2026 Special - Popful Mail

Get rich or die trying reload your last save.

Once again, I'm here to deliver content for the hundreds of bots that strip-mine this blog. Popful Mail is the story of a bounty hunter and the steady barrage of shit sandwiches that she has to deal with. After failing to apprehend Nuts Cracker, Mail gets word that there's a 2,000,000-gold bounty on the head of some wizarding prick named Muttonhead. In her quest to cash-in, she gets wrapped up in a world-saving adventure. This game was originally released for the PC-88 by Falcom, but I'll be talking about the Sega CD version. 

One of the stories that's often bandied about is that Sega Falcom was planning to turn Popful Mail into a Sonic the Hedgehog spin-off called Sister Sonic. Fans were rightfully not thrilled with the idea. Sega relented after receiving what had to have been a flood of letters and phone-calls. Before I played through the Sega CD version, I would've thought this was just another nonsense rumor. I mean, sure I'd have to ignore the Beep! MegaDrive articles that mention its development and cancellation, but not paying attention to legitimate sources comes naturally to me. Now that I've finally finished a playthrough, I can look at the following image and realize "Oh shit. They were really going to do it."

For the sake of clarity, a couple familiar hazards are as far as I can tell the only in-game references to Sonic's lost sibling. Popful Mail on the Sega CD is in every respect an accurate remake, just updated to appeal to console audiences. The controls and combat mechanics were overhauled, but the story and level-structure are practically the same. It's an adventure designed for immediate pick-up and play; balanced to reward newcomers looking for a fun romp as well as maniacs thirsting for a new challenge. One complaint that I have to air out is that the remake going so far to adopt the original's camera might've been a bit much. Mail and her friends tend to only see about a 1/3rd of what's in front of them. This makes platforming and fighting slightly more difficult than they should be, though I am coming around to the idea that it's intentional. 

Oh, there is one other thing. When Working Designs localized the game, some significant changes were made to how much damage enemies dealt. Items such as health restoratives and amulets of temporary invulnerability were also given drastic price increases. To save myself the trouble of typing out a long explanation as to why these changes outright suck, my playthrough was done using the Un-working Designs hack. The translation and dub are intact, but the numbers are where they should've been to begin with. I get it. The rental market was a pain in the ass, and Popful Mail is absolutely a weekend game, but I'm not fighting a boss 10 or 20 times. Falcom's intention was to give fans a breather. Not all of their games need a brick wall shaped like Dark Fact or Vagullion for players to slam their head against for hours.

Above all else, Popful Mail is about understanding the limitations of both your avatar and the adversaries you'll contend with. The heroes Mail, Tatt, and Gaw are very different from each other in how they move, jump, and attack. The one constant between them is their lack of invulnerability frames after taking a hit. There is no winning a battle of attrition. Even if you're carrying a mountain of fruit, your player-character can't defeat anything if they're too busy getting knocked around. Retreat and re-assess is something you'll have to apply to every situation. This is most likely why the camera operates the way it does. Rushing ahead only works when there aren't any obstacles. When you're struggling, take a literal step back and check the environment for something that'll give you an advantage. 

Unlike a number of other enemies and bosses of the era, Popful Mail's baddies tend to be afflicted with limited mobility. It's established as far back as the very first area. Those spiders aren't going to cut themselves from their threads to chase hapless hunters around. The first boss has a quick jump, but it can only jump between set locations. Rather than attempt to chase the bomb-spewing mech, let it land next to you and then punish its lack of agency. A lot of what makes this title shine is in the opportunities it provides the player. The boss arenas are often not arenas at all, and even if the fiend is capable of moving, there's no guarantee that it can actually reach whichever corner you decide to run to. 

Furthering the importance of agency is the ARMS mechanic. Magical weapons require ammunition aka ARMS. Once its exhausted, you'll have to fall back and recover. This is a neat system, especially during certain fights. The one that immediately comes to mind is the final encounter with Nuts Cracker. In order to defeat this hopping Italia American stereotype, you'll first have to take out the mech he's piloting. However, before landing the final hit to destroy the mech, let the ARMS gauge fill up first. You'll need it to hit Nuts as he hops around, doing as much damage as possible before he hops into another mech. It's a clever trick to managing what might be the most annoying fight in the game. Actually, having an MP gauge that doesn't rely on pick-ups, potions, or inns is just clever in general.

The level-design is probably best-described as "What if Ys was a side-scroller." Sorry, but Ys III wasn't it. Seriously though, every stage is broken up into multiple screens, all of which contain a collection of fiends to slash and treasures to obtain. Most of them are linear enough to be easily stumbled through and get modestly complex towards the endgame. Progression is sometimes not 100% clear, but that's likely due to my poisoned brain juggling several other games at once, some of which having quest indicators, or just a big red arrow pointing where to go or who to talk to. That said, going from one end of a cave to another and back again just for the useless NPC to suddenly have something useful is a nuisance.

God, this review is all segues, isn't it? It must be, because now I have to talk about the rest of this game's cast. The three heroes are fine, provided you can get past Gaw's tendency to add "gaw" to the ends of his lines. Mail using an ableist slur is honestly shitty, but I guess that's to be expected from a 90s product released in the west by the most 90s publisher. Main point I want to get across is that while I can tolerate them, just about everybody else in Popful Mail deserves the worst. I'm not sure whether Falcom or Working Designs deserves more of the blame here, but Muttonhead is garbage. Just an irredeemable sack of trash who never gets his comeuppance. There are several other villains in the game, and they all died. Why exactly does the guy responsible for unleashing a world-destroying evil get a pass? Actually, I don't care. Slick is also terrible. Yeah, he's purposefully terrible, but nobody at the local bar would've given me a thumbs up and a pat on the back if I purposefully took a dump on the counter. 

But what do I know? My favorite character is this guy.

While obviously far from a make-or-break issue, my interest in the story waned quite a bit towards the end. I think I even fast-forwarded through The Overlord's villainous speeches. Perhaps being subjected to the Muttonhead & Slick show for so long just wore me out. Sven (another villain) using every Arnold Schwarzenegger catchphrase - plus some from a SNL skit nobody remembers - no doubt exasperated the issue. At least the game portion of Popful Mail retains its high quality for the 6-8 hours a playthrough will likely take.

Seeing as how the PC-88 original remains unplayed, I don't know if I can definitively say that this is a fantastic remake of Popful Mail, but I'll say it anyway. After adjusting to the - purely intentional I'm certain - camera, I had a really good time. Learning and exploiting boss behavior is always a thrill. The three playable characters and how they control is also really thoughtful. The differences in aspects such as jump height and running speed don't really affect exploration, but they add identity to both platforming and combat. Beautiful word, identity. Shame it won't mean anything once this review is swallowed by the AI machine