Over its lifetime, Super Play reviewed more Super Nintendo games than any other magazine in the United Kingdom - 596 to be precise - so picking a sixth of them, let alone the order of merit, would never be an easy task. This past month, a new series here at Postcards of Pop Culture began, providing an overview of all 100 titles from Super Play’s ranking from bottom to top. And while Super Play’s word was regarded among the most reliable around, it wasn’t the only one with an opinion. And so, this “Redux” series will serve as intermediary overview for each entry, but from the perspective of other critics of the time. Naturally, we begin with Cool Spot, which was recalled last month.
The Super Play overview provided in last month’s post was from the top 100 itself. The verdict from issue #14 read as such:-
“Snazzy show-off platformer with a way cool character, but the fun’s short-lived. If you can afford that, go ahead.”
It differs slightly from the top 100 overview, showing its impression on the team improved over time. Next up is Nintendo Magazine System, who gave Cool Spot a score of 80% in the same month:-
“A playable enough effort which has not a single idea in it. Go for something a bit more inspiring instead.”
Ouch. That does not read like a videogame worthy of 4/5’s of a perfect score, does it? On the whole NMS were impressed with its visuals and music, but little else. More of an average score across the board than anything else.
Total! Magazine, another Nintendo-centric publication, began a few months earlier than Super Play and NMS, and was helmed by who would be the launch editor for Edge Magazine a year or so later, Steve Jarratt. Here’s their review:-
Whilst I appreciate a certain level of bias towards the platforms being covered within the publication, this review is way more favourable than any other, including my own. Thirty years on, its clear that while the SNES version of Cool Spot is a decent platformer, the Sega version had the better framerate, presentation and platforming smoothness. Cool fact? 92% was also the same score given to Mario is Missing. Make of that what you will.
Across all the publications that reviewed Cool Spot, its average score was 88%. What does that mean? Well the bar of Super Play’s top 100 started pretty high, despite the mixture of critique for it.
