Video games - Popful Mail

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	Video games - Popful Mail

Popful Mail is a little-known video game that resembles an RPG more so than many others. It doesn't have experience points. It has character dialogue, although the player has no choice in what the character says. And it has changeable weapons and armour and gold with which to buy items (and weapons and armour).

Set mainly as a 2D platform game, "Popful Mail" was produced by Falcom for the PC-8801, PC-9801, PC Engine CD, Sega CD (redesigned by Sega) and Super Famicom. Working Designs published the Sega CD version in America in 1994. The PC-8801, PC-9801 and PC-Engine CD versions are for the most part similar to each other, but the SNES 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 returns to the town. In town, she attempts to collect bounty from the bounty office, but is unable to convince the clerk of anything, although he does takes the head. Sore, she however become reinvigorated when she spots a 2,000,000 gold bounty poster for a wizard criminal, Muttonhead, on her way out. With this, she embarks on her adventure.

Characters

Heroes

Popful Mail

The main character, and the one with whom the player begins, is a female elf bounty hunter, although she hasn't had much luck lately. Mail's main target, Nuts Cracker, always seems to escape after Mail defeats him. Mail has red hair and a confrontational attitude. Her main and beginning weapon is a sword. She wears leather mail.

Tatt

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 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.

Gaw

Gaw is a small, round, winged, cave-dwelling purple creature, almost identical with all the others of his species, each who calls themselves "Gaw". 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 only later.

Gaw's main attack varies, although his first attack is a fireball. Subsequent attacks include a tail swipe and clawing.

Villains

Nuts Cracker

The first villain we meet, Nuts Cracker is the leader of a dangerous criminal gang knows as the Underground Grifter Gang. He specialises in manufacturing explosives, especially exploding dolls. Nuts Cracker is fashioned like a nutcracker, wood and all, and speaks in a goofy accent. When defeated, he will often throw his head, which 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, although he always escapes.

Muttonhead

Muttonhead was formerly a well-known and respected magician before unexpectdely 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.

Others

Slick

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

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 naivette and short memory.

Gameplay

The game is essentially a 2D platform game with some RPG elements.

The controls allow the player to jump, attack, or open doors, 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.

The character encounters enemies all the way, and when defeated they may yield gold, which can be used to buy a number of items in shops.

The character also encounters other characters that can be talked to. 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.

Health bar and Special bar

The character has 100 health points, 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.

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