Retro Thursday: E.V.O

Hello and welcome to our first Retro Thursday.

In light of our post Monday on Spore, We are going to talk about a Super Nintendo game: EVO - Search for Eden.



EVO was released in 1993 by Enix (The company behind the Dragon Quest games, who eventually merged with their rival Square ). EVO is an action platformer with some RPG elements. The game is broken up into five worlds or ages (Fish Age, Amphibian Age, Dinosaur Age, Mammal Age, and the "Age of Eden"), each with multiple stages. The world map (and levels for that matter) is structured similarly to Super Mario World. You progress through each side-scrolling level fighting enemies, and eating the meat they leave behind. This meat serves two purposes, first it restores your health, second it serves as an experience system (EVO Points) which allows you to evolve your character in a few different ways. You can save these evolutions in the "Record of Evolution" for later. At different points in the game, you can aquire crystals that give you special properties. The green crystal, allows you to turn in to any creature in the record of Evolution. The red crystal, allows you to unlock secret powerful creatures (which you can save in the record of evolution...) for a limited amount of time.

Check out this video review of EVO.

Turn the volume down if you just want to see some gameplay.

And that is why I decided to post this week. The premise of this game is almost exactly the same as Spore. Sure, spore has slightly more complex game play, but the core element, the one that makes spore truly interesting, is the ability to evolve your creature. Sure, it isn't quite as dynamic as Spore's creature creator ( you can't say, articulate your spine), but each level offers a slew of different parts you can use to upgrade your creature. In total, there are eight different parts of your body you can upgrade: Jaws, Horn(s), Neck, Body, Hands&Feet, Dorsal Fin, Tail, and the Back of your head. Each part has multiple options each typically better than the last.

Really, there isn't much else to the game. To get the best parts for you creature, you always have to spend some time grinding (hey, it IS a game by Enix after all) as going straight through each level only nets you enough Evo P. to get the weakest of parts.

So, how does this game hold up today? Well, I started replaying it this week, and I can say, it holds up pretty well. While the backgrounds and levels are far from inspired, the creatures are detailed and well designed. The game play, while repetitive at times, is simple and fun. The music (composed by Kouichi Sugiyama from the Dragon Quest series) has a very classical sound, and easily compares in quality to some of the finest SNES RPG scores.

I was definitely suprised that my nostalgia for this game holds up even today (it rarely does). True, I am a sucker for anything that lets me build up my character, or make visable changes to your character.

All in all, I highly recommend this one. If you can get your hands on a reasonably priced cartridge, pick it up, you won't be sorry. Barring that, we will just have to wait for its release on Virtual console. But given Square-Enix's limited North American support for the VC, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Now that I have propagated my evil Darwinist evolution to our nations children, my plan is almost complete...

~K