Makaimura for Wonderswan (WonderSwan) English-translated Playthrough - NintendoComplete
191A playthrough of Bandai's 1999 horror platformer for the Bandai WonderSwan, Makaimura for Wonderswan.
Played through on the default difficulty level.
This video shows both loops through the game for the true ending. The second loop begins at 24:43. I have translated the cutscenes into English - please note that this wasn't done using a patch. I merely edited the video to replace the Japanese text.
Makaimura for Wonderswan is one of the more obscure entries into the Ghosts 'n Goblin series, having been released only in Japan for Bandai's Wonderswan handheld. Though it shares its name with the game known in the west as Ghosts 'n Goblins, it is an entirely different game.
It does share a great many elements with the games the came before it: the storyline remains unchanged, the first level still takes place in the iconic graveyard, you still need to go through the game twice to get the special weapon that kills the final boss, and the music will be thoroughly familiar to anyone that has played the earlier games.
The Wonderswan's monochrome graphics and four-channel sound belie the exploitable horsepower lying beneath the 16-bit system's hood. Makaimura's graphics are fantastic: the sprites are fluidly animated and new style gives them quite a bit of personality. The backgrounds are surprisingly dense with detail, and the game makes liberal use of parallax scrolling and weather effects to add depth in certain scenes. The bosses are the true star of the show, though - just check out the end-game gauntlet. And that final fight with Emperor Azazel is completely bad-ass, and probably my favorite final boss fight in the series.
The music all sounds great considering the limitations at play - the Wonderswan tends to sound something like an NES or a TurboGrafx on steroids, so nobody will mistake it for the SNES game's soundtrack, but all of the series' most famous tracks are here and sound fantastic in the chiptune arrangements. The occasional use of digitized samples is also pretty effective.
And finally, the most important aspect of the game - its gameplay - is in top-form. Makaimura for Wonderswan isn't a cheap feeling knock-off: it feels quite similar to Genesis port of Ghouls 'n Ghosts. The controls are responsive and simple to grasp, and they're very precise. Jumping is just as particular and exacting as it has always been, and the stage layouts make devious use of this to ramp up the challenge level, but rest assured: if you screw up a jump and you die, it was your fault. The assortment of weapons you can find do give you some choice as to how you proceed, but make no mistake - though its not as brutal as the NES and SNES games, Makaimura for Wonderswan is a difficult game. Enemy patterns are generally predictable, but you will need to play many times before you figure out how to consistently get around each tough spot without getting whacked. One really nice addition made to the Wonderswan version is the auto-fire weapon attacks. Remember how difficult it could be to effectively button-mash on a Game Boy game? Well, now all you have to do is hold down the attack button and Arthur will chuck his weapon as fast as the game allows. It doesn't reduce the difficulty level as much as it allows you to focus on the stage challenges without being distracted by the mechanics, and I totally welcome it.
I'm a big fan of Makaimura for Wonderswan. It looks and sounds great, it holds a stiff challenge without ever becoming completely infuriating, and the new stages and bosses are all good additions to the series' staples. Don't discount it just because it never was released on anything but a handheld - it is just as good as it's older brothers. Why hasn't Capcom ever revisited this one? I'd love to see it ported or remastered to more modern hardware.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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