Popful Mail (My Namesake!)

Unlike my usual posts about media, I'm writing this one years after experiencing the piece of media, back in mid 2020 - early 2021. I figure this'll be a nice little treat to coincide with the release of my blog since I've never really talked about it that much in the past. 

Despite being my namesake, this isn't actually my favorite video game.

(I should really add a handful of things to this.)

Obviously by that list above, I do particularly like Popful Mail, it's just not my absolute favorite. I mainly decided to tie my online identity around it just because I think Popful is a really fun and memorable word.

As for the game itself, I really love its presentation.

The pixel art is really charming, expressive, and overall gorgeous,

 

And the traditional animation while I wouldn't consider amazing in a vacuum, is still well done and really cool to see

 

 

The sound effects are really satisfying, the music can get fairly catchy, the ending theme Somebody Loves You, while not actually very fitting for the game (at least not for the english localization), is a wonderful piece, but what stands out to me the most is the game's great voice acting. The voice acting really brings the characters to life.

Of course, the characters themselves are also just well written (excluding the use of the word r*****). The characters aren't super deep, but they work well with the game's somewhat comedic tone. The main 3 characters Mail, Tatt, and Gaw were all favorites of mine.

 

It's a shame they barely get to interact with each other, due to how only one of them is allowed to be out at a time (excluding the early game in which Tatt and Gaw aren't party members yet). On the bright side though, each cutscene (in which you have access to all 3 party members) is sort of tripled in value because dialogue changes depending on what character you're playing as.

The overall narrative isn't something I really gush about though. It captures a sort of grandiose feeling well, but I see it as a fairly generic fantasy story. I also felt like the pacing was a little slow in the first third, although that may have just been due to me struggling with the gameplay. I wouldn't consider the narrative bad though, just alright.

The gameplay's probably my least favorite part. Mail and Tatt are both pretty slippery from what I remember, and Gaw has a weird jump arc that goes further vertically than horizontally, which adds up to the movement in general just feeling really weird. Despite this, I was still able to enjoy the platforming at times.

 

The combat on the other hand is generally more fun, although the enemy damage values get really cranked, and some of the bosses have really obnoxious attacks. I remember this one boss in particular, Goradius, being extremely annoying to fight.

 

 

On the bright side, this game has an extremely generous save system. You're allowed to save in nearly any room, so most of the time when you die, you'll only get set back like maybe a minute, if even. It's really ahead of its time I'd say.

There's this one segment though requires you to sit and watch a 3 minute cutscene every time you die, and it was probably my least favorite part of the game.

 

From what I've heard about and tried, the difficulty issues and weird slippery controls are only really a thing in the Sega CD version. While it's good we got what is probably the best version overseas from a presentation standpoint, it's a shame there's no english translation for what might be the better playing PC-Engine CD version.

 I might play through the entirety of this version someday anyways since I really like its super cutesy artstyle.

This game's pretty linear, so it wouldn't be that hard to fumble through anyways.

 

The Super Famicom Version seems to be pretty foundationally different, so I might play through that version someday as well.

I actually tried playing through the Super Famicom version in the past, but I gave up because I couldn't figure out how to save. Looking it up, saving seems to be restricted to the overworld map.

 

Anyways, unless you understand japanese, I'd only recommend the Sega CD version of the game.

I actually wanna circle back to the music. The company behind Popful Mail, Falcom, seems to be big fan of their own music, because they've released a lot of arrangements of their own songs. You can find those arrangements along with the original game's soundtracks on a fan-run Falcom Music Channel. The aforementioned Somebody Loves You is my favorite Popful Mail song, but I also really like Backup Creation, Start Screen, Castle Exploration, Love On Demand, and many others.

A piece of side media I might as well mention is the No No Pessimist promotional video. It's a 4 minute music video, and I really love its style.

 

I also wanna briefly mention Sister Sonic. If you don't know, here's a good video to watch

but the short of it is that Popful Mail was originally going to be turned into a Sonic game to better appeal to western audiences, although unlike Dr. Robitnik's Mean Bean Machine, it wouldn't have used any pre-existing Sonic characters.

I'm glad we got a much more direct adaptation of the game since I love these characters as they are now, but I still wonder what Sister Sonic would've looked like.

I'm sure Sister Sonic would've had a much larger audience, but I wonder how it would've been received, because I can totally imagine a world in which people generally hate the game for being a platformer that plays nothing like Sonic. 

 

Even if it Sister Sonic did have a negative reputation though, I imagine it would've at least drawn in an audience people that cared to create fan translations of the other versions of Popful Mail.

While there's also drama cd's,

 

a manga,

and a random Dead Or Alive 5 costume (?)

that's about all I have to say about Popful Mail for now. While the PC-8801 version actually just recently got released on the japanese Nintendo E-Shop, the Sega CD version has yet to be re-released in any capacity (Edit: I'm wrong, it was actually rereleased on the Mega Drive Mini 2 back in 2022, but also only in japanese) so uh, find your own way to play it if you're interested.

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