Popful Mail
Popful Mail is a lighthearted side-scrolling action RPG starring the elf bounty hunter Mail, who chases after an elusive criminal mainly because she's run out of money. The tone is comedic from the very first moment: characters bicker, plans fall apart, and the game regularly pokes fun at serious fantasy clichés. Alongside Mail, other heroes join the party and can be switched between, each with a different range and attack style, so choosing who to play changes how a given section can be tackled.
The gameplay rests on platforming action — jumping, slashing, dodging projectiles — combined with an RPG layer of shops, gear upgrades, and experience. Levels are built as short, tight expeditions ending in a boss fight, which keeps the game's pace up. On the PC-98, Falcom focused on bold, cartoon-style visuals with large, legible characters and color-coordinated backgrounds; portrait insets during dialogue give the whole thing the feel of an animated series. The music is more playful and melodic than in the studio's more serious titles, and together with the witty dialogue creates an atmosphere quite different from most Japanese output of the time.
At the time, the game won over an audience precisely through its lightness and by not going down the path of a punishing dungeon. It later received console remakes that also brought it to Western players, and its Sega CD version ranks among the best-known localizations of its kind. Today, Popful Mail makes for a pleasant counterpoint to the more serious RPGs of its day: it can be finished in a few evenings, the action has just the right bite, and the humor has aged surprisingly well, since it rests on the characters rather than on era-specific references. It's also worth noting how well-paced the game is: the difficulty rises gradually, shops appear just as your equipment starts running low, and no section drags on long enough to stop being fun. From today's perspective, it's one of the most enjoyable ways to sample what the PC-98 could do in the action genre, without having to fight the unforgiving difficulty typical of other titles of the era.
Game 18 of 28 for NEC PC-98
The same title elsewhere (1)
The original was built for Japan's NEC PC-98 computers, which delivered sharper, higher-resolution graphics than home consoles of the era, though the game stayed Japanese-only text. The 1994 SEGA Mega-CD version used the CD's extra storage to considerably boost the music and sound, and thanks to its English localization it became the version Western players actually got to know — which is why it's often recommended today as the more approachable option. Running on console hardware, though, the Mega-CD can't match the PC-98's colour depth and resolution, so some of the original's visual sharpness is lost.
