Samurai-Ghost (TurboGrafx-16)

There hasn't been enough TurboGrafx games on the site lately, or at all really, so I thought I should do something about that. Then I remembered that thinking makes my brain hurt and decided to just pick one to play randomly.

So here's Samurai-Ghost, I'm hoping it's a clever spook 'em up where I get to float around a house haunting the shit out of the living, harassing them by possessing their furniture and chasing them down the halls waving my spectral katana at them. Though it's on the TurboGrafx so it's probably a shoot 'em up.

Right, so my mission is to "Destroy! Yori..." Hang on mate, could slow down a little and let me take some of this in? Also quit doing that with your face, it's really off-putting.

Okay apparently I need to destroy this Yoritomo's soul on orders from the King of Heaven, and I should "Never for get! Heike's enmity of soul". Got it.

What the game has neglected to tell me is that I'm playing as (real life) samurai Taira no Kagekiyo, famous from his appearance in the classic medieval Japanese novel Heike Monogatari, and for trying (and failing) to have Minamoto no Yoritomo (the leader of a rival clan) assassinated. The word Heike actually refers to the Taira clan that our hero belongs to, so I suppose this text could be saying 'don't forget that your clan hates this guy, now rise as a ghost and try to kill him again, and do it right this time'.

Ah, it's a hack and slash style platformer... perhaps. I'll let you know just as soon as it lets me take control.

I have to apologise for this gif, as it has to be the most shameful, crappiest looking animation I've made for the site so far. I had to chop frames out of it and it didn't exactly loop properly in the first place, so the end result turned out to be a stuttery mess.

Oh crap, am I supposed to be doing something now? I'm pressing buttons but I can't tell if I'm actually controlling anything or just sitting through a cutscene.

Yeah this is all cutscene, it has to be. A mostly pointless intro revealing basically nothing except that our hero hates dragons and doesn't take falling damage. The lunatic straight leaps off the dead dragon's back and falls 20,000 feet back to Earth without a parachute. In fact I think he overshot a little...


LEVEL 1 - ENTRANCE TO THE DARKSIDE.

... because he seems to have smashed right through into an underground cavern, the kind that's filled with lakes of blood and the tortured souls of the damned.

At least now I'm sure that I'm finally controlling the guy myself. Damn, look at that animation, he moves like a paper figure pinned together at the joints. I know he's an undead zombie ghost creature, but it can't be good for him to land on his knees like that.

Even the half-buried disembodied faces are mocking my attacks. At least I've still got arms you gormless potato-wannabe.

A few steps forward I started running into some actual enemies, like flying flaming skulls and floating samurai heads in full armour. Even the faces in the ground are getting in on the action now, shooting spears up out of their cranium to surprise me when I'm distracted.

The other enemies I can handle, but this samurai ghost just doesn't want to go down. I guess I have to get a couple of hits on him in quick succession, but that huge sword he's wielding is making me cautious about getting too close. Hang on, if that's what an actual ghost in samurai armour looks like, then what am I playing as?


A SHORT HIKE LATER.

After walking to the right for a minute or so I finally reached stage 2, and already I can tell this is going to be far more interesting. Look, there's a pit over there! Maybe I'll even get to jump over it!

These flaming skulls are getting a bit more cocky out here, hovering around my head in a group and attacking me from random directions. My crimson haired puppet-man just about capable of spinning around and waving his sword in the air fast enough to handle them all without taking damage, but I fucked it up and shamefully lost a bit of one of my health-candles.

It'd be nice if enemies dropped replacement health candles every now and again, but sadly all I ever seem to get out of them are these emerald doughnut orbs (contents: one doughnut). No clue what they do yet.

Well, that's all the fun I'm getting out of this tiny pit I guess, time to jump back up to the ground level and start walking to the right again.

Whoa, there's some actual platforming over here, what glorious variety at last! You can tell just how cramped the level area is here, as just leaping off a platform is enough to send me disappearing off the top of the screen.

Crap, I managed all the jumpy bits just fine, got my feet back on the ground, then immediately mistimed an attack and lost my last candle to a flaming skull. These things explode in a single hit so they're barely even a threat, but I still need to get my sword to connect with them first, and the thing has a bit of a delay to it.

Fortunately the game was kind enough to give me extra lives and I'm kicked back to the start of the stage to take another go.


LATER, ON THE THIRD STAGE.
 

Only one enemy on this stage, but he's a big guy, he's buck naked, and he's brought his own health bar. I have to be honest, I'm a little concerned.

Oh come on he had one candle left!

It seems that running right into him and tapping the attack button might not have been the correct strategy here, but I wasn't having much luck with hit and run attacks either. He's got a massive reach with that sword of his and I still haven't found a block button yet. I don't have many lives left to waste here though, so next time I am going to have to try a more cautious approach...

Now THAT'S the crappiest looking animated gif on the site so far!

There's no time limit so I can keep on running forever, but it's not going to do me any good. I'm going to have to eventually turn and face my fears head on. And then try hammering the attack button until he explodes again. I mean you've seen how my guy jumps, dodging is not his speciality. He's not exactly the most spritely of sprites.

Oh by the way, I should probably mention that you get a ton of screen space in front of you in this game. There's never any risk of running into an enemy before you have a chance to see it coming, and for that it deserves considerable kudos. So there's something to put in the 'positives' column.

Whoa, my dumb technique actually worked and I've reached a world map! I can't go back and replay old levels though (or even see them marked on screen).


LEVEL 2-1 - VOLCANIC ZONE.

Hey it's a new kind of enemy! Though he's basically just a variation of those ghost samurais really: he's in my way and then two hits later he's not.

Alright, here's an actual platforming challenge for me at last! I've got to jump from rock to rock as they drift horizontally across the screen (no doubt being kept aloft by warm air currents from the lava below... or possibly magnets).

Despite the clunkiness of the animation it's actually possible to manoeuvre Kagekiyo reasonably well, so leaping across these things isn't so difficult.

Well, it's not so difficult when there's something there for me to land on anyway. To its credit, the game actually doesn't kill me off instantly when I touch lava, though with the health I had left here that didn't much matter.

That's it, the end: I'm out of lives, there's no saves, no passwords and apparently no continues either. Game over.

My reward for failure: Engrish.

Oh hang on, I spoke too soon, it seems that I actually do have continues. Potentially infinite of them too! Thanks for that you creepy mean old cackling hag.

Using a continue put me right back to the beginning of the Volcano Zone, but seeing as I was at the right at the beginning anyway, it's not a huge setback for me.

Alright floating volcanic rocks, you might have tricked me last time, but now I'm on to you. I'm going to wait right here until I see a row of them turn up close enough together for me to actually jump across them.

The floating rock beat me up and shoved me into the lava! Damn you floating rock!


MUCH LATER, ON LEVEL 2-2.

Come on Kagekiyo, move your ass before it is set aflame!

Oh hang on, I see what's going on here, that sneaky skull spider must have fired a web at me, tying my legs together, and I need to swing my sword to cut them free. Very mature mate. That's basically the undead arachnid version of secretly tying someone's shoelaces together.

Alright so I have to fight off floating demon forearms from multiple directions while jumping over spider webs, outrunning a lava flow and trying to duck down and stab that bloody spider... finally something interesting is happening in this game!

Though wait a second, aren't spiders supposed to have four legs (on each side)?


SEVERAL LIVES LATER.

Oh and now they're throwing in giant ravens armed with cutlasses too. Well that's just... marvellous.

This stage is totally (and predictably) kicking my ass, but I do feel that I mostly have myself to blame. The character movement could be better, but I do have enough moves available to deal with these guys if I get the timing right.

I'm mostly just annoyed that I couldn't get multiple pink hands, the lava, and a cutlass bird all on screen in the same shot.

COME ON, there's the exit right there! A few more steps and I've finished the stage, just hold on until then!

YES! I actually did it, with just a fraction of a second left on the invisible clock. I just hope thin wooden archways can stop a river of lava or else I'm going to be doing all this again on the next stage.

Oh of course, third stage is another boss fight.

I didn't stand a chance with this guy at all, he hovered out of my range poking me with poles and shooting lightning at me, and when I tried jumping on the platforms to take the fight to him, I lost way more health than I inflicted. Losing all my lives means I have to do the last two stages again, and I don't think it's worth fighting through that lava race a second time just for the opportunity to get my ass handed to me in seconds by a troll, so I'll turn this off now.


Well after exhaustive study and analysis I can conclude that Samurai-Ghost is definitely a game about walking to the right. In fact it reminds me a little of China Warrior, in that it feels like an early tech demo for the console that was later expanded into a full game. Though China Warrior was game #1 for the system and this came out five years later, so I think it may actually be just a really straightforward clunky looking game.

But is it any joy to play? I have to admit that I didn't hate it. It didn't do much to entertain, but it didn't do much to frustrate me either really. It lowered my expectations to rock bottom right from the get go, then slightly exceeded them. Don't consider that a recommendation though.

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