Kai Magazine Software seemed to burst from the ground with the sole mission of pushing the Mega Drive beyond its known boundaries and limits. I’ve been lucky enough to cover all of their MD releases over the last five years or so, and each one has breathed new life into Sega’s much-loved 16-bit console, and given thousands of retro gamers worldwide reason to boot up the black Sega classic.
From the tongue-in-cheek MERCS-esque Metal Dragon through the Metroidvanian Life On Mars to the run-n-gun ‘tastic Life On Earth: Reimagined, Kai Magazine Software push the hardware in different directions, through differing genres – but none have felt quite so special as The Secret of the Four Winds.
Beginning with Inspector Henge in pursuit of a suspect – a suspect running on foot as Henge chases in his cop car!- resulting in them both entering an abandoned warehouse, where the suspect disappears and Henge watches a man die, stealing his gun to discover it’s a supernatural weapon that kills ghosts, it’s safe to say that The Secret of the Four Winds has one of – if not, THE – best kick-off to a Mega Drive game, helped immensely by the anime-style cut scenes, and – I will be talking about this a lot – the incredible, INCREDIBLE music.
Honestly, when the game first booted up and I could select between between the enhanced or standard music, I sat bolt upright the moment the energetic, sax and guitar laden soundtrack kicked in during the intro chase, it was a clarity – and style – of audio that I had simply never heard come from my Mega Drive in the thirty-five years I’ve spent with the console, and on the strength of that aspect alone, my genuine, reflexive initial response was “well, this game is getting 10/10 as far as I’m concerned”.
Even more impressive was the fact that, when I switched the audio to ‘FM’ style, there was still a gorgeous swing to everything, that called to mind the saucy soundtrack of Side Pocket (which is yearning for a vinyl release).
Moving away from the soundtrack though, the visuals are tasty, and depict a top-down world in which the characters that you control – an eventual choice of three in total - move through with quite a unique control scheme. One button runs – and drains stamina – whilst the others act as aim and shoot. It initially feels very esoteric, but quickly becomes second nature as you make your way through the mostly night-time locations that the game takes you through.
Whilst some stages require simple detective work and puzzle solving, the vast majority of The Secret of the Four Winds involves making your way through the waves of enemies – most of which are weak to light and strongest in darkness – as you hold down the aim/shoot buttons, taking them out before they can get anywhere near you.
Whilst there are three characters to – eventually – choose from, and there are RPG aspects of the game that level up stats such as accuracy, health points, and power etc. this is the part of the game that starts off positively, but becomes a crutch relatively quickly.
Look, I love this game, and I’ll reiterate that the retro Japanese style of visuals, incredible music, beautiful physical presentation, nuanced and bold control scheme, as well as the mood and narrative of the game is fantastic...but my word, does the core gameplay result in a bone-crushing grind. Not just a grind of the type you’d see in most modern games, where you hit a rut and go off exploring, giving at least a little variety in the proceedings, this is a game in which you hit various points that result in you incrementally making your way forwards through areas that are just designed to kill you over and over until the numbers in your stats are high enough for you to make progress.
Thus making what is initially a thrill in how it blends action and RPG (and that world-beating music), and the heart of the enjoyment of the game itself an eventual brick-sieving, repetitive sludge-fest of progress. I promise you that there will never be a speed run of this game, the grind is too built-in to ignore.
SUMMARY
Kai Magazine Software are one of the most exciting developers around for the Mega Drive, and The Secret of the Four Winds is a game that deserves to grace a lot of shelves, pushing the Mega Drive not only through its saucy music, but also in blending genres, visuals and creating a mood in general that seems genetically designed to please me on a cellular level.
That said, the incessant grind and repetition that kicks in after a couple of hours can’t be be ignored, and perhaps leans too heavily on retro-Japanese design philosophies to connect with me, personally. That said. The music? Play it again, Sam.
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