The Mysterious Murasame Castle (1986)

The Heavens themselves are cleaved in twain by a bolt of lightning. A time of historical opportunity is at hand! All the stagnant evils of the world have rallied together and exposed themselves, emboldened in their hubris. A lifetime spent preparing for this festering inevitability of a decisive confrontation has provided you with the resolve in which to challenge them. To purge these malignant lords while sanctioned through an irrefutable casus belli. Before they can slither to shroud their insidious machinations away once more. The infinite potential of the future rests upon your ability to rise and meet this pivotal moment.

It is all too much stacked against you. The roots in which your adversities are entrenched lie bunkered deep. The extent of their influence overwhelmingly oppressive in its reach. An infinite retinue of willingly self-immolating serfs have crawled out from every crevice to harm you. And you do not have the luxury to let them even slow you down. Time and energy much too limiting to expend on petty skirmishes! You have learnt that only a few selective victories are meaningfully significant. Reprieve can only be found through striking down evil’s core. And so, your instinctive reaction is to fixate your exertions upon a surgical regicide. You rush directly towards the throne.

You find your charge impaled upon the palisade. Revolution is rarely found to be so idealistically swift. Your adversities paranoidly concerned of their own mortality, have inoculated themselves against such a frontal assault. To succeed, you must adapt from this pyrrhic approach. To learn to value your survival. To realise the moment is not so desperately transient. That this world’s transition is perpetuated through each and every one of your breaths.

Change is not spontaneous. It is momentum. A steady and persistent showing of one’s found conviction. Through the act of siege castles can be made to fall. And you will win this battle of attrition simply through forming a greater desire to persist within it.

Through a flurry of blades and a symphony, you eventually herald the end of this decrepid era. Yet the spilled blood of battle precipitates into a thick vapour, condensing in the skies above. The thunder clouds begin to form once more.

(So I couldn’t find anything to corroborate with this idea but this game surely is inspired by Sakamoto Ryoma and the advocacy to end Japanese feudalism? Admittedly my basis for this interpretation is mostly on the closing card’s conspicuously western ‘Ode to Joy’ which diegetically contrasts against the otherwise eastern soundtrack. Although my understanding of Japanese history is quite limited.

Regardless, ‘The Mysterious Murasame Castle’ is a game that speaks through its mechanical systems. Unusual for a game of this era, it generously checkpoints you. Storing your progress after passing each individual screen. Basic enemies infinitely respawn and offer little incentive in defeating them. This initially may seem to encourage a particular playstyle. To have you recklessly rush towards the objective. And although you may find some initial success with such stratagem, the game swiftly rebukes this approach in its scaling difficulty. Although you may not lose your ‘progress’ for falling, the consequences are still severe. The substantial powerups you have accrued are lost, without which the challenges you face are multiplicatively more formidable. Instead, the game will silently insist that you slow yourself down. As the stronger foes do not respawn, you should allocate time and effort to find and memorise the respawning hidden caches of powerups scattered throughout each level. And through this knowledge rejuvenate yourself as necessary as you make a more carefully considered approach. The game imparts upon you that sometimes the best way forward is to counterintuitively first take a step back. I recommend this game to all those thrilled by difficult arcade type experiences. Its unique design philosophies distinguishes itself among contemporaries.)

The Mysterious Murasame Castle has a similar layout - traverse Zelda-like areas and do sword combat with enemies, but amps up the pace and difficulty into a run-and-gun that might get pretty frustrating but looks great and provides some decently fun challenge.

The player is Takemaru, a swordsman who must race through several castles in order to obtain four gems from the castle lords and defeat the evil Murasame. Takemaru can throw a projectile or hit with the sword in close range. It's quite dangerous to get up and close all the time but some large enemies can be quite the issue if they don't get killed fast enough and the melee packs a punch. The player may also use a limited amount of special techniques to either run around with invincibility for a short time or clear the screen. The player has three hits and fairly limited lives but can rescue princesses to gain those lives back.

Powerups are fairly limited but worth exploring - tanookis can provide fireballs for damage, windmill swords for distance, and special techniques, while special gift boxes can up movement speed, firing rate, multi-directional shooting, health, and temporary invincibility. They're mostly invisible so the player will resort to luck or memorization to get them all.

Difficulty gets fairly intense quickly - a large variety of enemies such as ninja, tengu, demons, samurai, a particularly frustrating flame ninja, a wealth of new enemies at the end stage, and particularly difficult daimyo stand in the way. Progression is brute force navigating through the outdoor grounds and eventually the castle, set to a time limit so the player mustn't dawdle. This can get fairly stressful quickly.

The extra power from the Disk System provides some catchy and well-made tunes and the ancient Japanese style is communicated in some pretty environments with an extra round of spooky near the end.

Murasame Castle might not be as playable or fun as the game that inspired it but it has a decent challenge amidst all the racing and dying that at least looks like a blast if not fairly fun.