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I can imagine that when the Super Famicom launched in Japan, titles like Super Mario World, F-Zero and Pilotwings were the ones that caught the vast majority of attention – and with good reason.
Mario World was (and, in my opinion, still is) one of the best 2D platformers ever created, while F-Zero and Pilotwings served as an amazing demonstration of the console's much-hyped rotation and scaling powers.
However, for me personally, as someone who didn't pick up the console until it launched officially in the UK in April of 1992, the game which caught my attention the most was Enix's ActRaiser, a compelling mix of action platforming and God Sim – two genres I'd never seen mixed in such a manner previously.
While ActRaiser wasn't technically a Super Famicom launch title (it arrived on December 16th, 1990, a few weeks after the system had hit Japanese store shelves), the sluggish nature of both physical distribution and print media back in the early '90s meant that it certainly 'felt' like a launch release; my first encounter with the game came via Mean Machines, a British multiformat video game magazine helmed by the one and only Julian 'Jaz' Rignall.
It's hard to properly explain to anyone who didn't grow up with the internet just how mind-blowing it was discovering new games back in the '80s and '90s; instead of enduring endless previews and trailers for titles which took years to launch, it would often be the case that magazines of the era would review imported games with zero pre-release hype – and ActRaiser was one such example.
I had never heard of the game prior to opening Mean Machines issue 7 (which came out in April – a full four months after the game had released in Japan!) and seeing the glowing three-page review, which awarded it a much-deserved 91%, despite the language barrier being an obvious problem.
My pre-teen brain was dazzled by how the game was described within those hallowed pages. There was talk of pacifying townspeople by constructing bridges and destroying monster lairs, mixed in with a breakdown of the six "graphically incredible" arcade-style levels and the orchestral-quality soundtrack by Yuzo Koshiro (music so good it put Final Fantasy legend Nobuo Uematsu into a temporary state of depression).
I was a big fan of Populous, so the concept of a 'God Sim' wasn't new to me – but the notion of fusing it with side-scrolling action sequences blew my tiny mind. It felt like truly next-generational evolution in pure gameplay terms, and suddenly my trusty Sega Mega Drive didn't feel quite as cutting-edge anymore. Personally, I felt that more was expected of video games after the SNES launched, as many of its early titles really did push the envelope in gameplay mechanics and long-term appeal.
Simply put, I knew I had to own this game. As I've already touched upon, the wait between ActRaiser appearing in Mean Machines and the UK launch of the console was almost exactly a year, and, to make matters worse, ActRaiser wasn't a launch title in my country – in fact, it wouldn't see release in Europe until March of 1993. Thankfully, I quickly armed myself with a cartridge adapter that allowed me to play Japanese and North American games on my PAL SNES, and wasted no time in picking up a US copy of the game (it had launched in that region at the close of 1991).
Despite the painfully protracted wait, ActRaiser lived up to all my lofty expectations, and more. I became utterly engrossed in the world-building of its God Sim sections, so much so that the (admittedly excellent) arcade portions of the game often felt like they got in the way. My dad, as keen a gamer back then as he is now (he's still playing PC games today, well into his '70s), bounced off the game immediately because he couldn't beat these action segments. However, I could still see that the two gameplay styles worked together rather brilliantly, and I was intensely disappointed when Enix decided to drop the God Sim portion for the sequel.
When I think back to the early days of owning a Super NES, my recollections are flooded with different memories; Super Mario World took over my life briefly, and I can still recall the shock of my Amiga-owning best mate when he laid eyes on F-Zero's smoothly-rotating circuits. However, it's the amazing music of ActRaiser and its incredible ability to meld two disparate genres that have stuck with me the most – and what's really stunning is how well it holds up, even by modern standards.
I enjoyed the recent remake for modern-day systems, but even that didn't feel like it totally overshadowed or enhanced the beauty of the original – a game which, in my opinion, is a true work of art.