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Reader, I must apologize. After a rather disorganized start to this series, during which I kept expanding the scope and going back to add more games that messed up the timeline, I thought I’d made a comprehensively researched list of every game I might want to include. Once I got all caught up with Final Fantasy II, I thought it would be smooth chronological sailing. But while tracking down a fan-made translation for the next game to follow Clash At Demonhead, I ended up on the website for Nebulous Translations and took a look at the other games they’ve translated. It’s not a long list, and yet: I still found a couple of interesting games that weren’t on my list. So I’m going back in time once again.
The first of these games is Getsu Fuuma Den, which translates roughly to The Legend of Getsu Fuuma. Released for the Japanese Famicom by Konami in July 1987, it slots in after Wonder Boy In Monster Land and before Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family in our timeline. That’s actually pretty early, only the 13th game by original release date, which makes its combination of a top-down world map, side-scrolling platforming, and grid-based dungeon crawling all the more notable. It’s likely this game was an inspiration for a bunch of others I’ve already covered.
The title refers to the protagonist, Getsu Fuuma, youngest brother of the Getsu clan. It’s the first year of the Demon Age, and the demon lord Ryuukotsuki has escaped from Hell to rampage across the surface world. The Getsu clan, who are entrusted with the mystical pulse blades, fight back, but the two elder brothers are killed and only Fuuma survives. He now must travel to Mad Demon Island to recover the stolen pulse blades and defeat Ryuukotsuki once and for all.
With all this talk of demons, it’s no surprise that this game was never localized for a US release. Nintendo were careful to market its Nintendo Entertainment System (a rebranded Famicom) as family-friendly entertainment in the US market, and avoided bringing over games that might be controversial. Then again, Konami’s own Castlevania series — I’ve covered the second entry, Simon’s Quest, which would release less than two months after Getsu Fuuma Den in Japan — got US releases, despite their gothic horror setting with vampires and other monsters. Those, I think, had more of a Halloween flavor that still felt appropriate for kids in the US, but Getsu Fuuma Den is darker in tone. Right from the opening scene, Mad Demon Island is littered with giant skulls and other bones, and sometimes skeletal remains act as walls that define paths. It’s an actively hostile place, with only a few friendly faces who are clearly hiding out lest the demons kill them. Many of the people Fuuma meets may be demons themselves, willing to parlay or help out for a price.
Getsu Fuuma Den is also heavily inspired by Japanese folklore, which might be another reason it was never released outside of Japan. Fuuma appears to be a samurai, the islands he explores are littered with desecrated Shinto temples and shrines, and the side-scrolling areas are marked with torii gates. These are all recognizable worldwide now, but in 1987 it’s likely that Nintendo thought they would be too foreign for American players.
It’s evident that Japanese players and developers played Getsu Fuuma Den, though, because I can see clear imitators among other games I’ve covered in this series. But Getsu Fuuma Den was an imitator itself; the most obvious influence is Zelda II, which combined top-down map exploration and side-scrolling action areas six months earlier. Some parts of the top-down map in Getsu Fuuma Den even feature wandering monsters, which trigger a small side-scrolling battle when encountered, a design copied almost verbatim from Zelda II. But the map in Getsu Fuuma Den is far more restrictive than Zelda II’s open wandering. Fuuma can move only along narrow paths that connect points of interest like shops, side-scrolling action areas, and caves. Five months later, Phantasy Star would use a similar path design in its town areas, but Getsu Fuuma Den’s short side-scrolling sequences that pepper its roads would be imitated more explicitly by action games to come. A year later, Lord of the Sword used side-scrolling action areas to represent the roads connecting its towns and other locations, and another six months after that Clash at Demonhead built its map out of dozens of “routes”, each its own short platforming area. Both feel like they owe a debt to Getsu Fuuma Den.
Getsu Fuuma Den’s other clear inspiration is Konami’s own The Goonies II, which released four months earlier. That game split up its platforming action with first-person adventure game sequences. Getsu Fuuma Den instead includes grid-based dungeon crawling sequences. Chronologically, it’s the first game in this blog series to have these; Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei wouldn’t release for another two months, and Phantasy Star another three months after that. But all these games borrow their grid-based dungeon design from early computer role-playing games such as the Wizardry series (which was quite popular in Japan).
The grid-based dungeons in Getsu Fuuma Den have a few interesting details. All the other games I’ve listed show their dungeons from a first-person viewpoint, but here players are actually looking over Fuuma’s shoulders as he explores the corridors and passages. The dungeon view takes up most of the screen, which wasn’t common; most such games kept the view in a small corner of the screen, with the rest showing menus or other information. Phantasy Star would also use the entire screen for its first-person dungeons, and featured slick animation for turns and other movements to boot; here the dungeon view isn’t animated, but Fuuma himself is. Players watch as he trudges forward or turns to the side, which isn’t as fancy as what would come in Phantasy Star (which was meant to demonstrate the superior capabilities of the Master System over the Famicom) but does a surprisingly good job of illustrating movement.
The most remarkable thing about the dungeons, however, is the battles. These don’t switch to a turn- and menu-based battle system like most dungeon crawlers, they are actually action sequences. Opponents move around the screen launching projectiles or other attacks, while players move Fuuma left and right, make him jump, and swing his sword at the enemy. The goal is to try to strike an enemy’s head, which does far more damage (with satisfying audio and visual feedback) than glancing blows elsewhere. Unfortunately, these fights use a lot of flickering sprites that make it impossible to capture good screenshots. You’ll have to take my word for it.
Players can find a magical candle to light up these dungeons, and a compass to tell which way they’re facing, but they’ll still want to draw their own maps. That’s another reason why this game may have been deemed inappropriate for the American market, since kids might get lost easily without knowing how to draw maps. But I’ve come to appreciate map drawing in these types of games. It makes them feel much more personal, as I scrawl notes or erase a mistake. It also means I always felt I was making progress, even if I had just found some dead ends or corridors that looped back to places I’d been before, because my map was slowly getting filled in.
The dungeons are big, but there are only a few of them, making them climactic sequences. Most of the time, players will be battling through the side-scrolling areas as they explore the top-down map of Mad Demon Island. Controlling Fuuma in the platforming sections felt odd at first. His jump seems to accelerate upwards, which is counterintuitive, and he can even jump from midair after falling off a ledge. I think it’s supposed to be some sort of magical flight power rather than a physical jump. Fuuma’s sword attacks take getting used to as well. They’re slow overhand chops that can hit enemies above and below as well as in front, but can’t be chained together very quickly. Fortunately, Fuuma can take a lot of hits before dying, and defeated enemies often drop health-restoring pickups, as well as a lot of money.
Money can be used to buy items in shops scattered around the island, and while some are single-use items to heal Fuuma or clear a screen full of enemies, most are permanent upgrades. I bought a sword that can cut through rocks that block the way through some areas, and found a magical drum that gave Fuuma a basic ranged attack. Players must actively equip items like this in each and every short platforming area, which is annoying, but I was pleased by how much they change the action. Fuuma’s sword gains strength over the course of the game as he defeats enemies, so that magical drum was soon outclassed by Fuuma’s standard (but more risky) melee attacks. The shurikens I got later stayed useful, however, as did the “devilish top”, which is basically a copy of the screw attack from Metroid, turning Fuuma into a spinning ball of blades when he jumps. Fuuma’s progression from a tentative fighter to a versatile master combatant over the course of the game is very satisfying.
Getsu Fuuma Den isn’t too challenging or too long. Its boss encounters — fought in platforming mode — can be tricky, but smart use of different weapons and items saw me through. There are some instant-death pits in some of the platforming areas, but Fuuma has a few “lives” before his adventure ends, and he can even find extra lives in some areas. Even if he loses all his lives, however, players can continue the adventure an unlimited number of times, starting on the top-down map close to where they perished, with all of their items but only half their money. Money is easily earned again, however, and honestly not that critical overall anyway. Continuing a game across multiple play sessions may have been tougher: there’s a password system, although I never actually used it, relying on save states to continue my game rather than laboriously enter a password (as with other Famicom/NES games in this series, I used the Retroarch frontend and Mesen emulator core to play). If passwords work the same as in-game continues, then that’s great, but I suspect they might return players to the starting position on the top-down map, which would be annoying to deal with.
This is a pretty cool game, though, I’m glad I went back to play it. It’s fascinating to see so many of these early games play around with different design elements, before genre conventions had solidified. Why not mash together action gameplay with role-playing elements? Why not switch between top-down, side view, and over-the-shoulder dungeon crawling perspectives? It’s also an interesting entry in Konami’s catalog specifically, with some enemies sporting whips like those in the Castlevania series or a ball-and-chain not unlike Mikey’s yo-yo from The Goonies II. There are even some specific sound effects I recognize from other Konami games. I can see why Nebulous Translations picked this game for the short list of projects they’ve done, and I can recommend that you, dear reader, check it out too, if any of what I’ve written above sounds interesting.
Next, I’ll be jumping forward nearly a year to May, 1988, for another interesting-sounding game that Nebulous Translations worked on, before returning to our regularly-scheduled timeline which just entered 1989. Stay tuned!
Next on Console History: Star Cruiser
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