Jimmu Denshou

~ JIMMU DENSHOU ~

Wolf Team / Big Club

HuCard

1989

I don't think I've ever seen anything even remotely positive written about this game. After just a few minutes of playing it, I was ready to join the crowd and rip it for its many apparent inadequacies. The Space-Harrier-like graphics were choppy as hell, and huge doses of slowdown and flicker didn't help matters at all. The controls felt shoddy, and the weaponry seemed inadequate, as I started off with nothing but a sword-slash attack, and minor upgrades that allowed my blade to emit little projectiles didn't seem particularly helpful or impressive.

But things turned around once I made adjustments to those unwieldy controls. Changing the run setting from "AUTO" to "KEY" on the title screen menu makes the game feel entirely different (and better). On AUTO, your clumsy samurai will undoubtedly fall from platforms, get stuck on poles, and bump into bosses. KEY allows you so much more command over the unfortunate hero. And following the discovery of manageable controls, other bright spots became evident.

The music is actually good all the way through. I'm sure people have ripped on it and will continue to rip on it, but I'm convinced that if it were part of a different overall package, no one would have any issues with it. (Useless comment--the first few notes of one of the boss tunes reminds of a Zelda II track for some reason.) The aesthetic pleasure doesn't end there, though: while the graphics are indeed choppy, some of the distant backdrops are actually quite nice to look at. And the huge bosses are often impressive (and compellingly bizarre) in design.

Those bosses can put up quite a fight, and the earliest battles can seem like long, drawn-out matters of attrition. But make some progress and you'll discover giants that require strategy and prudent weapon selection to defeat. It feels really, really good to solve the attack patterns of the tougher ones. And by the time you get to those tougher ones, you'll probably be wielding much more effective weaponry than you had been earlier in the game. Your blade can eventually shoot out spreading lightning bolts and homing spheres and other such cool and effective missiles.

And you'll need those upgrades to contend with even the standard stage villains, whom you'll find yourself baiting into position before you destroy or evade them completely. The stages themselves are more than just flat pseudo-3D affairs. You'll have to make tricky speed runs and avoid numerous danger spots. Underworlds and warp zones mean alternate routes through some sections. Power-up locations are not always immediately evident. You'll need to get dialed in and learn the levels inside and out.

And when you're in that zone, the game knows how to evoke all the right feelings. Bosses can disgust and amaze you at once. Speed runs are exhilarating. Dark underworlds are appropriately terrifying. You'll be in the zone and everything will just feel right.

All of these things are elements that, I imagine, we all love to discover in our action-adventure games, and Jimmu certainly delivered them to me. But not everyone will have this sort of experience with the game. Some won't be able to get past the shoddiness and lack of overall appeal that inevitably plague early sessions. More significant than that, the game is flat-out hard, even grueling at times. Passwords keep track of your health and weaponry, so it's not enough just to clown your way through a stage; you've got to beat it in decent condition for the next one or you'll find yourself crushed immediately. And I'm not even going to try to excuse Stage 3, a nightmare of hellish platforming that the game's controls simply aren't cut out for: contact with the surface means instant harm, and you might find yourself repeatedly plummeting into a long and horribly difficult underworld.

But if you accept those initial bitter experiences and manage to get past Stage 3... well, there's a darn good chance you still won't like the game. You'll need to have a pretty high level of tolerance for unpolished products, and being a fan of Space Harrier lookalikes to begin with won't hurt. Even then, you might find this one unacceptable. But playing through it was a very rewarding experience for me personally, and it actually ranks quite high among HuCards in my book.