Alright, alright, so the plot is bare-bones at best, and the main character is a tubbier clone of Mario. That's not the point. Metroid relied on its swampy ambience to captivate the player - Super Adventure Island 2 has purely charming fun. It's very charming and very fun, though, and far more complex than most action games; there's quite a lot of revisiting stages, maze exploration, switch pushing, and so forth. It's nothing spectacular, but it's just enough challenge to not insult one's intelligence and to draw one into the action instead - it inspires the perfect amount of involvement needed to dig the colourful stages, search out all the various armour and weapons (there's plenty of both, actually), and battle the goofy enemies.

I have no simple explanation as to why this game is very good. It's fairly superficial, certainly. But it's also very unpretentious and unassuming, it doesn't demand a whole lot of time, it goes very fast, and most importantly, the charm is genuine. Whoever made this game certainly enjoyed every minute of it. This enjoyment is highly contagious, and that makes for a game that outclasses by far many a plodding RPG. And better yet, it even has a very good soundtrack - this is the only game in which I have seen a funk track. Yes, a funk track. Need I say more?