Trivia / StarTropics

• Feelies: The game came with a letter that had to be dipped in water to obtain a code...and if you didn't have it, you're screwed... until now. 747. You're welcome.
  • Even if you had the letter, it could take a while for you to realize that when the in-game characters were talking about "the letter attached to the instructions" they weren't referring to some in-game item you had to find...
  • As game manuals are easy to lose and not included with rentals, this issue generated tons of calls to Nintendo's tips hotline and letters to Nintendo Power. The code was eventually published in Nintendo Power.
  • To get around this roadblock in the Virtual Console release, the letter is simulated inside of the game's operations guide on the Wii, and actual scans of the letter before and after water are included on the Wii U version. Unfortunately, the version included in the Nintendo Switch Online NES application doesn't mention the code at all.
  • It is possible to guess the right code, either by guessing obvious number possibilities, or simply brute forcing every possible answer one by one until you get the right one. It works eventually as long as you are patient to the point of obsessive.
    Caution: Do not taste, eat or otherwise consume this paper
    Note: This letter is very important, so please hold onto it until the end of the game.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: StarTropics II has fallen into this with the closure of the Wii U eShop in 2023, as it (for unknown reasons) is nowhere to be seen on the Nintendo Switch Online NES app.
• No Export for You: StarTropics and its sequel have never been released in Japan as the Japanese mapper chip (the MMC6A which is based on the MMC5 chip) of its prototype is more powerful than the mapper chip found in the US/EU versions that did come out (the MMC6B which is based on the MMC3B but with 1KB of built in ram and can do larger sprites of 32x32 rather them 8x8 or 8x16 like the MMC2 (Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!) and MMC4 (the Japanese version of Punch-Out!!, Famicom Wars and both Famicom Fire Emblem games) chips); however the Japanese version of said mapper was so expensive to make that it was cheaper to work with the Super NES, so it never came out in Japan because of it. In addition, only the original was released in Europe.
  • The Virtual Console gave StarTropics II to European gamers in July of '09. Japan still hasn't seen either game.

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