang
as the game progresses.
Tatt is a magician, a former apprentice of Muttonhead. He chases after his master, who has left him and his fellow students, in order to find out why and ultimately dissuade him from his path. Tatt is kind, polite and a bit timid, and is sometimes ridiculed. He meets Mail in the first level. His main weapon is a magical staff. He wears a red hat, perhaps to present him as neither a black magician nor a white one
.
Gaw is a small, round, winged, cave-dwelling purple creature. He almost identical with all the others of his species, who call themselves "Gaw" as well. Gaw itself is often an interjection all gaws use when speaking. Mail and Tatt meet Gaw in the second level, the Caves, but Gaw joins them later. Gaw's first main attack is a fireball; subsequent attacks include a tail swipe and clawing.
Nuts Cracker, the first villain seen in the game, is the leader of a dangerous criminal gang known as the Gingerbread Grifter Gang. He specializes in manufacturing explosives, especially exploding dolls. Nuts Cracker is fashioned like a nutcracker
, wood and all, and speaks in a goofy Italian accent. When defeated, he will often throw his head—which then explodes—while his body runs away. Mail has been trying to catch Nuts Cracker for a long time and has faced him on many occasions, but he always escapes.
Muttonhead was formerly a well-known and respected magician before unexpectedly disappearing from public view and turning to crime, a move that left his apprentices puzzled. He is dangerous and his goals unknown. A 2,000,000 gold bounty is offered for his capture.
Slick is an elf acquaintance of Mail's. He often wants to tag along with Mail on her adventures, which, along with his bad jokes and obnoxious demeanor, annoys her to no end. He often causes more trouble than he solves, and is especially infamous for his use of home-made bombs, which his grandfather taught him how to make.
Glug is a nice dwarf from the mines. Unlike everyone else, he enjoys Slick's company and they are both friends. It is hinted that Glug suffers from mental problems as a result of a strong knock on the head, which might also explain his naiveté and short memory.
At the start of the game, the only playable character is Mail; however, as the game progresses, Tatt and Gaw will be available, and the player may switch between them at any time through the use of the "character" option in the menu (except in the middle of dialogues). Each character has different attacks and armours, as well as differences in walking speed and jump. Mail is the fastest character, but is the one whose jump is lowest. Tatt is balanced—slower than Mail but faster than Gaw—and his jump is similarly in between. Gaw is the slowest of the three, but his jump and attacks are usually the highest.
The character encounters enemies as well as non-playable characters. Often, when encountering an important character, dialogue begins immediately, with the player having no control over it. These important dialogues are by default always voice acted: however, text accompanies them, and the voiced speech can be turned off in an options menu if so desired.
The character has 100 health point
s, and attacks from enemy characters diminish it according to the strength of the attacker. Similarly, all enemies have a 100 health point bar that has to be brought down to 0 for the enemy to be defeated. How much damage is dealt depends on the strength of the character, although an attack always causes the same amount of damage to the same enemy. The character also has a blue-grey bar that is depleted as a distance weapon or a magical attack is used. When the bar reaches 0, the character can still perform the weapon motion, but often no actually useful attack is produced. The bar regenerates quickly if given time to do so (if the character uses no attacks or switches to a melee weapon). Use of a distance weapon or magical attack while the bar is regenerating halts the regeneration, which resumes if no attacks that deplete it are made.
Each character can acquire up to five different weapons and various items. Each subsequent weapon is stronger than the preceding one, although the player may switch to any weapons possessed at any time if so desired, through the menu. Weapons include a sword, dagger, boomerang, staff, fireball, and claw. Items, different from weapons and armour, affect either the health bar or the character's status, or are plot devices. They may confer invulnerability at a price, stability in snow, or replenish health, among other things. They can be obtained from other characters, treasure chests, shops, or bosses (in some cases- usually for plot devices).
The game has a practical save game
feature. Games may usually be saved and loaded at any point in the game (except during dialogues and the animated sequences); if a game that was previously saved in a room with a boss is loaded, the game resumes just before the battle, before the character has entered the room. The state of the game, including the hours played and the level, will be displayed. Three save slots are supplied, for storing up to three different states.
. Characters react with pain when they fall from high places, as in Dragon Slayer IV
(released as Legacy of the Wizard in North America). The original releases incorporate features from the popular game Xanadu
(Dragon Slayer II) as well.
Gaming magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly
reported rumours of a new game in Sega
's Sonic the Hedgehog series called Sister Sonic, which was to be shown at the Tokyo Toy Fair in June 1993. The game, which ultimately did not appear in the Fair, would have been a remake of the PC Popful Mail using Sonic characters in place of Mail' s. After Mail fans petitioned against the remake, "Sega Falcom" (the alliance between Sega and Falcom that would have made Sister Sonic) instead created a version of Popful Mail for the Sega CD, retaining original characters Mail, Tatt, and Gaw.
Working Designs translated the Mega-CD version for North America's Sega CD, and made several changes and adjustments to the game. Enemies were made more difficult, downsampling
and variable bitrate
s were used to compress the game's sounds from full 44.1 kHz CD quality
to fit on the game disc, and some audio events and visual effects were added. Except in animated sequences, waveform analysis
was used to make characters' mouths match their dialogue. Two teams worked on the English translation for four months.
series published by King Records: , a series of five CDs released between 1994 and 1995; and , two CDs released beginning in 1996. Falcom created , another drama CD published by King that features Mail, on 22 November 1995. GameMusic.com sells Tarako and Paradise dramas 2 through 5 in the United States.
As with Ys IV, an attempt was made to pitch an anime OVA based on the game to various anime studios, but no one was interested. The promotion video is all that remains of the idea. You can watch the promotional video here.
Mail and Gaw, along with other Falcom characters, would return as secret "Masters" in the 1997 Falcom game Vantage Master
.
Side-scrolling video game
A side-scrolling game or side-scroller is a video game in which the gameplay action is viewed from a side-view camera angle, and the onscreen characters generally move from the left side of the screen to the right. These games make use of scrolling computer display technology...
platform game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
. Popful Mail was developed by Nihon Falcom for the NEC PC-8801
NEC PC-8801
The NEC PC-8801 was an early Zilog Z80-based computer exclusively released in Japan, where it became very popular, by NEC Corporation in 1981. It was informally called the "PC-88"....
computer in 1991
1991 in video gaming
-Notable releases:*Microprose creates Civilization, Sid Meier's most successful game .*Electronic Arts releases James Pond 2 and Road Rash for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, starting a series of games that were popular in the 1990s....
and for the PC-9801 in 1992
1992 in video gaming
-Events:-Notable releases:* Gremlin Graphics releases Zool, Amiga's answer to Mario and Sonic. It goes on to become the best selling Commodore Amiga game, boosting the already popular computer to be the leading gaming machine in Europe....
. It was later ported to PC Engine
TurboGrafx-16
TurboGrafx-16, fully titled as TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment SuperSystem and known in Japan as the , is a video game console developed by Hudson Soft and NEC, released in Japan on October 30, 1987, and in North America on August 29, 1989....
CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
by NEC Home Electronics
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
and to the Sega CD by "Sega Falcom", an alliance of the two game companies Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
and Falcom. In 1994
1994 in video gaming
-Events:*Nintendo calls this year "1994: The Year of the Cartridge".*Nintendo Australia Pty. Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of Nintendo Co., Ltd is established and opened by Hiroshi Yamauchi and effectively ends Mattel Australia's distribution of Nintendo's products throughout Australia.*"Project...
, Falcom themselves remade Popful Mail and released it on Super Famicom
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
; this release was their first original console game. SIMS Co., Ltd. translated the Sega CD version and Working Designs
Working Designs
Working Designs was an American video game publisher that specialized in the localization of Japanese console role-playing games, strategy video games and top-down shooters for various video game platforms. Though the company had published many 'cult hits', it was known best to fans as the...
published it in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
in late 1994.
The PC-8801, PC-9801 and PC Engine CD-ROM versions are for the most part similar to each other, but the Super Famicom and Sega CD versions differ significantly both from each other and from the previous versions.
Story
Set in a fantasy world, the story begins with an animated sequence where the main character, Popful Mail, squares off with the criminal Nuts Cracker in a forest. Though defeated, Nuts Cracker's body manages to escape, as always, and Mail thus cannot claim any bounty. Frustrated once more, she off-putedly takes Nuts Cracker's head and wanders until she finds a town. In the town, she attempts to trade the head for cash, but fails. Instead, however, she learns of a new bounty and becomes reinvigorated when she spots a 2,000,000 gold reward poster for the wizard criminal, Muttonhead, near the store. With this, she embarks on her adventure.Characters
The main character, and the one with whom the player begins, is Mail, a female elfElves in fantasy fiction and games
In many works of modern fantasy, elves are a race of semi-divine humanoid beings.-Characteristics and common features:Modern fantasy literature has revived the elves as a race of semi-divine beings of human stature who are friendly with animals. Fantasy elves are different from Norse elves and the...
bounty hunter
Bounty hunter
A bounty hunter captures fugitives for a monetary reward . Other names, mainly used in the United States, include bail enforcement agent and fugitive recovery agent.-Laws in the U.S.:...
who hasn't had much luck lately. Mail's main target, Nuts Cracker, always seems to escape after she defeats him.
Mail has red hair; her pointed elven ears stick outward from her head, as in the Japanese convention. Her personality is rather confrontational, and she is never drawn as humorous or morose
Melancholia
Melancholia , also lugubriousness, from the Latin lugere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, , in contemporary usage, is a mood disorder of non-specific depression,...
. Her main and starting weapon is a sword; she can acquire a dagger and boomerang
Boomerang
A boomerang is a flying tool with a curved shape used as a weapon or for sport.-Description:A boomerang is usually thought of as a wooden device, although historically boomerang-like devices have also been made from bones. Modern boomerangs used for sport are often made from carbon fibre-reinforced...
as the game progresses.
Tatt is a magician, a former apprentice of Muttonhead. He chases after his master, who has left him and his fellow students, in order to find out why and ultimately dissuade him from his path. Tatt is kind, polite and a bit timid, and is sometimes ridiculed. He meets Mail in the first level. His main weapon is a magical staff. He wears a red hat, perhaps to present him as neither a black magician nor a white one
Black magic
Black magic is the type of magic that draws on assumed malevolent powers or is used with the intention to kill, steal, injure, cause misfortune or destruction, or for personal gain without regard to harmful consequences. As a term, "black magic" is normally used by those that do not approve of its...
.
Gaw is a small, round, winged, cave-dwelling purple creature. He almost identical with all the others of his species, who call themselves "Gaw" as well. Gaw itself is often an interjection all gaws use when speaking. Mail and Tatt meet Gaw in the second level, the Caves, but Gaw joins them later. Gaw's first main attack is a fireball; subsequent attacks include a tail swipe and clawing.
Nutcracker
A nutcracker is a mechanical device for cracking nuts. Usually they work on the principle of moments as described in Archimedes' analysis of the lever...
, wood and all, and speaks in a goofy Italian accent. When defeated, he will often throw his head—which then explodes—while his body runs away. Mail has been trying to catch Nuts Cracker for a long time and has faced him on many occasions, but he always escapes.
Muttonhead was formerly a well-known and respected magician before unexpectedly disappearing from public view and turning to crime, a move that left his apprentices puzzled. He is dangerous and his goals unknown. A 2,000,000 gold bounty is offered for his capture.
Slick is an elf acquaintance of Mail's. He often wants to tag along with Mail on her adventures, which, along with his bad jokes and obnoxious demeanor, annoys her to no end. He often causes more trouble than he solves, and is especially infamous for his use of home-made bombs, which his grandfather taught him how to make.
Glug is a nice dwarf from the mines. Unlike everyone else, he enjoys Slick's company and they are both friends. It is hinted that Glug suffers from mental problems as a result of a strong knock on the head, which might also explain his naiveté and short memory.
Gameplay
Popful Mail is essentially a 2D platform game with some RPG elements. The controls allow the player to jump, attack, open doors or treasure chests, and speak to another character. Additionally, the player can summon a menu to change some of the game's attributes, the current character, the current character's equipment, use or activate an item, read the game's status, save, load and quit.At the start of the game, the only playable character is Mail; however, as the game progresses, Tatt and Gaw will be available, and the player may switch between them at any time through the use of the "character" option in the menu (except in the middle of dialogues). Each character has different attacks and armours, as well as differences in walking speed and jump. Mail is the fastest character, but is the one whose jump is lowest. Tatt is balanced—slower than Mail but faster than Gaw—and his jump is similarly in between. Gaw is the slowest of the three, but his jump and attacks are usually the highest.
The character has 100 health point
Health (game mechanic)
Health is a game mechanic used in role-playing, computer and video games to give value to characters, enemies, NPCs, and related objects. This value can either be numerical, semi-numerical as in hit/health points, or arbitrary as in a life bar....
s, and attacks from enemy characters diminish it according to the strength of the attacker. Similarly, all enemies have a 100 health point bar that has to be brought down to 0 for the enemy to be defeated. How much damage is dealt depends on the strength of the character, although an attack always causes the same amount of damage to the same enemy. The character also has a blue-grey bar that is depleted as a distance weapon or a magical attack is used. When the bar reaches 0, the character can still perform the weapon motion, but often no actually useful attack is produced. The bar regenerates quickly if given time to do so (if the character uses no attacks or switches to a melee weapon). Use of a distance weapon or magical attack while the bar is regenerating halts the regeneration, which resumes if no attacks that deplete it are made.
Each character can acquire up to five different weapons and various items. Each subsequent weapon is stronger than the preceding one, although the player may switch to any weapons possessed at any time if so desired, through the menu. Weapons include a sword, dagger, boomerang, staff, fireball, and claw. Items, different from weapons and armour, affect either the health bar or the character's status, or are plot devices. They may confer invulnerability at a price, stability in snow, or replenish health, among other things. They can be obtained from other characters, treasure chests, shops, or bosses (in some cases- usually for plot devices).
The game has a practical save game
Saved game
A saved game is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. This saved game can be reloaded later, so the player can continue where he or she had stopped...
feature. Games may usually be saved and loaded at any point in the game (except during dialogues and the animated sequences); if a game that was previously saved in a room with a boss is loaded, the game resumes just before the battle, before the character has entered the room. The state of the game, including the hours played and the level, will be displayed. Three save slots are supplied, for storing up to three different states.
Development
Falcom developed the NEC PC versions of Popful Mail with features used in previous games in the company's Dragon Slayer and Ys series. They use the battle system of Ys, magic attacks like those of Ys II, and a side-scrolling view similar to that of Ys IIIYs III: Wanderers from Ys
is an action role-playing game developed by Nihon Falcom Corporation. It is the third game in the Ys series.Ys III was initially released for the NEC PC-8801 and NEC PC-9801 in 1989, and versions for the MSX 2 and Sharp X68000 soon followed. In 1991, a number of console ports were produced:...
. Characters react with pain when they fall from high places, as in Dragon Slayer IV
Legacy of the Wizard
is a fantasy-themed action role-playing platform game released for the MSX and Famicom in Japan and for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States. Legacy of the Wizard is the fourth installment in Falcom's Dragon Slayer series...
(released as Legacy of the Wizard in North America). The original releases incorporate features from the popular game Xanadu
Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu
is an action RPG developed by Nihon Falcom in 1985 for the PC-8801, PC-9801, FM-7, MSX and X1 computers. Enhanced remakes were released for the Sega Saturn, PC-9801 and Windows systems...
(Dragon Slayer II) as well.
Gaming magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly
Electronic Gaming Monthly
Electronic Gaming Monthly is a bimonthly American video game magazine. It has been published by EGM Media, LLC. since relaunching in April of 2010. Its previous run, which ended in January 2009, was published by Ziff Davis...
reported rumours of a new game in Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
's Sonic the Hedgehog series called Sister Sonic, which was to be shown at the Tokyo Toy Fair in June 1993. The game, which ultimately did not appear in the Fair, would have been a remake of the PC Popful Mail using Sonic characters in place of Mail
Working Designs translated the Mega-CD version for North America's Sega CD, and made several changes and adjustments to the game. Enemies were made more difficult, downsampling
Downsampling
In signal processing, downsampling is the process of reducing the sampling rate of a signal. This is usually done to reduce the data rate or the size of the data....
and variable bitrate
Variable bitrate
Variable bitrate is a term used in telecommunications and computing that relates to the bitrate used in sound or video encoding. As opposed to constant bitrate , VBR files vary the amount of output data per time segment...
s were used to compress the game's sounds from full 44.1 kHz CD quality
Red Book (audio CD standard)
Red Book is the standard for audio CDs . It is named after one of the Rainbow Books, a series of books that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats.The first edition of the Red Book was released in 1980 by Philips and Sony; it was adopted by the Digital Audio Disc...
to fit on the game disc, and some audio events and visual effects were added. Except in animated sequences, waveform analysis
Audio signal processing
Audio signal processing, sometimes referred to as audio processing, is the intentional alteration of auditory signals, or sound. As audio signals may be electronically represented in either digital or analog format, signal processing may occur in either domain...
was used to make characters' mouths match their dialogue. Two teams worked on the English translation for four months.
Legacy
Falcom used Popful Mail and its characters in various other media. The company created two Mail drama CDRadio drama in Japan
Radio drama in Japan has a history as long as that of radio broadcasting in that country, which began in 1925. Some consider the first Japanese radio drama to have been "" which was a radio broadcast of a stage play. Others consider the Japanese translation of Richard Hughes's "Danger" or to be...
series published by King Records: , a series of five CDs released between 1994 and 1995; and , two CDs released beginning in 1996. Falcom created , another drama CD published by King that features Mail, on 22 November 1995. GameMusic.com sells Tarako and Paradise dramas 2 through 5 in the United States.
As with Ys IV, an attempt was made to pitch an anime OVA based on the game to various anime studios, but no one was interested. The promotion video is all that remains of the idea. You can watch the promotional video here.
Mail and Gaw, along with other Falcom characters, would return as secret "Masters" in the 1997 Falcom game Vantage Master
Vantage Master
is a tactical RPG game developed and published by Nihon Falcom in 1997. The game was never released outside of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Falcom released a sequel, Vantage Master V2, a few months after the first game's release, featuring new maps and adjusted character balance but unchanged...
.
External links
- Falcom — the game's creator.
- Falcom's Major Titles: Other Titles — an official Falcom webpage, in English, with a section on Popful Mail and its characters.
- ファルコムの主なタイトル: そのほかのタイトル — Japanese version of the previous page.
- Popful Mail at Hardcore Gaming 101
- Sega CD Popful Mail at FantasyAnime